RICO:
Hello Barkingmad wellcome to Trucknet. I was new on here once and i now how rude some of these of these Ex pats can be. But we are now all good freinds so stick with it and it will be ok. Good luck.
Crikey…everybody has their “alter ego” names out tonight 
FFS don’t talk about chainsaws 
This could be ‘Barkinrobbie’ 
All I know is I own a house that I could only dream of in the UK, have a swimming pool, Jaccuzi room 3 double bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 6 downstairs rooms, f**kin huge basement, a 4x4 thats eats 8 people in comfort for a family car that I could never afford back there and a Jeep Wrangler we occasionally climb mountains with. and for an average of 1600 miles a week I make $70k a year … but I ain’t bragging
As a new member and a ex-pat this was the 1st forum i looked at! I didn’t know my 1st post wasn’t allowed to be to nmm. 
There seems to be lots of bragging and paranoia going on…
barkingmad:
As a new member and a ex-pat this was the 1st forum i looked at! I didn’t know my 1st post wasn’t allowed to be to nmm.There seems to be lots of bragging and paranoia going on…
Bragging and paranoia, not quite, being content with your life and commenting on it is not really bragging 
Paranoia, don’t get that one, you can post what you like to me mate, if you disagree with me, so be it, if you want to put your opinion over, feel free, we’re all entitled to have one 
I was just a little surprised that with all the posts on this forum you would choose to introduce yourself by questioning the square footage of my house, but as I said, that’s your choice, you said you’re also an expat, so who knows, one day I may invite you round for a beer and you can bring your tape measure and see for yourself
Pat Hasler:
This could be ‘Barkinrobbie’
All I know is I own a house that I could only dream of in the UK, have a swimming pool, Jaccuzi room 3 double bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 6 downstairs rooms, f**kin huge basement, a 4x4 thats eats 8 people in comfort for a family car that I could never afford back there and a Jeep Wrangler we occasionally climb mountains with. and for an average of 1600 miles a week I make $70k a year … but I ain’t bragging
You have a top setup there too Pat but that kind of money and being able to afford/run those kind of “toys” or house is not really available to somebody who is/did look @Canada trucking unless your willing to run OTR and work BIG hours/miles til you get PR.
Might have been a reality@ Westcan Bulk maybe 05/08 but that looks highly unlikely now for somebody on a WP and having to wait years on PR.
I still can’t believe that Canadian CIC are still letting the likes of H+R/BFS/FUNKS and RJ Hoffman take new on new employees for PNP when the driver retention stats tell all 
BT,
I’m going to have to call you on that one as well
Think about this, we’re all over 40, so we’ve been working hard for well over 20yrs, that has more to do with our current lifestyles than the money we earn now 
I never lived in a poky little rented house in England, never had an old banger for a car, well not in recent times anyway, what I have now is the result of many years of working hard
Moving to Canada or the USA to earn big bucks is a waste of time, you will earn a little more and your money will go a little further, but not enough to make you rich overnight, maybe if you bought a house in the UK a few years back and have a large chunk of equity, you could come here and be mortgage free, but that’s about it.
I have to admit that I am rather spoiled with my Mon to Fri (sometimes sun afternoon, as today) but my job is rare over here, before I got this job I was over the road for less money. The view that if you want to drive in Canada it’s away from home for weeks ata time is rubbish, Dave and his mates seem to return home after every delivery and pick up, Bob does local now most of the time.
I did have a very well paid job before I left England but I was away for weeks at a time (Bit like you think Canada is LOL), before that I had an easy and very well paid job driving for Tesco and earning vast amounts but was bored. I owned a 3 bedroom detached house that I could fit in my basement here Life was a struggle with my 13 year old car and bills to pay.
Everyone has a choice in their life if you love the UK you can enjoy life there, if you prefer to live elsewhere then do so. I know that if I lived back in the UK I would have a much lower standard of living.
The people who have moved to Canada or anywhere else and who have made a sucsess of it are probally people who had a decent life and job in the uk as they are grafters who chase a pound note.
I’ve not been to Canada but I do have a reconasence mission penciled in for some time soon.
I have friends who live in spain with there own business who are getting by despite the troubles there but the amount of Brits out there who are pottless blaming this that and the other but not themselves is amazing. Lots seem to have got a few quid through the massive rise in uk house price rises but other than that were always in debt and in and out of work and always blaming everything else here for there problems.
The fact is you are never going to be a millionaire anywhere been a lorry driver but you can earn a half decent wage for a relatively easy and not to skilled job in the uk or abroad if you are a grafter.
Yes agree with the last three posts there.
Nobody has commented on why CIC have not clamped down HARD on the usual “meat in the seat” OTR Canadian trucking companies who after all these years are still openly able to recruit from UK etc on false promises/ complete lies to the “rose tinted glasses” brigade who you ALL know don’t have the gumption to make it work in Canada
Surely there must be a damming set of stats SOMEWHERE that shows how many LMO/TWP’s these notorious companies go through per year and how many PR’s come out at the end? 
A group of us were having that conversation yesterday BT, it does seem strange that the companies who use the ‘meat in the seat’ philosophy have been supported by the Government with immigration programmes, although I think that they have just managed to slip through the net, the TWP was not only for long haul drivers, there are many categories, I assume that other trades have better success than trucking.
When you think about it, it’s only the ability to recruit staff from abroad that has allowed these ‘meat in the seat’ companies to continue in business, without an influx of staff, they would’ve gone skint, perhaps deservedly so, after all if nobody within 5000miles and an Atlantic sea crossing wanted to work there, it couldn’t have been a decent job, or for that matter, a properly run company to get into that position.
As time goes on and the immigrant drivers stop coming over, who knows, maybe the inevitable will happen.
kr79:
The people who have moved to Canada or anywhere else and who have made a sucsess of it are probally people who had a decent life and job in the uk as they are grafters who chase a pound note.
.
Not quite so !
I arrived here with two suitcases, $250.00 and what I thought was a bank accout fuilled with thousands of pounds untill I discovered that my ex wife (“Oh I agree to an amicable devorce and we will split everything fairly, after all we have been seperated for over 2 years Pat and good luck in the USA with Kate”) ■■■■■ took me for ebery f**kin penny of equity in the house. I did manage to draw about a grand in total out of the account before it was all handed to her. So basically I spent over a year doing under the table jobs of all sorts, even becoming a builder of sorts and working on a new log cabin in the mountains for some guy just to survive. It took me 18 months to get a work permit, 18 months of hiding from INS and trying to earn a crumb… Yes I was an ilegal imigrant for most of that time.
First legal job was car salesman for a Ford dealer, but I couldn’t lie and rip people off, second job was for a sceptic tank company which was the only company around here that would employ a non US citizen due to 9/11 and this was because it was owned by an Englishman. St Ann transport showed trust in me and loaned me a truck to take my CDL A as a UK LGV 1 is worthless here. I spent 4 years driving for them and still struggling, the company is great to work for and the boss really cares about drivers home and family life, if they paid more money i wold go back there tomorrow as without them I would have given up. I did something that I had to do in November 06 and went self employed which was crap them Foodliner rescued me.
Dont think life is easy and you need to be rich to make it work here, it just takes hard work and persistence. 
Hi all.As Pat says,not everyone goes abroad with a sackfull of money.When i lost everything in 1976 due to a bad partner and decided to go to Holland to work,i had nothing.I wanted to go to Danmark but didn’t have enough for the boat fare.When i got off the boat in Hook of Holland i walked to Monster[about 10kms]to start banging on doors.It took me about 4 days to find a job during which time companies let me sleep in trucks in their yards and drivers gave me lifts to other towns so it ain’t all sunshine,but if you don’t try you never will know what’s possible.Mike
hutpik:
Hi all.As Pat says,not everyone goes abroad with a sackfull of money.When i lost everything in 1976 due to a bad partner and decided to go to Holland to work,i had nothing.I wanted to go to Danmark but didn’t have enough for the boat fare.When i got off the boat in Hook of Holland i walked to Monster[about 10kms]to start banging on doors.It took me about 4 days to find a job during which time companies let me sleep in trucks in their yards and drivers gave me lifts to other towns so it ain’t all sunshine,but if you don’t try you never will know what’s possible.Mike
Well done that man
Getting back to the work week thingy…
My weeks can vary a lot, it can be haed or very soft for me to earn my fixed minimum and the hard weeks give me no incentive because I still get the same amount… However week comencing sunday 30th of august was hard but I benefited from it. I left home midnight that day bob tailed to Albany to collect an empty molasses tanker, ran down to NYC, reloaded and back to Albany to unload at the port of Albany, I then had a new clutch fan fitted in our workshop about 1000 feet away and then took 10 off at the truck stop. Next day did the same run but got back to NYC because I didnt start from home, I got 14 hours off in NYC tuesday, Weds I did the same run but due to the fact that I get on very well with the Molasses guys I got reloaded on return at 3.00pm so I was well set for the night and didnt start heading back up till 08.00am thurs, empty and back to NYC yet again for another load of the same, loaded as soon as I returned this tim I headed north while I still had hours and park at Plattekill service area for the night. I got started at 06.30 friday and phoned the molasses drop to see if I could get in early “Come right on in” said the lady and I had offloaded, dropped my traier, bob tailed home and was indoors by 10.30am friday for the weekend.
It’s 140 miles each way from NYC to Albany port so wuite a short run but what my dispatcher didn’t know was that the molasses run pay’s the highest rate on the company and five loads put me well over the minimum Basically a 4.5 day week for just under $1500. Last week my dispatcher realised his errors and changed my runs around as they don’t like anyone breaking the minimum weeks wage if they can help it. So I had to leave home sunday night, down to NYC and do a Ben & Jerrys run where the tourists took photos of my truck next to the silos. All I did then was weds Scranton PA, spent thursday loading 4 trailers for others, load friday for Fraser NY (up in the Catskills) and home empty, I did 1345 miles but Hey ! … still get my minimum.
Pat Hasler:
kr79:
The people who have moved to Canada or anywhere else and who have made a sucsess of it are probally people who had a decent life and job in the uk as they are grafters who chase a pound note.
.Not quite so !
I arrived here with two suitcases, $250.00 and what I thought was a bank accout fuilled with thousands of pounds untill I discovered that my ex wife (“Oh I agree to an amicable devorce and we will split everything fairly, after all we have been seperated for over 2 years Pat and good luck in the USA with Kate”) ■■■■■ took me for ebery f**kin penny of equity in the house. I did manage to draw about a grand in total out of the account before it was all handed to her. So basically I spent over a year doing under the table jobs of all sorts, even becoming a builder of sorts and working on a new log cabin in the mountains for some guy just to survive. It took me 18 months to get a work permit, 18 months of hiding from INS and trying to earn a crumb… Yes I was an ilegal imigrant for most of that time.
First legal job was car salesman for a Ford dealer, but I couldn’t lie and rip people off, second job was for a sceptic tank company which was the only company around here that would employ a non US citizen due to 9/11 and this was because it was owned by an Englishman. St Ann transport showed trust in me and loaned me a truck to take my CDL A as a UK LGV 1 is worthless here. I spent 4 years driving for them and still struggling, the company is great to work for and the boss really cares about drivers home and family life, if they paid more money i wold go back there tomorrow as without them I would have given up. I did something that I had to do in November 06 and went self employed which was crap them Foodliner rescued me.
Dont think life is easy and you need to be rich to make it work here, it just takes hard work and persistence.
Fair enough you was down on your luck but i know from your other posts you had done decent work here and you obviously have a bit of get up and go to get where you are now.
It just amazes me when i come on some of these forums that some people want everything handed on a plate and winge about everything.
My story is similar to yours Pat, but under different circumstances. When I first came to Canada I was only on a two year work permit, within the two year term of the work permit I could migrate onto another scheme that would give me a nomination for residency, but there were no guarantees. So with that in mind I decided to dip my toes in the water. I packed up my job at Mercedes and went driving again for a cowboy outfit that would let me work all the hours I wanted, I wasn’t selling anything in the UK before coming over, so I needed a few quid to live on and keep everything ship shape at home until the money started rolling in.
I did this for a couple of months and managed to save a couple of grand. I didn’t need a fortune as I had accomodation sorted out in Canada, so I left the Wife (or girlfriend as she was at the time) and jumped on a plane with a few cases and a couple of grand in my bin. Then came the rollercoaster ride, first of all it was all very exciting, I was going to be trucking all over Canada and The USA in a Kenworth 
That was a high, no doubt about it, but first I had to get my licence. The training at Big Freight was laughable, it took nearly a month and I spent most of my time teaching myself the important parts (the pre trip and air brake sections) while the fat git of a trainer spent the morning falling asleep in the passenger seat of the training truck as the other bloke doing training at the same time went joy riding around town (the situation was reversed in the afternoon) but I passed my test first time and, after a week of orientation, was on the road. This was not a moment to soon, as the accomodation I referred to earlier amounted to a blow up bed in a cupboard (seriously )
I spent my two grand on a laptop and the Love Machine (my old Lincoln) and got down to the business of earning money, sort of, as I’ve said many times before, the job at BFS was a disaster, I had been fed a pack of lies, it was the worst job I had, by far. So I packed it in and got on to the firm I’m with now. Things started to look a little better now, I was working at a good place, earning decent money and I managed to get work to keep me running so that I had my time off somewhere down the road, so instead of a lilo in a broom cupboard, I stayed in motels or the truck when I had my time off and did some sightseeing along the way, things were looking good now.
That Christmas I flew back to England, the girlfriend and I sat down and worked everything out and came to the conclusion that Canada was our future, she hadn’t seen it for herself yet though, so we still had that to take care of. She came over a few times that year and loved it, so we made our plans. We went onto the PNP scheme that nominated us for residency, put the house in England up for sale and waited for nature to take its course, we got married in the meantime, she came over for a visit and we took a trip to Vegas, got ■■■■■■ up and ended up married this bolloxed up the residency application, so we had to start that again 
So although I now live in the house pictured earlier and have a nice car to go with my Love Machine, I never had SFA handed to me on a plate, I spent nearly three years away from my loved ones, I lived in a [zb]ing cupboard, a lorry or a motel, my Wife had to keep things going back in England, but we got there in the end and we earned everything we’ve got, so you may understand why it gets on my ■■■■ to hear people moaning, or even worse, people begrudging what I have (there are a few of them believe me ) We made the choices we made so that we could end up where we are today, they could’ve made the same choices too, but they chose not to. Success or failure, over here or back in the UK, is all about attitude, hard work plays a part, but attitude and making good decisions are far more important. Luck plays a part in it too, although it seems that the harder I work and the better my decisions, the more ‘luck’ I get
Hardest week since joining Foodliner has just gone by
Started 10.00pm sun, down to NYC take 10 off, Load and deliver Bethlehem PA, back to NYc and preload a tanker for some bloke, 10 off, load and deliver Ben & Jerry, Waterbury VT, home for 14 hours, down to NYc and preload another, Thurs… load and deliver Ben & Jerry, St Albans VT, 12 hours off at home. One of our new guys was at St Albans and I showed him the way down via the Champlain free ferry.
Now I placed 3 photo’s in line and not 4 and they came in a different order to how I posted them
By contrast I’ve had a pretty easy month, I had a wedding to go to the first weekend of the month, so I was only going to go out on a short trip, but the water pump packed up on my motor, so that put the kybosh on that little plan, so I was off for a week, not all bad though, Nianiamh and I went round to a mate’s house with our families and drunk all our absent friends beer (I even found and imbibed his secret stash ) the folowing night it was round to Nianiamh’s, which turned into another session, then the wedding, the next day was a bbq at my place which went on until the early hours and Monday was recovery day
I’m finishing for the month at the end of this week and as it stands right now I’m on just under 10k miles, I’m loading in Indianapolis in the morning and supposed to be running it up to Edmonton, then loading from there or Calgary back to the yard, so will be on 13k miles for the month, not too bad considering I’ll only have worked 20 days, especially when you remember I get paid miles, not salary like Pat, anything over 12k gives me enough, over that is all a bonus (for the off licence this month )
