2 year contract for rookies normal??

I am so ####ing done with this industry and this country. I can only stand it, because I’m an O/O, and they don’t mess with my home time. Just putting in days, until I can go local O/O, Costco Fleet comes to Canada or Walmart stops slip seating Daycabs.

 

Oh yah I hear yah there. It is sad to see how bad the industry has become. Dishonesty, lacking in morality, slave drivers ... I could go on. You would think they would know better, that the government would no better, but nope, same old crap.

I just got back from the mainland for an interview ... was 100% lied to. I drove up to their office building, needles, pee bottles, broken down equipment. I didn't even get out of my car ... kept on driving. It is crazy!

I saw these guys (Harlens Trucking Ltd.) looking for people on indeed and they were found guility of screwing their foreign working drivers. Surrey trucking company ordered to pay $350,000 after underpaying foreign workers - Surrey Now-Leader

Like how does a company get their license back? The government doesn't seem to care, as if I had the power, they would never own a company every again.

 

The government knows very much so what's going on but they don't care. Either way if they shut his company down he would just open another under his wife's name and move everything there. You just can't win.

Same man, same. This industry is horrible, however at the moment it's one of the few industries that seem unaffected by this covid thing. They should introduce federal drug testing, it would weed out 80% of drivers and I'm fairly confident about it. The industry is a joke in Canada.

Was driving on 401 today and there was some guy pulling a B-train in the middle lane going 60kmh. I pass this guy in the left lane (no trucks allowed) and I look at this guy and he's on his phone with his leg up on the dash like dude seriously?

 

Look into the job offer more, like others have said there is no reason they should be making you sign a contract if they are not paying for your school or offering you tuition reimbursement. When I first started two years ago I was looking at going with Kriska or Schneider because they offered tuition reimbursement ($200 a month for two years) but they only had crazy OTR positions that had like 3-4 home days a month.

I was lucky enough to find a local job two minutes from my place (I live in Brampton), but I started with the night shift and even then it was very difficult. My advice is I wouldn't start with a local job doing day time work. First of all it is probably near impossible to find for a new driver in this market, a year ago my company would hire anyone who walked in the door, now they laid off half the drivers (including myself for two months), most of us are back but there are still two drivers waiting to be rehired and these guys have close to 10 years experience.

It depends on which company you work for but like someone pointed out a lot of them will pay you garbage rates. I started at $19 and am only making $21 now. The only reason its worthwhile to me is because I'm 2minutes away and I'm saving probably $10-20 a day on gas/wear and maintenance/depreciation costs on my car due to not having a 30 minute - 45 minute commute. But the job is extremely difficult, driving in the GTA, reversing off the road into docks, is far more dangerous and riskier to your CVOR than an OTR position.

 

I disagree, I did local for some time a few years ago and it was not nearly as stressful as OTR was. OTR you go to so many different places, different road conditions, drivers etc. Living in Toronto you can easily predict how they'll act. Getting paid by the hour meant I never rushed, unlike the OTR drivers who were flying past me. I did Loblaws dedicated however so it was just warehouse to warehouse and 6 hours waiting time inbetween each.

But hey, each to their own. I'd recommend doing OTR for a little while before going local but it's totally dependent on the person.

 

The parking crisis, and parking in these truckstops at night, will completely delete your CVOR compared to delivering local. I did the worst of the worst, OTR LTL, so basically drive to a large US city, and do local for 3 days lol (up to 12 drops and picks), then OTR home. If someone will give you local, take local by the hour and never look back.

 

That sounds horrible haha, I've only ever done 3 pickups and I was done for. I might switch back to local sometime, I just enjoy being away from the stresses at home.

Problem is most local companies in the GTA pay $23 an hour max which is terrible. Trying to get enough experience so I can haul gasoline.

 

Just apply to company to haul fuel. My friend was training drivers at Paul’s Hauling and as he said “they hiring people who have no business being behind the wheel”
2 years experience seems to be golden for companies