I have had a few friends around looking at my pics and small video clips when I came across this video and they can't believe how long the trains are in Canada but this clip is only of a small train so I thought I would add it to my blog. As you cross Canada you get to see loads of freight trains but I have never seen a passenger train.
Monday 26 January 2009
Saturday 17 January 2009
For new drivers
I have just switched all my Internet and phone over to sky so I get the one bill at home instead of 3 bills. While I was chatting to the lady about the phone service they supply she told me all landline calls are free 24/7 plus you can ring landline numbers in 20 countries. She told me because the mobile numbers on American and Canadian phones are they same as landline numbers my wife can ring my American and Canadian mobiles for just 7p connection and we can chat for an hour free (No Mick I don't want that solo phone back I will buy another). I have now got to find a couple of phones which don't charge you for incoming calls so if any one can let me know of a pay as you go mobile that doesn't charge for incoming calls for America and Canada I would be very grateful.
Sunday 11 January 2009
The flight home
I boarded the plane at Calgary on time but as usual we had to wait for a family to move there lazy arse and get on the plane we took off 45 minutes late but the pilot tried to make up some of the time on route. It was very foggy at Heathrow so we had to fly in a circle for an hour until there was a slot for us to land. On the way over I was wondering where I would get caught in my first traffic jam on the M25 or M3 or M27 but boy was I surprised when we landed there was a plane stuck in the terminal where our plane was due so we had to sit at the side of the runway for 45 minutes while they de-iced the wings of the other plane. I travelled light so I didn't waste time getting my bags and was met by my wife and daughters. Then I drove home with no hold ups at all but it felt funny driving home I kept driving over the line on my near side. When we pulled up at my house my wife went in to let our dog out as you can see she was very happy to see me.
It took her 20 minutes to calm down and she has not left my side since. while I have been in Canada I have not had a gravy dinner so last night my wife made me my favourite dinner which was faggots and mash with peas swede and carrots. Today Dee is cooking a nice sunday roast dinner.
It took her 20 minutes to calm down and she has not left my side since. while I have been in Canada I have not had a gravy dinner so last night my wife made me my favourite dinner which was faggots and mash with peas swede and carrots. Today Dee is cooking a nice sunday roast dinner.
Friday 9 January 2009
At the airport
I drove a Kenworth truck up to the Calgary yard, (what a very nice truck to drive) when I got to the yard Hutch gave me a lift to the airport so a big thanks to the guys at H&R. I spoke to a very nice couple I met while being at H&R and it seems I am not the only one getting crap from an English couple. I know this English driver and he was the same at his last job didn't want to work and full of shit he only wants to go to California and back so he can be home every weekend but wants to earn the same money as drivers who do work hard he spends his time trying to upset other drivers and bad mouthing H&R, all I can say is if you don't like it here as much as you say why don't you f--k off back to England. The one thing I do know (because my mate works in the office) is when he put his notice in at his last job he made a lot of people very happy that he was leaving.
Thursday 8 January 2009
Time at H&R
I have been at H&R for 4 months now, in that time I spent a month doing training and my mentor trip. In 12 weeks of driving
I have been to 5 new provinces in Canada.
13 new States in America.
I have covered 64,526 km/h or 40,328.74 miles.
I have met some very nice drivers here I have had some very nice comments from people all over the world and some nice e-mails from drivers who are going to sort out an interview to come and work here. I have even had 2 messages from an asshole who wanted to remain anonymous who didn't like what I wrote on MY blog but still keeps reading it, never mind won't be losing any sleep over what the guy wrote!
The blogs you read on the Internet about how drivers are doing at H&R are only a small fraction of the work force, if you do the math it will work out less than 1% so what we write on our blogs are our own views. All the back biting going on has come from a couple of English drivers crying because you earn more than them.
By the way to the anonymous driver who sends me nasty comments if you don't like what I write then why bother reading my blog? Next time you send me a message be man enough to put your name so we can have a private chat away from everyone face to face!
I have been to 5 new provinces in Canada.
13 new States in America.
I have covered 64,526 km/h or 40,328.74 miles.
I have met some very nice drivers here I have had some very nice comments from people all over the world and some nice e-mails from drivers who are going to sort out an interview to come and work here. I have even had 2 messages from an asshole who wanted to remain anonymous who didn't like what I wrote on MY blog but still keeps reading it, never mind won't be losing any sleep over what the guy wrote!
The blogs you read on the Internet about how drivers are doing at H&R are only a small fraction of the work force, if you do the math it will work out less than 1% so what we write on our blogs are our own views. All the back biting going on has come from a couple of English drivers crying because you earn more than them.
By the way to the anonymous driver who sends me nasty comments if you don't like what I write then why bother reading my blog? Next time you send me a message be man enough to put your name so we can have a private chat away from everyone face to face!
Time to go home
Its been 4 months since I got here and about time I went home to spend sometime with my family, its been hard leaving my family at home but I still think it was the right thing to do. I am in the Sandman hotel for the night then tomorrow I will go to the yard and pick up a Kenworth truck and take it to Calgary yard then get a lift to the airport. I have not got a credit card to book my flight so I asked H&R if they could book my flight for me which they did so a big thank you to Dave F for sorting out my flight for me. When it came to getting all my stuff out of the truck I was surprised on how much I have brought in the last 4 months I rented a small lock up for $25 for the month and all I am going to take home is a small bag and my laptop.
Saturday 3 January 2009
H&R as a company
H&R is not a bad company to work for they have new trucks and trailers and plenty of work if you want it. There are a few things that they could change which would make it a fantastic company then there would be a queue of drivers wanting the job. There would be a few small changes I would make which would make a lot of drivers very happy and lets face it if you have happy drivers then no one would want to leave!
Another moaning driver
Another driver has phoned Steve to ask him why I have earned more money than him and its not fair. All I can say is to that driver.... do you work as well as me or hard as me? Here are a few questions to ask yourself.
1 Do you or can you drive for more than 600 miles a day
2 Can you go anywhere and be away from base for 4-6 weeks at a time
3 Can you drive your maximum hours if the job needs it
4 Have you told your dispatch you don't care where they send you
5 Start at 4am most days
If the answer is no to any of the questions above then how in the hell can you earn as much as me. I just put on my blog how much I have earned to tell guys that are thinking of coming over here what sort of money they can earn but it seems to have upset a few (never mind). From what I have seen so far is there are 5 types of drivers here.
1 Married driver who wants to be home every weekend
2 Married driver who is OK with being away for a couple of weeks
3 Married driver who has partner with them (in the truck)
4 Team drivers
5 Single driver (who goes anywhere any time )
How can driver 1 and driver 5 earn the same money? they can't! Dispatch will not give a Texas run to a driver who wants to be home on Friday so driver 3 or 4 or 5 will get the trip. If you put restriction's in place then there a some jobs you will not get. The more restrictions you have the less jobs you can do so why is it my fault? I left my family in the UK so I could earn shit loads of money and I have. Before you say I must be a brown nose or arse licker its not true. Me and my dispatch guy have a love hate relationship I hate him and he would love to punch my face in lol but we work well together as a team.
Look at it another way if you ring up for a flight and you want to go on a certain day at a certain time and with only one carrier then the price will be high but if you say any carrier then the price drops if you get rid of the time and go anytime then you will get a much better deal.
So to the driver who moans because I am earning loads try my way of driving you might start earning then. There is a very good reason why I start at 4 am the roads are empty, if you have ever been through Great Falls Montana during the day there are loads of bloody traffic lights you can lose so much time there but you go through early hours of the morning all the lights are flashing orange and you can drive through all of them with out stopping. I like to start early so by the time the traffic starts to slow you down its time for breakfast but I will have done 5-6 hours by then so I am more than half way through my day there have been many times I have not stopped sometimes I have driven for about 9 hours without stopping. I know most drivers who read this will say not me but that's how I work. Over here you only get paid by the mile so I get from A-B as quickly as possible then its time for my break and you can get a parking spot easy in the truck stops. Another thing to the driver who moaned, I was just north of Salt Lake city Utah, it was a Thursday night, I was parked up and looked at my streets & trips I looked at my route back to Lethbridge it was 630 miles to the border I knew If I didn't get any hold ups I could make the border then I could switch over to Canadian times then I would have another 2 hours driving to get me back to the yard for my reset so I went for it. I drove 10hrs 40 Min's to the border and got back to the yard Friday night I started my reset Friday night not Saturday afternoon (that's when my truck would do 65mph) could you or would you do that? If you are willing to work hard over here you can earn some good money but if you only want to do 500 miles a day then you won't earn as much as a guy who does 600 + a day. If you read my last post I drove over 630 miles a day, all legal. I have just been stopped they went through all my logs and found nothing wrong with the miles I do, the only comment that was made was that I work my maximum everyday which is not breaking any law. In the last 20 years of driving I have always worked hard and earned good money in the last 5 years working for a driving agency I was the top earner. Every job I went on I did all the overtime that no one else wanted .I worked for a tanker company a few years back, over the radio they asked the drivers if they wanted another load everyone said no then they asked me I said yes this went on all week by the end of the week they got fed up asking them and just asked me, I did every extra load and at the end of the month 2 drivers went in to the office and moaned that I was getting all the overtime and they got nothing. It was pointed out to them that they keep turning it down so on the Monday I heard both these drivers being offered the extra run but they turned it down that's when the guy in the office went nuts and told everyone over the radio including me that they had gone into the office moaning that they were not getting over time and it was not fair that I was getting all the extra runs. So it just shows that some guys just moan because I get more than them but they don't want to do the extra work or the early starts. So if any other driver wants to moan that I might be getting more than them read my list above if you answer no to any of the question then you know why!
1 Do you or can you drive for more than 600 miles a day
2 Can you go anywhere and be away from base for 4-6 weeks at a time
3 Can you drive your maximum hours if the job needs it
4 Have you told your dispatch you don't care where they send you
5 Start at 4am most days
If the answer is no to any of the questions above then how in the hell can you earn as much as me. I just put on my blog how much I have earned to tell guys that are thinking of coming over here what sort of money they can earn but it seems to have upset a few (never mind). From what I have seen so far is there are 5 types of drivers here.
1 Married driver who wants to be home every weekend
2 Married driver who is OK with being away for a couple of weeks
3 Married driver who has partner with them (in the truck)
4 Team drivers
5 Single driver (who goes anywhere any time )
How can driver 1 and driver 5 earn the same money? they can't! Dispatch will not give a Texas run to a driver who wants to be home on Friday so driver 3 or 4 or 5 will get the trip. If you put restriction's in place then there a some jobs you will not get. The more restrictions you have the less jobs you can do so why is it my fault? I left my family in the UK so I could earn shit loads of money and I have. Before you say I must be a brown nose or arse licker its not true. Me and my dispatch guy have a love hate relationship I hate him and he would love to punch my face in lol but we work well together as a team.
Look at it another way if you ring up for a flight and you want to go on a certain day at a certain time and with only one carrier then the price will be high but if you say any carrier then the price drops if you get rid of the time and go anytime then you will get a much better deal.
So to the driver who moans because I am earning loads try my way of driving you might start earning then. There is a very good reason why I start at 4 am the roads are empty, if you have ever been through Great Falls Montana during the day there are loads of bloody traffic lights you can lose so much time there but you go through early hours of the morning all the lights are flashing orange and you can drive through all of them with out stopping. I like to start early so by the time the traffic starts to slow you down its time for breakfast but I will have done 5-6 hours by then so I am more than half way through my day there have been many times I have not stopped sometimes I have driven for about 9 hours without stopping. I know most drivers who read this will say not me but that's how I work. Over here you only get paid by the mile so I get from A-B as quickly as possible then its time for my break and you can get a parking spot easy in the truck stops. Another thing to the driver who moaned, I was just north of Salt Lake city Utah, it was a Thursday night, I was parked up and looked at my streets & trips I looked at my route back to Lethbridge it was 630 miles to the border I knew If I didn't get any hold ups I could make the border then I could switch over to Canadian times then I would have another 2 hours driving to get me back to the yard for my reset so I went for it. I drove 10hrs 40 Min's to the border and got back to the yard Friday night I started my reset Friday night not Saturday afternoon (that's when my truck would do 65mph) could you or would you do that? If you are willing to work hard over here you can earn some good money but if you only want to do 500 miles a day then you won't earn as much as a guy who does 600 + a day. If you read my last post I drove over 630 miles a day, all legal. I have just been stopped they went through all my logs and found nothing wrong with the miles I do, the only comment that was made was that I work my maximum everyday which is not breaking any law. In the last 20 years of driving I have always worked hard and earned good money in the last 5 years working for a driving agency I was the top earner. Every job I went on I did all the overtime that no one else wanted .I worked for a tanker company a few years back, over the radio they asked the drivers if they wanted another load everyone said no then they asked me I said yes this went on all week by the end of the week they got fed up asking them and just asked me, I did every extra load and at the end of the month 2 drivers went in to the office and moaned that I was getting all the overtime and they got nothing. It was pointed out to them that they keep turning it down so on the Monday I heard both these drivers being offered the extra run but they turned it down that's when the guy in the office went nuts and told everyone over the radio including me that they had gone into the office moaning that they were not getting over time and it was not fair that I was getting all the extra runs. So it just shows that some guys just moan because I get more than them but they don't want to do the extra work or the early starts. So if any other driver wants to moan that I might be getting more than them read my list above if you answer no to any of the question then you know why!
Here you go George a laugh on me
This is the one thing H&R have got so wrong, you cannot pick up a trailer at H&R without the computer telling you! You get paid a safety bonus every 4 months here so why don't H&R take out $75 every time a lazy driver leaves a trailer with a bold tyre and give the $75 to the poor driver who has to sit waiting to get a new tyre! Why should a driver leave a trailer with a bold tyre its not safe so they should not get their full bonus. It might take a few months to sink in but as soon as a trailer gets found with a bold tyre that driver who dropped it should get a message saying you just lost $75 lol. I bet he would check the next time it would make it a fair and much safer system and the poor driver who found it will not feel too angry sitting and waiting because they get $75. You can understand a flat tyre but not a bold tyre like the one me and Mick found when we went to LA.
Tulsa to Kelowna
I got into Tulsa Oklahoma on Monday the 30th. As soon as I got there I was backed on to the dock and tipped within 1 hour then I worked out that I had enough hours to get down to Denton in Texas. I have been there before I knew I would get loaded as soon as I turned up because they load 24/7 It was a quick load then pulled outside to find a place to eat and park up. I looked at my route to Kelowna worked out the miles and time I worked it out if I went flat out for 3 days I could cross the border in the 7 days then once I crossed into Canada I could roll my hours and would still be able to drive, but on the way the weather turned bad which slowed me down. There is a stretch of road between Wyoming and Colorado that gets very windy, on the way down I saw 4 trucks on their side (I left my camera in my drawer other wise I would of got some pics) but on this stretch going north I saw one truck that had gone off the road and another on it's side this time I took some pics but not very good!
When I crossed into Montana the weather turned really bad, very high winds and loads of heavy snow. I got pulled in at Butte by the guys on the weigh bridge they wanted to see everything, they even put my hours and miles in their computer to see if I was fiddling but found nothing. He asked me where I was going (even tho he had my delivery notes in his hand)! I told him I was going to Kelowna but I had run out of hours and didn't have time to make it to the border so I was stopping at Spokane Washington for a reset (I should of switched to 120 hours at the start of the week but I didn't know what job I was doing). When I left the weigh bridge I had to fuel at the Flying J. It was going to be a quick stop but I had to ring H&R and tell them I had to have a reset and was told the load was not booked until Monday so once I had my reset I was told to deliver the load. I was just about to go outside when it started to snow heavy and the wind picked up and you couldn't see a thing outside so I stopped and had lunch. About 40 mins later it stopped and the sun came out so off I went but it was very strong winds which slowed me down a lot so I could not make Spokane I got as far as Post falls Idaho.
I am now sat in the Flying J (with the slowest internet service ever) I like eating in here but only the buffet because the other meals are so small you still feel hungry when you leave but this J doesn't have the buffet so I have eaten my emergency supply of food (just hope I don't get stuck somewhere lol). My reset will be up at 6am tomorrow so when I leave here it will still be dark but by the time I get to the Coulee Dam it will be light so I am going to stop and take some pics. When I came this way with Lyndon it was too dark so couldn't take any pics and it looked a fantastic place so I hope it looks just as good in the light!
When I crossed into Montana the weather turned really bad, very high winds and loads of heavy snow. I got pulled in at Butte by the guys on the weigh bridge they wanted to see everything, they even put my hours and miles in their computer to see if I was fiddling but found nothing. He asked me where I was going (even tho he had my delivery notes in his hand)! I told him I was going to Kelowna but I had run out of hours and didn't have time to make it to the border so I was stopping at Spokane Washington for a reset (I should of switched to 120 hours at the start of the week but I didn't know what job I was doing). When I left the weigh bridge I had to fuel at the Flying J. It was going to be a quick stop but I had to ring H&R and tell them I had to have a reset and was told the load was not booked until Monday so once I had my reset I was told to deliver the load. I was just about to go outside when it started to snow heavy and the wind picked up and you couldn't see a thing outside so I stopped and had lunch. About 40 mins later it stopped and the sun came out so off I went but it was very strong winds which slowed me down a lot so I could not make Spokane I got as far as Post falls Idaho.I am now sat in the Flying J (with the slowest internet service ever) I like eating in here but only the buffet because the other meals are so small you still feel hungry when you leave but this J doesn't have the buffet so I have eaten my emergency supply of food (just hope I don't get stuck somewhere lol). My reset will be up at 6am tomorrow so when I leave here it will still be dark but by the time I get to the Coulee Dam it will be light so I am going to stop and take some pics. When I came this way with Lyndon it was too dark so couldn't take any pics and it looked a fantastic place so I hope it looks just as good in the light!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
