Emigrate to U.S?

Pat Hasler:
Not to put a spoiler on things but I moved here 16 years ago, married an American and have a daughter with her, I love what I have but knowing what I do I can’t understand why anyone would really want to move here ?
Drivers are treated in a disgusting way by almost every company, there is virtually no vacation pay until you have been working for any company for a year, then you usually get 5 days, there are only 6 national holidays recognized by trucking companies, there is no real healthcare system, you can be fired at a minutes notice without pay, if you do anything wrong you can be suspended on the spot with no pay, you have no employee rights whatsoever, taxes are disgustingly high despite what you may think, true … you may pay less from your pay check but town taxes, village taxes, school taxes (you don’t need to have kids to pay this, it’s the law), my property taxes alone come to $600.00 a month and we live in a poorer rural area. Our healthcare insurance costs $150.00 a week and if you are sick for over 6 weeks it is cancelled and you loose every cent of your premiums and are left to go bankrupt because you can’t afford the treatments. If you have dental insurance you go to the dentist only to be told your insurance only covers a tiny bit of the costs so your ridiculously high dental charge of $10k means you will still have to pay 3/4 of it. In all you need to make a great deal of money to survive, each doctor visit that you think is covered by your insurance involves a co pay of about $25 to $50.

Now for the truck driving bit…
You will be treated like a slave. You will only be paid for the miles you cover and mostly then it will be from zip code to zip code so you loose a far bit of actual milage, you can sit around for days in a truck stop for hours or days unpaid waiting for an assigned load, you will not be paid overtime and get days off if you actually do work a holiday and as said earlier you will not get vacation pay or very little anyway.

As others mentioned, unless you are married to a US citizen you don’t have a chance anyway.

Sorry to be a spoil sport but you need to know the truth.

May I spoil your cry a bit… just a bit… - I agree that Health stuff over there is gravelike…

About holidays etc…
Here - in modern tax avoidance scheme Britain… (it’s different now from when you were young…) majority of us - Drivers are on Self Employed of Ltd tax avoidance schemes = NO Holidays, Sickpays etc goodies… so … I would say almost equal to US…

About poor US driver in his Flat on Wheels…
Here - in Europe, we have polyester/foam/smth plank few inches behind seats (seats are half of US seats)… while you are jumping around in your moving Flat…
Most of young people here rent till they die rooms in shared houses that are smaller than your Flat on Wheels…

What else - oh right… insurance scams and cyclist scams…
We here have cyclists trying to get compensations - they do that sneaking up to left side door and scraming just few meters after left turn on junctions… then claim compensations…
Then these crash for cash and whaiplish watewa scams…

Oh, yeah … and we are not driving in straight line all day… we have corners tight places and lanes are narrover than yours guess…
Cameras everywhere cashing in…

Oh, and services yeah… showers… do you really want to even start on this…

Get real… you guys over there are in much better conditions…

Only downsides I would agree:

  1. no tacho so slave labour probably if it’s the same as here all non tacho jobs… fake papers and just roling… but there are certain pluses on this as well - streching to services anytime with pen…
  2. your VOSA - DOT is much rougher on you than these ones here…
  3. Food… ■■? maybe food is worse over there… plasticy, chemicaly…

Just saying - cheer up, you’re better off than you might think…

You can buy house for one years salary over there… we here can’t… And I mean proper house not 2 brick walls and fake grass 10x5m
You can drive proper car - we can’t… we have to struggle with micras, vans and hothatches due to all these insurance scams racking up money for last 30 years to clownish rates… how many do you think in here - on this forum can afford to drive pickup trucks her ein UK■■?

:open_mouth: