hkloss1:
“The bloke that drives my other truck”
Hi NMMAre you an owner operator, or am I confusing things, as you said this: “The bloke that drives my other truck” in your last post?
So, things are not looking rosy for those wanting to be home every night and be paid hourly, then? At least not in Manitoba.
Alberta might be a better place for good hourly paying jobs, but I guess since oil prices collapsed things are not looking good there neither, as all those made unemployed in the oil patch drive south looking for jobs in Edmonton and Calgary.Is there anything else worth mentioning about Alberta industry wise apart from oil extraction and related services?
I am an owner operator plus one, I had an opportunity to put another truck on the turnpike fleet at the carrier I’m with, at the same time the salesman I bought the first truck off called me to tell me about this truck that “was too good to miss out on” and that weekend a driver I rate highly told me he was going back OTR, so I bought the other truck. So far the truck and the driver have lived up to and passed my expectations, however the promised spot on the turnpike fleet has not materialised due to the economic downturn, so it hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. It’s early days yet as my driver had to do 6months on the normal fleet to prove he was good enough to go on the turnpike, that has only just passed, so we will see what happens, the way work is at the moment I doubt anything will change in the near future though.
The introduction of elogs will help things pick up I think, a lot of older drivers will hang up the keys for good, the ones running false logs will have to straighten up their act and together this should mean that there are more loads needing to be covered, the industry needs a cull, there are too many trucks out there now, which is hypocritical of me I know, having put an extra truck on the road, but I’m speculating to accumulate, well that’s the plan at least!
As FTTM said, the good jobs are, like anywhere, dead man’s shoes and because they’re good jobs elogs won’t have any effect on them at all, so they will always be dead man’s shoes jobs. In Alberta most transport is oil related or groceries to the big cities, other than that it’s logging, which I imagine is difficult to get into, livestock, again not something anybody can or wants to do. About the best thing you could hope for if you want regular hours is trunking between Calgary and Edmonton or Saskatoon or running groceries up to Ft McMurray for one of the big box carriers.
As an aside, I was in Ft McMurray today, I never saw much evidence of the devastation caused by the fire, but the little I did see was shocking, whole streets of houses are just a pile of ash now.
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