I know this is cheeky, but my husband Paul and myself are coming out to Winnipeg on the 18th may and then driving to Saskatoon for interviews for Siemens (kindersley) and yankee, westcan rung as well and want Paul to interview in lloydminster for petrol tankers, but thats a slightly different set up as they want Paul to put himself through the HGV test and then their training starts on the petrol after and they said he would earn about $45000 for the first year, because of training, but would only be out 7 days at a time, she also thought we would struggle on the amount of money we are planning to take out, (not be able to buy) and that rentals are in short supply, and with a dog and 3 kids in tow even shorter. Now yankee have said that Paul would be double manned and out on road for 12/13 days at a time and earn about $50000 a year, and we would be based in Manitoba, Siemens was about the same. so my questions are......... what do you think of Yankee as a company, because looking at some of the boards they get a slating, what do you think of Winnipeg? any areas best avoided and is it possible to rent with the dog in tow, also is $50000 enough for a family of 5 to live on as i don't think i can work for the first year on the PNP scheme. any help will be greatly appreciated

Hi i hope i can be of some help
And i am going to be truthful
we went for interviews with all three of the companies you have interviews with, Hubby said if he had the choice over again he would have chosen Yankee, they pay around average but their Rigs are far superior to the other companies, and when your on the road for so long it does matter.
I have to agree with you that Yankee have had a slating i am in-touch with a family who unfortunately Yankee didn't work out for, but i think all three have been slated in their turn.
We took $40k with us we chose a company that everything had to be paid by us upfront (flights, training, licences, tests and uniforms) plus we had a family of four a dog and renting and living expenses, whoever told you $45k is not enough is quite right its probably not. you will spend more than you are expecting to spend, and things are more expensive than you will expect them to be.
Unfortunately for us things didn't work out and we came after a few months, it just wasn't to our liking
All i can say to you is be cautious don't put all your eggs in one basket
Shelly

Creamcrackered,

As your in Winnipeg have you looked at Big Freight (Steinbach) and Transx

George-Ang

Drives for Big Freight and could tell you about small town life in that part of Manitoba.

Whilst Paul is in interviews have you thought of contacting a Realtor in Saskatoon to have a look round?

They normally pick people up and drive them around to the different houses.
So Paul can drive to interview meetup with you afterwards.

Look on MLS for houses 3 kids 4 bedrooms ?? under $125000 there is 90


What do your 3 kids like to do? what school age are they? Renting with a dog not a big problem lots of Co-ops. think there's a few around Biiiink and myself.

Area to be avoid is core area. But having said that one side of Portage is very nice and then the other side is working class with pockets of "house/s" to avoid if you know what I mean.

I.E not all poor people are thugs and not all rich people are nice.

After your interviews how long are you going to be in Canada?

Have fun searching and enjoy yourselves. Are
( 13 -19 in our case 4 of them out of town)

PS if your going via Regina can you get us a couple of lb of Bacon from lizwil98.

All the best Grah.

thanks for that guys. i thought $40000 would be plenty if we wern't buying, guess i was wrong.

shelly, out of interest, who did you go out with?

This Wikipedia article gives a good overview of Winnipeg - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnipeg,_Manitoba - just learned a few things myself!

I can't help with the job stuff, neither of us work and I haven't heard of those companies You say you wouldn't be able to work for a year on the PNP scheme, are you sure about that? I haven't heard that before.

We gave up looking for a rental that would take a dog - lots of them say they do but in reality when you measure your dog against their stipulated maximum shoulder height, they mean chihuahua-sized or smaller I think the humane society publishes a current list of rentals that take dogs, I'll try and dig it out for you later. We decided to buy and overall I'm pleased we did. We're in the west of the city, not overly keen on the south but we considered a few houses there too.

How old are your kids? Mine's not yet 2 so I can't give you any school info either. We've just toured some childcare places and our local centre is charging CAD 9 a day for nursery school, or CAD 2.40 a day if you're subsidized... unbelievable!!

The only thing I don't like about Winnipeg is the choice of flights out - only 1 direct flight to UK and only during the summer, very expensive to get to ORD or MSP and connect... but that's not important if you're not planning on going anywhere.

If you're in Winnipeg on your trip (or are you just passing through?) - give us a shout and we can have a beer/show you round/whatever. Grah, you can come for a bevvy too and bring that DVD back, Mr B's almost at the point of making me buy him a new one

Yes, that is bad about Regina too. Its a cheap place to buy a house and a pretty safe place for your kids to grow up. I think you have to make your own entertainment. There isn't all that much to do around here. I guess Winnipeg would be better as its bigger. When our kids were young we socialized with the neighbours and barbecued in the summer and played cards etc. in the winter and we had loads of fun.

But its sure expensive to go home for a holiday. There are no direct flights from Regina. You are stuck with paying an extra $300 to get to Winnipeg or Calgary. It doesn't matter that Calgary is probably further away from England than Regina is - its just a fact of life when you have no direct flights. At least from Winnipeg you can go direct.

Hi there i am also going to winnipeg, i went out there last year for interviews. i went to a few companys, [reimers,transx, and pauls hauling] all good firms to work for but the last one, is tankers and they pay for all your training so try them.

I Guess we've nothing to lose now by saying We went with Westcan Bulk Transport, the damage has already been done we've lost everything we had, and no amount of threats can take what we haven't got

I've got to say there are couples and families still out there that are happy, some had problems in the UK ( money and family) so therefore come hell or high water wouldn't return to the UK

Out of the five families that went out, within two weeks of each other four of us had returned and are now back starting again from scratch in the UK, we stayed there three months two others stayed four and the last one came back a few weeks after that

We thought that maybe it didn't work for us because we didn't have enough money to be financially sound to start with but there we're others that went out with $200k+ and more from UK house sales and still found it hard adjusting
I do know of some couples that are still paying from the UK their Canadian mortgage because they can't sell their property, but they had to get out because the earnings they had been promised just weren't coming in so they couldn't pay the mortgage.

All of us returnee's that are in contact are under the same impression that they would have told us, and did tell us whatever they thought we wanted to hear, we we're lied to about contracts, earning's, training, safety, uniforms all being reimbursed, yes they will pay you it all back after your initial three months training period basically we were lied to about everything.
There we're a couple who where expecting to apply for pr after three months, the goal posts where then moved to twelve months to keep the drivers longer.

If your hubby follows the HGV road rules in the UK he will be very shocked with the way and the hours he will be expected to drive in Canada 20 hours some days.

This was said to us the day we arrived by a lad that was selling all his furniture off and that was flying home the following day, we just looked at each other and smiled never believing for one minute he was telling us the truth, but like always we learnt the hard way

One of the questions we asked at the interview with westcan where how many had returned, we we're told two families for personal reasons had returned,
If i hadn't have had my rose tinted specks on i would have realised he was lie ing because he wouldn't make eye contact when replying to our questions
but you only hear what you want to hear.

The truth once out there was apart from three Brit drivers that had stayed the others had all returned from that depot.
SHAME ON YOU WESTCAN !!!!!!

Luckily we are getting back on our feet its been a hard and very stressful 12 months
You might want to read the returning back to the uk forum
No one wants to put you off but i for one would'nt want to hear your back and have lost it all

Please be careful
Shelly

Just be careful with pauls hauling its westcan

ask as much info as possible as much as you can think of

OK OK we have a kids soccer game in the field over the road from your house in a couple of days I'll drop it off then. We went pass your house last week but no-one was in. Well no Car anyway. I give you the exact date once I get home

Thanks for that info, i know about westcan and knew that there were part of pauls hauling. I have been to see the people at pauls and i think i know what to expect [i hope] i have already got a friend out there and he and is family are loving it, so i am hoping we will to. did you get to look at any areas to live while you where there or did you decided not to as it was not what it seemed. ps iam sorry it didnt work out for you.

hi guys, thanks for the replies. shelly i am horrified to hear of what you endured, it must have been dreadful, i pray that things really pick up for you now and that your happy again.

biiiink, we are flying in to winnipeg on the 18th (just a week to go)
pick up a car from the airport and staying in winnipeg till the 21st, then starting the drive to saskatoon, stop off in neepawa for the night on the 21st, finish the drive the saskatoon on the 22nd, interviews on the 23rd, not driving to lloydminster for westcan now for that interview, so might drive back to winnipeg on the 24th in one hit so we can spend the 25th shopping or mooching about, we fly home that evening. would love to meet up for a drink if you can make it.

interested that you've settled in the west as one realtor said just to look in the south! and definitly not at he north end, then the east seems to be the french part (don't mind, but i can't speak french).

grey thanks for the pm, helped us make our mind up as to manitoba over alberta, hopefully i'll get a letter from the royal ballet here to take with us if everything goes to plan

Thankyou Sweetie
Safe journey
Hope all goes well and you find what your looking for
Shelly x

neepawa went there for a day trip on Canada day, it was closed.

Saskatoon is a straight drive in 1 day normally we stop there on our way to Edmonton and then Drive non-stop back from Edmonton 14 hours.

Straight roads no corners or turns whizz by at 100 KM even quicker at 140 but my job doesn't need a driving license.

Whereabouts in Winnipeg are you staying?

If you like we could meet up at lunch one day and I can show where the immigration help office and a the Destination Winnipeg info place the RWB and answer any other questions.
If you're in town for three days have you spoke with a Realtor yet?

Did you do a search on the forum for Winnipeg? as there is a few links for PNP info Manitoba Advantage website and lots of other information.

Do you want to look around a couple of Schools?
Can speak with schools to see if possible, did it last time for some else.

If you look on that MLS site see some houses that you like tell us and we can let you know what is what about the area ....

Hope to see you soon.


Grah