airbornepara123

Hi all, new to this forum.
Ive always had this romantic notion i guess of moving to France Italy or Sicily and either settling or living and working from there as my base.
Im recent ex military, currently working as a HGV Class 1 Artic Truck driver in civvy street now..
Im wondering how difficult it would be for me to re locate to France Italy or Sicily and maybe drive back and forward to UK and other destinations, i know others do.
As you can see, my enquiries are in there infancy, its just a speculative question in the hope that maybe someone has already tried or done this?
Ive sat for sometime and pondered over this.......And worried about if it would work or not etc etc.
And yet i look at migrants travelling from half way around the world on rickety boats risking life and limb?
Im sure if they can do it.......i can.
Thanks in anticipation of any replies.
Stevie

dmu

Hi, and welcome to the Forum!
If you want to live in France, it would be logical to be employed by a French International Transport firm, to avoid the otherwise complicated Healthcare and Tax questions. Google "Transporteurs internationaux" for some companies that you could send your CV and "lettre de motivation" to. Be aware that the letter is an important part of the application (you have to sell yourself to convince them that you alone are the perfect candidate) and, if your French isn't up to writing one, you should get help, otherwise your application will go straight into the basket....
I've no idea whether there's a demand for British long-distance drivers in France, the unemployment rate is much higher here than the UK, in most sectors, and there must be a good few French drivers who drive in the UK.
Hope this helps a little, but hopefully another member will come along to give less vague help!

airbornepara123

Thanks for your response, yep there are a few French truck drivers over here, ive never given it much consideration as to why, but its entirely possible they have notions or ideas about the uk as i do about france and italy, however misguided they may be lol.
Thanks for your advice, ill crack on and check out what you suggested, and thank heavens for 'Google Translate' lol
Steve

EuroTrash

The equivalent of the UK's HGV licence that you would need if you lived in France and wanted to work for a French haulage operator is FIMO
FIMO [Formation initiale minimale obligatoire]
(you may know this already!)

Novocastrian

Off you go then. I hear there's a demand for truck drivers in Syria.

dmu

What I meant was a good few French lorries driven by French drivers, transporting French/Continental things to the UK and British things back to Continental Europe.
I rather suspect that, for any jobs going, a French haulage operator would give priority to a candidate who could speak French (presumably necessary for the FIMO anyway). You may do better to continue driving for a UK company and buy a holiday home in France or Italy for leisure inbetween missions....
P.S. Google Translate might give you the gist of what the French says, but a prospective employer reading a machine translation from English into French would find it laughable. When I said "help" above, I meant a human French speaker....

EuroTrash

Next time you come to France, use one of the routes that gets a lot of freight traffic and get talking to the truckers, it shouldn't be too hard. I've often been prevented from getting my kip on overnight crossings by the truck driving fraternity having animated multilingual discussions about which are the best and the worst international hauliers to work for, swapping tales of stowaways etc. That would be the best way to get inside info I think.

Touraine

It might work if you can afford yourself a LHD tractor unit and basically live in it. How it works in a 'tax' way is another matter.

A lot of companies (well they used to) ship their trailers across unaccompanied into Cherbourg or Le Harve or wherever and employ local subcontractors to make the deliveries. The driver then collects and returns the trailer back to the port.

Another idea is base yourself in a railhead terminal in Europe. Same idea, trailers are transported by train too Perpignian or Milan and then the trailers are picked up and deliveries are made. The driver then makes the collections and returns the trailer back to the train.

Breaking into the market is the hard bit.

EuroTrash

Sorry Touraine but it REALLY bugs me when people spell Le Havre wrong.

Touraine

Looks ok to me

dmu

Not just "tax", but "business structure" and "healthcare contributions" if he's self-employed. Not to mention an address and proof of domicile for all the Administrations involved....

EuroTrash

OK Terrine, no worries then

EuroTrash

Quite - far simpler to gerra job. But it would mean investing in the FIMA training if he want to base himself in France. Might be easier in Italy, they don't have rules for drivers do they ? and as for Sicily, do they have any rules at all ?

(PS I'm bored today, can you tell? Somebody please send me some work soon...)

Touraine

PO Box UK. PO Box France Why not ?

International Lorry drivers spend a lot of time 'internationally'. One minute they are in Spain, then Germany, France and so on. It is the nature of the job. You have to have a base somewhere.

The only real problem is cabotage.

EuroTrash

But as you say, you do have to have a base somewhere, for tax and social security purposes. Everybody lives somewhere. I think most countries don't allow you to register a business to a PO Box - at least the UK doesn't and France doesn't.