Rubie

Hello all,

we are still in the UK waiting for medicals for our PNP PR application and hubby is wondering about a career change to truck driving as he did it a number of years ago, although the trucks he drove didn't need HGV. We have only carried out cursory investigations up to now and found lots of useful info but would like to gather opinion on a couple of things.

Hubby is late 40's and does not have HGV licence in UK; he works in construction driving excavators and such (amongst other things).

Would you recommend him getting an HGV licence first over here or training in NS if we get PR? Any recommended training companies?

Would you recommend truck driving in NS at all and what would you consider his job prospects to be, considering his lack of truck driving experience??

I know these questions leave things wide open but we would really appreciate any thoughts you may have.

Thank you in advance.

fedupgb

I'm no expert i'm afraid but there is sure to be someone along who can give you some advice, there are several people in that area who drive trucks who have made the move

Silverdragon102

My understanding is he will still have to pass driving test and heavy goods test to get a license in NS

best check out this link http://www.gov.ns.ca/snsmr/rmv/licence/

DAVIE_MAC

Hi there,

Have a look here:

http://www.safetycollege.ca/default.htm

Its one of the main commercial driver training establishments in the Maritimes.

They offer intense driver training courses and then working attachments to local trucking companies to gain experience, which if your OH does not yet have would probably be the best route to take.

If he takes his test in the UK he will still have to re-sit it here in Canada anyway and therefore if he went to the above for example he could complete his course then gain experience as part of it and more than likely land a job at the end of it. As he wants to come to Canada and drive and has no HGV experience in the UK then I would say this is the best way to go about it.

However.... If you look at the jobs section of the above mentioned site they are recruiting for the following:

We have positions available in:

Truck Driving Instructor

Heavy Equipment Operator Instructor

Crane Operator Instructor

Forklift & Mechanical Instructor


Therefore why not consider going for one of the plant instructor positions might be worth a shot. He would be home every night and not away on the road for anywhere from 7 - 14 days or maybe even more??

He might be better to get some instructor quals back in UK if he wanted to do something while waiting.

Hope That Helps

Rubie

Hi Davie,

thank you so much for all your advice. You have certainly given us something to think about; he had never even thought of being an instructor but it makes sense really given his experience and he is going to look into it further.

Kaye5

Hi Rubie

Did you ever investigate Class 1 driver training? We're just researching anything possible at the moment for OH, if he can't get into his usual occupation.

Wondering about the cost...

We've emailed the company suggested by Davie Mac, but thought you may have already got the information and could share it.

Thanks!

Kaye5

Thanks for your reply. We found the info in the meantime - yes, it's around $10k. Quite a hefty amount to find, but we thought if job prospects were good... I think the Masstown college is the one we looked at as it's up near Truro.

Any idea of salaries? We couldn't find an awful lot on the web but what we did was around $20 an hour, so we weren't sure if the investment was worth it.

jamesmc

im not sure $10k for a truck driving course is good value for money,,, if i read this right it is a course to be an instructor ? i thought you had to hold your class 1 licence for a yr before being allowed to instruct .
if its just a normal class 1 licence find somewhere else as that is 3x what i paid for a 6 wk course that included log book school etc. in mb.

Kaye5

It's a normal Class 1 course (tractor trailer) - 12 weeks total with 4 of those weeks as an internship with an employer.

This is to train from scratch, though, not to conversion from UK HGV license. Don't know if that makes a difference?

They quote 90% employment rate following the course. I've seen a lot of ads for drivers with two years experience OR 12 week course including internship. I'm wondering if it is more costly because it gets you around the two years experience barrier.

jamesmc

well i was driving near 30 yrs and went for the 6wk course as i knew i had a lot o bad habits and was shown the canadian way they wanted things doing and the log book rules.
ok i see where your coming from ,if you can afford it well .....BUT make sure the driving school is registered so you can claim 65% of your course fees back of your tax return..
if its not registered to get tax back why not?.
jimmy.

Kaye5

Never thought of being able to claim tax back - thanks for the tip - if we decided to do it we'll certainly check that out! Thanks James.

Gremmie

6 week course ???????? my god man !!!! 5 days done and dusted and that was 2 days too many for $1100 ish.. plus I got to keep my bad habits, just hid them for the test.

jamesmc

lol,, yup G 6wks ,,,,,,,why i will tell you why....
the 3 EU drivers that started before me at LD kept failing their tests after going for the 5day courses repeatedly and when starting knew f all about the law/log books and had to go to log book school for 3days up on king edward ............soooo john boy told me to sign up to school for the course so as to be rd ready when finnished.
it was strange having homework
jimmy

Gremmie

Guess I'm better at winging it than you .....LOL