An Immigration Scheme Steering Newcomers Into The Trucking Industry

[Gurn]

apparently the deaths of those kids is now to be considered  "the price of freedom" from red tape in Alberta and Ontario.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/elections/heather-mallick-alberta-ontario-vote-against-common-sense-in-favour-of-a-dangerous-doctrine/ar-AAIKJcZ?ocid=spartandhp

 

"

“Spare us from government oversight of meticulous truck driver training and licensing!” Crash victims do not cry this out as they sit in their own blood in the eerie silence post-smash on the flat highways of the West. 

“No taxpayer dollars for me,” they don’t tell horrified police officers wet with the surrounding carnage. The injured just beg for help, sometimes mutely with their eyes.

But eccentric Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, chief doctrinaire of the province’s United Conservative Party, will swear these are the wails he heard. Strange that other premiers didn’t. Kenney has decided to revert to old trucking rules, which may make accidents again more likely.

After the 2018 Humboldt bus crash in Saskatchewan — an inexperienced driver crashed a semi into a bus carrying a hockey team, killing 16 people and injuring 13 — provincial governments tried to prevent such a crash happening again.

The young truck driver had been new. The small trucking company had been indifferent to federal and provincial safety rules, ignoring and faking paperwork. The driver, heartbroken by the accident he caused, was sentenced to eight years in jail. The company owner didn’t even show up in court for his $5,000 fine.

It could all have been so different.

The new post-Humboldt rules about safety in the trucking industry required $10,000 in fees for more training (113 hours) and better testing for licence applicants. Ironically, the Globe and Mail recently revealed the situation had been worse than imagined. For years, many small fly-by-night companies, particularly in B.C., had been luring ill-trained temporary foreign workers to Canada to drive semi-trailers for low pay and long hours without rest. What could go wrong?

The new Alberta rules were sensible, but also compassionate, offering some reassurance to the bereft families about future safety. In fact, the Humboldt families had asked Kenney not to reverse the new rules.

Kenney ignored them, an act that was not just reprehensible but in bad taste. What kind of man would apply pepper to their wounds?

Kenney and his true believers — tangled are they in red tape — did it anyway. They have allowed exemptions that let some new drivers slip out of training, even retroactively, freeing farm truckers and school bus drivers from the training and testing. They would go back to the old system — it worked for the “last 30, 40 years,” the transport minister said — partly to ease short truck trips (when accidents presumably don’t happen.)

For Kenney and his kind, doctrine is religion. All red tape is the same: bad. Facts are suspect. “Red tape makes government bigger and opportunity smaller,” Kenney’s government says flatly, asking voters to suggest government rules to cut.

His callout website is positively manic. It’s like a store closing sale. All rules 30 per cent off! It suggests cutting safety codes, safety code exams, audits, inspections, building licensing, appeal boards, liquor bans in campsites, and extra pay for overtime.

If the safety of schoolkids is the ketchup on the uninspected meat in one’s burger, what’s the matter with Alberta? What’s the matter with Kansas, or the U.S. red states? Why do voters knowingly damage their own interests to follow the Trumpish ultra-conservative libertarian dream of non-existent self-sufficiency?

Canada is an organized country, a rules-based nation. By electing Kenney, at the absurd end of the extreme right — just as Ontario did with Doug Ford — they voted against common sense, choosing a failed doctrine involving bootstraps, whatever they are, which must be pulled on personally, never en masse.

As Ontario has learned, it’s expensive to elect doctrinaires. They don’t do inventive things, they just flip everything the previous government did, out of spite.

Successive governments become serial flippers. Alberta is flipping back to chaos. I can’t quite follow why Kenney might change the rules at the Alberta Boilers Safety Association but if it’s anything like highway safety, I wish Alberta’s boilers well.

Canadian voters are not doctrinaire. If they were, they would enjoy paying extra to airlines for flying with luggage and sitting in squeezy/less squeezy seats. Instead they complain. There should be rules, they say. But not in Alberta and Ontario, not for the next few years.

Heather Mallick is a columnist based in Toronto covering current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @HeatherMallick

[kingofsurrey]

#brokenALBERTA

[Truckingainteasy]

A lot of those trucking companies mentioned in the original post are hiring foreign workers for cash also (West Abbotsford based - the money bought big houses and high end cars - names have already been provided to cbsa as they have a open investigation on it) they are all collecting between 15-20k from foreign workers with the help of scam artist immigration service consultants such as "Ravinder Randhawa Immigration Services". The immigration consultant will collect cash from the workers and either put them behind rigs, or put them on the books and collect the cash back from their pay checks while they work elsewhere for cash.

 

This needs to be stopped as it is highly dangerous for people on the road and a tax evasion scam!

Edited April 13, 2021 by Truckingainteasy

[riffraff]

On 10/5/2019 at 5:38 PM, kingofsurrey said:

I have an Indo Canadian buddy that drives part time BC -Alberta....  He told me all about this scam a few months ago..

 

Basically Trucking wages are so low now they can not get anyone to drive...  Welcome to BC.

 

Lowest paid teachers in our Country and now lowest paid truckers as well.

 

BC used to be such a great place to live....  Somehow we ruined it.   No wonder that kids today have had enough and are looking at their options. 

When companies are bought by large “groups” in various industries and the wages are reduced to garner contracts it drives the legit established companies out of business.

 

trust me this is isn’t all on the gvt.  Foreign labour has been cutting the throats of local established companies for at least 10 years.

 

i won’t bother with anecdotes.

[riffraff]

On 12/28/2019 at 9:13 AM, Truckingainteasy said:

A lot of those trucking companies mentioned in the original post are hiring foreign workers for cash also (Super bee transport, Bills trucking Ltd, R Mann Trucking) they are all collecting between 15-20k from foreign workers with the help of scam artist immigration service consultants such as "Ravinder Randhawa Immigration Services". The immigration consultant will collect cash from the workers and either put them behind rigs, or put them on the books and collect the cash back from their pay checks while they work elsewhere for cash.

 

This needs to be stopped as it is highly dangerous for people on the road and a tax evasion scam!

This.

 

competing against “cash” quotes that don’t involve tax is futile.

[riffraff]

On 10/6/2019 at 9:25 AM, 189lb enforcers? said:

Is this thread 25 years old?

It should be. 

Nailed it.  And not strictly related to trucking by any stretch.

[189lb enforcers?]

9 minutes ago, riffraff said:

Nailed it.  And not strictly related to trucking by any stretch.

It’s been made that we can’t even be precise in what we say because it’s too hateful. My career and whatever else would be over, just for stating the obvious. 

 

Its like Ike people don’t see what’s coming, one small step at a time. 

Not the monopoly, nor the censorship. 

Both have been disastrous, but who sees it though? 

 

That’s why this thread is 2 pages while Trump page is 4K, I guess. 

 

[189lb enforcers?]

On 10/14/2019 at 3:57 PM, kingofsurrey said:

#brokenALBERTA

- NDP.

[Russ]

On 10/5/2019 at 12:07 PM, Attila Umbrus said:

I work in an industry where we deal with foreign truck drivers all the time. You are right, it is scary what has been going on! I have lots of stories of these types of drivers hitting the ditch and getting stuck on the side of the highway, happens several times each year. And a lot of them don't even know how to back up their own rig safely. We call them "forward" drivers because that's all they know what to do is drive the truck forward. When they get to sites where they have to back into a spot usually they need lots of help getting into the spot and sometimes someone else gets in the truck to back it up. I'm glad they are digging into this because truckers used to be the BEST drivers on the road. My dad drove trucks his entire life as well and he's ashamed at where things are now.

 

I'm in no way slagging foreign workers for trying to make a living in Canada, but the companies involved need to be cracked down on and hard before another Humbolt tragedy happens again 

I was working on a site a few years ago, we had some trucker who was supposed to back up to my excavator go 20 feet over and end up hitting the ass end of our other excavator that was parked all day in the same spot. I was blaring my horn the whole time too, pretty much pissed off anyone in the neighbourhood we were in just to get the guys attention and he still couldn't get close enough.  And quite a few times I had seen guys jump in trucks and back up others who had no clue how to even back up singles, let alone ponies or end dumps.  When you get good truckers, they are phenomenal drivers, they can backup end dumps in the most narrow of spaces and its amazing to watch but when you get bad ones, oh god is it bad. 

[kingofsurrey]

39 minutes ago, 189lb enforcers? said:

- NDP.

Alberta has been ruined by long term Alberta Conservative Politicians.  Wasted all their oil revenues......  the money is gone......

[kingofsurrey]

1 hour ago, riffraff said:

When companies are bought by large “groups” in various industries and the wages are reduced to garner contracts it drives the legit established companies out of business.

 

trust me this is isn’t all on the gvt.  Foreign labour has been cutting the throats of local established companies for at least 10 years.

 

i won’t bother with anecdotes.

Now it is happening with teachers in many parts of BC  being allowed to teach with zero teaching credentials.....

 

What happened to our once great province and why is BC always in race to the bottom in terms of wages....

[Tortorella's Rant]

Basically, if you aren't exploiting this province and country you're in the minority. 

[Boudrias]

On 10/5/2019 at 1:07 PM, Attila Umbrus said:

I work in an industry where we deal with foreign truck drivers all the time. You are right, it is scary what has been going on! I have lots of stories of these types of drivers hitting the ditch and getting stuck on the side of the highway, happens several times each year. And a lot of them don't even know how to back up their own rig safely. We call them "forward" drivers because that's all they know what to do is drive the truck forward. When they get to sites where they have to back into a spot usually they need lots of help getting into the spot and sometimes someone else gets in the truck to back it up. I'm glad they are digging into this because truckers used to be the BEST drivers on the road. My dad drove trucks his entire life as well and he's ashamed at where things are now.

 

I'm in no way slagging foreign workers for trying to make a living in Canada, but the companies involved need to be cracked down on and hard before another Humbolt tragedy happens again 

My history is the same. I ran delivery local trucks for 25 years and had contract haulers bringing fuel out of Calgary. When I left the industry in '96 the oversight by government was huge. Pre-trip inspection reports and load manifests all retained for inspection. Mandatory hazardous goods training and fire fighting training. 

 

There are always bad apples in every industry. Road side inspections and scales were designed to counter unsafe practices. In my day any firm that sent trucks into the USA were subject to USA audits in their Canadian offices. WHat I notice on the road is how often scales are not open. If government wants a safe industry then man them! There are unsafe drivers whether by negligence or ignorance no matter their race. Testing and re-testing would change that. I frequent a Timmy's at 5 am on Tuesdays and most of the long haul truckers who stop for a coffee are East Indians. I respect anyone who gets up and works for a living.   

 

The default conclusion that the industry is ran by a bunch of exploitive owners is an over simplification. Contracts made and shortages of labor causes problems. Just in time delivery scheds causes problems. Lots of financial challenges for a trucking company. Massive investment and thin margins. 

 

The trucking incident that stays with me is an accident back in the '80's. A young driver stopped at my business and asked for info about the Kootenay Pass. It was winter and he was hauling a load of salt to Trail. We told him that he had to chain up if the signs were up and to talk to other drivers on his CB. He had to stop at the summit and check his brakes. For whatever reason he did not stop at the summit and rode his brakes down the other side. We assume he missed a gear on the way down and lost it. He went over the edge and was killed.   

[Attila Umbrus]

16 minutes ago, Boudrias said:

My history is the same. I ran delivery local trucks for 25 years and had contract haulers bringing fuel out of Calgary. When I left the industry in '96 the oversight by government was huge. Pre-trip inspection reports and load manifests all retained for inspection. Mandatory hazardous goods training and fire fighting training. 

 

There are always bad apples in every industry. Road side inspections and scales were designed to counter unsafe practices. In my day any firm that sent trucks into the USA were subject to USA audits in their Canadian offices. WHat I notice on the road is how often scales are not open. If government wants a safe industry then man them! There are unsafe drivers whether by negligence or ignorance no matter their race. Testing and re-testing would change that. I frequent a Timmy's at 5 am on Tuesdays and most of the long haul truckers who stop for a coffee are East Indians. I respect anyone who gets up and works for a living.   

 

The default conclusion that the industry is ran by a bunch of exploitive owners is an over simplification. Contracts made and shortages of labor causes problems. Just in time delivery scheds causes problems. Lots of financial challenges for a trucking company. Massive investment and thin margins. 

 

The trucking incident that stays with me is an accident back in the '80's. A young driver stopped at my business and asked for info about the Kootenay Pass. It was winter and he was hauling a load of salt to Trail. We told him that he had to chain up if the signs were up and to talk to other drivers on his CB. He had to stop at the summit and check his brakes. For whatever reason he did not stop at the summit and rode his brakes down the other side. We assume he missed a gear on the way down and lost it. He went over the edge and was killed.   

You hit on some good points Bouds, you are right I should not generalize a race to this incident. The issue is the system in which the training for new drivers is being delivered. I should have been more clear that yes indeed, I see lots of foreign drivers where I work, there are lots of good ones, the bad ones are a mix of new foriegners and just new young drivers who are born and raised in north america. Both are not getting the proper training to do the job safely.

 

You are right about the scales, half of the ones I drive past these days look closed, just a parking lot now basically. Enforcement is key and something we should narrow down on. It helps new drivers learn the rules and the dangers of the road that they are driving in that certain area...The amount of trucks I see spun out on bad winter hills out where I work is crazy. Guys used to chain up religiously on the bad hills, but I think it's also in part as you said due to the newness of a lot of the drivers. They don't know which hills to take seriously or not. Which in my mind, chain up no matter what till you get yourself orientated. But most opt to wing it, then deal with consequences. I don't like that attitude, it's dangerous. Seen too many guys make that assessment then jack knife the rig on a steep hill and shut down the highway for hours, or slide into the ditch causing a roll over or at the very least tipping their load on their trailer all over the damn place...anyways rant over! I do hope we start seeing some better enforcement just in the hope that we start catching some of the bad practices by drivers. It can be corrected.

[Boudrias]

20 minutes ago, Attila Umbrus said:

You hit on some good points Bouds, you are right I should not generalize a race to this incident. The issue is the system in which the training for new drivers is being delivered. I should have been more clear that yes indeed, I see lots of foreign drivers where I work, there are lots of good ones, the bad ones are a mix of new foriegners and just new young drivers who are born and raised in north america. Both are not getting the proper training to do the job safely.

 

You are right about the scales, half of the ones I drive past these days look closed, just a parking lot now basically. Enforcement is key and something we should narrow down on. It helps new drivers learn the rules and the dangers of the road that they are driving in that certain area...The amount of trucks I see spun out on bad winter hills out where I work is crazy. Guys used to chain up religiously on the bad hills, but I think it's also in part as you said due to the newness of a lot of the drivers. They don't know which hills to take seriously or not. Which in my mind, chain up no matter what till you get yourself orientated. But most opt to wing it, then deal with consequences. I don't like that attitude, it's dangerous. Seen too many guys make that assessment then jack knife the rig on a steep hill and shut down the highway for hours, or slide into the ditch causing a roll over or at the very least tipping their load on their trailer all over the damn place...anyways rant over! I do hope we start seeing some better enforcement just in the hope that we start catching some of the bad practices by drivers. It can be corrected.

What neither one of us mentioned was the power in these highway units. 600 - 700 horse power. That might even be old news. I am always amazed at the speed these guys can climb mountains now versus the '80's & '90's. I was talking to a chip truck driver who told me that his on board computer system anticipates his position on his route and tells him what gears to use! Wow!

[Gurn]

The government, most likely lobbied by industry, have probably made a cynical cost/benefit analysis; and decided it is "cheaper' to just run the risk than pay to fix the problem.

 

About 20 years ago now, a number of class 5 driving examiners in Richmond were found guilty of taking bribes to pass people that should have failed their tests.

Government decided not to call in all the people that were passed by those examiners for re testing. So the government knows there are unqualified people driving around in Richmond.

[Kragar]

3 hours ago, gurn said:

The government, most likely lobbied by industry, have probably made a cynical cost/benefit analysis; and decided it is "cheaper' to just run the risk than pay to fix the problem.

 

About 20 years ago now, a number of class 5 driving examiners in Richmond were found guilty of taking bribes to pass people that should have failed their tests.

Government decided not to call in all the people that were passed by those examiners for re testing. So the government knows there are unqualified people driving around in Richmond.

So does anyone who has driven in Richmond!

 

Seriously, though, how can they let that slide.  You opening sentence says it all, I'm sure.

[kingofsurrey]

6 hours ago, Attila Umbrus said:

You hit on some good points Bouds, you are right I should not generalize a race to this incident. The issue is the system in which the training for new drivers is being delivered. I should have been more clear that yes indeed, I see lots of foreign drivers where I work, there are lots of good ones, the bad ones are a mix of new foriegners and just new young drivers who are born and raised in north america. Both are not getting the proper training to do the job safely.

 

 

I  am looking forward to the days of self driving big rigs..... that will probably be more safe than our current drivers..... 

Edited December 31, 2019 by kingofsurrey

[Attila Umbrus]

17 hours ago, kingofsurrey said:

I  am looking forward to the days of self driving big rigs..... that will probably be more safe than our current drivers..... 

I could see that as a possibility in urban areas like the mainland and such where roads are very well known and mapped by GPS systems... But with the remote roads that I work on, most aren't even on mapping systems completely. There is lots of heavy transportation driving remote back country roads that I just don't think you could replace a driver in that situation. Pretty cool and futuristic to think about, and no doubt we will see it one day!

[Standing_Tall#37]

17 hours ago, kingofsurrey said:

I  am looking forward to the days of self driving big rigs..... that will probably be more safe than our current drivers..... 

Me too. For your safety of course. The lower mainland is world-renowned for having the worst drivers globally.