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-   -   Transit Operator - Job Change - Advice needed (https://www.revscene.net/forums/718050-transit-operator-job-change-advice-needed.html)

TypeRNammer 09-03-2025 11:12 AM

Community shuttle is a decent gig too at TransLink, top wage of $35.22 an hour

You start off as a casual though, so you don't get a seniority number until future bidding on the next schedule.

We also have depot clerk dispatch positions that pay $42 an hour top wage

Eff-1 09-03-2025 02:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by whitev70r (Post 9191783)
I thought one day, when I retire, I'd like to drive the shuttle bus from car dealers to transit ... like Richmond Car Dealer to Brighouse ... just for kicks, shitz, giggles, conversation, and to get out of the house.

A long time ago when I was managing sponsorship events for car dealers, we used to hire this company all the time (I forget what they were called) but they were a family-run small business. Basically, all they did was drive cars to and from dealerships and the port.

All you need is a fleet policy of transporter plates, a mini van to shuttle drivers around, and a bunch of retired people.

The hardest part is scheduling the drivers and the shuttles I imagine.

Food for thought if we win the lotto and can retire early.

whitev70r 09-03-2025 03:04 PM

^ is that why new cars all list 300 kms on odometer .. :lol.

noclue 09-03-2025 03:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eff-1 (Post 9191887)
A long time ago when I was managing sponsorship events for car dealers, we used to hire this company all the time (I forget what they were called) but they were a family-run small business. Basically, all they did was drive cars to and from dealerships and the port.

All you need is a fleet policy of transporter plates, a mini van to shuttle drivers around, and a bunch of retired people.

The hardest part is scheduling the drivers and the shuttles I imagine.

Food for thought if we win the lotto and can retire early.

There are transport businesses that hire retired people with class 1 to deliver semi trucks/RV/Buses all over north america. Too big to ship via rail I guess

donk. 09-03-2025 06:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TypeRNammer (Post 9191863)
Community shuttle is a decent gig too at TransLink, top wage of $35.22 an hour

You start off as a casual though, so you don't get a seniority number until future bidding on the next schedule.

We also have depot clerk dispatch positions that pay $42 an hour top wage

42$/hr for dispatch is insane.

This chick i d̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ banged 12+ years ago, was making 18$/hr up north as dispatch. (Min wage was 9$ at the time i think), so she was rolling in money for someone fresh out of highschool.

Traum 09-03-2025 08:24 PM

I am totally seeing the subtle flex here lol~ :ifyouknow:
Quote:

Originally Posted by donk. (Post 9191922)
This chick i d̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ banged 12+ years ago, was making 18$/hr up north as dispatch. (Min wage was 9$ at the time i think), so she was rolling in money for someone fresh out of highschool.


68style 09-03-2025 09:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by donk. (Post 9191922)
42$/hr for dispatch is insane.

This chick i d̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ banged 12+ years ago, was making 18$/hr up north as dispatch. (Min wage was 9$ at the time i think), so she was rolling in money for someone fresh out of highschool.

Shouldn’t you have been still playing with GI Joes and Transformers 12+ years ago?

underscore 09-03-2025 09:49 PM

^ maybe he meant finger banged.

TypeRNammer 09-04-2025 12:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by donk. (Post 9191922)
42$/hr for dispatch is insane.

This chick i d̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ banged 12+ years ago, was making 18$/hr up north as dispatch. (Min wage was 9$ at the time i think), so she was rolling in money for someone fresh out of highschool.

It's a mix of administration and dispatch.

They are bus driver's first point of contact for general inquiries, booking off, checking work assignments.

Besides those things, they also take care of time keeping, logging incident reports from operators, do roll call for over time, assigning daily work for operators for the next day.

That's just off the top of my head

donk. 09-04-2025 10:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 68style (Post 9191932)
Shouldn’t you have been still playing with GI Joes and Transformers 12+ years ago?

:okay:

Quote:

Originally Posted by underscore (Post 9191933)
^ maybe he meant finger banged.

:okay:

Im actually a virgin that walks in the abundant light of christ

headhunt3r 09-28-2025 08:11 AM

Anyone got darks contact info? I could use a hyundai sales rep right now.

Gumby 09-28-2025 08:18 AM

Pretty sure he left OpenRoad Hyundai already, I don’t see him listed on the website…

dark0821 09-28-2025 10:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by headhunt3r (Post 9195194)
Anyone got darks contact info? I could use a hyundai sales rep right now.

Yes sir, last day was end of Aug, though I still know all the people, I will refer you someone.

BIC_BAWS 09-28-2025 12:13 PM

Damn what a crazy thread to come back to. Congrats Dark! I'm sure, we'll catch up again soon when Hobz drags us out of the house lol

dark0821 10-28-2025 05:48 PM

Quick update guys....


Training was a success, 17 of us are gonna drive a bus for the first time tmrw, we started from 28 people orginally.

and now 5 months of probation....

bcrdukes 10-28-2025 05:49 PM

Congrats! So when will we see your GT3?

EvoFire 10-28-2025 06:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dark0821 (Post 9199585)
Quick update guys....


Training was a success, 17 of us are gonna drive a bus for the first time tmrw, we started from 28 people orginally.

and now 5 months of probation....

What happened to the other 11?

Badhobz 10-28-2025 06:45 PM

they got sent back to india

Quote:

Originally Posted by dark0821 (Post 9199585)
Quick update guys....
and now 5 months of probation....

Everyone find dark (shouldnt be hard, hes the only non indian guy driving a bus) and crash into him. show him whos boss !!!!! plz yield its the law my ass. Cut him off and immediately finger him!

mb_ 10-28-2025 06:54 PM

Lol was just wondering if you ended up leaving OpenRoad cause just had a buddy quit after many years

Totally missed your update that you did end up leaving, good luck with the rest!

whitev70r 10-28-2025 09:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EvoFire (Post 9199604)
What happened to the other 11?

From what I understand, it's quite a gruelling training process and a high failure rate, I heard as many as 50% of a group doesn't make it so this group was particularly sharp ... led by Dark.

TypeRNammer 10-29-2025 12:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EvoFire (Post 9199604)
What happened to the other 11?

They probably failed at various parts of the training such as not passing the road test on the 2nd week, or unable to operate a trolley bus on the 3rd or 4th week, or even as far as failing on the final exam day of driving

Quote:

Originally Posted by Badhobz (Post 9199606)
they got sent back to india



Everyone find dark (shouldnt be hard, hes the only non indian guy driving a bus) and crash into him. show him whos boss !!!!! plz yield its the law my ass. Cut him off and immediately finger him!

Crash into him after probation, so he can be off on WCB :lawl:

smoothie. 10-29-2025 08:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bcrdukes (Post 9199586)
Congrats! So when will we see your GT3?

:lawl:


80K today is 65K in 2020

1/18 no problem

bcrdukes 10-29-2025 08:30 AM

BoC interest rates just dropped to 2.25%. @dark0821 - Don't disappoint us. Need to see your celebratory GT3 by end of Q4 2025. Show us what you're truly capable of! :fuckyea:

bcrdukes 10-29-2025 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TypeRNammer (Post 9199638)
They probably failed at various parts of the training such as not passing the road test on the 2nd week, or unable to operate a trolley bus on the 3rd or 4th week, or even as far as failing on the final exam day of driving

If you are allowed to share, what are some examples of how people fail? Is it because of skill/technical errors or behavioural/competency issues? i.e. Failed to complete right turn 2/5 times vs. Legit stupid and cannot/does not want to listen to supervisor/trainer and flipped them the bird.

dark0821 11-02-2025 10:27 AM

To be honest, it is "hard" and "easy" at the same time. I have RS Translink GURUs at my disposal which I harassed them daily for like hours on end and be like.. what is this... how is that.... WTF do i do here.... how are the exams appointed... what are they looking for lololol

SUPER DUPER LONG READ (I cant write concise, lolol sorry guys, but I think its interesting)


****it is a long ass process to get hired though.... I guess it is the same for all public sectos....


1. I havn't been back to school for like 2 decades (but the amount of reading expected of you is absurd) (of course I didn't read the material, I uploaded the pdfs to various AIs and read summaries) and even then its a solid 45min to 60min of reading every single day (there is an online quiz every day, you have to keep up 80%)
- legit have somone fail on this part... which was... but I understand, some students kepts a second job during training which was crazy to me

2. written exams (mid term and final) to maintain 80% as well, you get a 2nd chance to take one big final exam if you fucked up the midterm + final
- one of our student did that as well... and honestly not his fault, English was like his 3rd language.... and the multiple choice answers are tricky (as in even if you knew the answer, they word it in a way where even I have to read it 5Xs over and be like... ahhh ok!)

3. driving in general... this is the "easy" or "hard" part... You are expected to 100% make mistakes, and LOTS of mistakes at that... they just want to see how you react to your mistakes.... there are A LOT OF POLICY AND PROCEDURES that are there to protect you, your passengers and other road users in a SAFETY FIRST manner. when you fuck up... and lemme tell you, during training i fucked up.... they want to see that you can
remaing calm. deep breath
do the proper PROCEDURES in the correct order to resolve the mistake
- this part of the program is also based on "lucK", you can have bright sunny days, with calm traffic, courtes drivers and easy going passengers, you can have a very "smooth" day... or you can have drivers trying to cut you off, pull out of parking without seeing you coming up to them at full speed (which I hate the most, you stomp on brake, you might send passengers flying and injure them) you lay on your horn, the car might freeze up and just cont to occupy the space which now you bus is gonna occupy in the next 2 seconds... yes they teach you defensive driving (which shameless plug here, it overlays the PRS class 6 motorcycle school pretty extensively) helped me alot since I already practice a lot of these things for the past few years), but yea, if you are unlucky, from what I heard from classmates, the "incidents" that occured which we are told "so and so" are no longer with the program, half of it is how they handled it once it happened, but also a portion of it being "lucky" it just so happens to happed to them in the first place

4. Road test... road test is easy, just like every other road test bascially the jest of it is "dont do stupid shit"... the only unconventional part of the road test is before driving, you are given 45 minutes to articulate your "pre-trip", ie checking the commercial vehicle over to make sure it is road worthy before putting the vehicle on public road. You are required to do this daily if you are the first driver of the bus brining the vehicle out of the yard. You need to tell your examiner during the test, ofc when you do it yourself in the future, you don't need to speak, but do make sure you still check. Because if the bus fucks up during your shift and it was something that should "have been found during your pre-trip".... get fucked...

5. Trolley... this is the part where alot of students gets fucked (I almost did as well, I just got lucky tbh).... so you are driving this large vehicle for probably about 20 hours in total (unlike other vehicles, you "cant" practice at home, so the 1 to 2 hours everyday is all you get). You are trying to keep your bus straight (even on the Oak/Granville skinny lanes), not to have poles wipe out your mirrors, look for other road users, traffic lights, bus stops, pedestrains, e-scooters, e-bikes, etc etc)... now you gotta look up at the wires in the sky... the trolley wires are from 1940's, they are "NOT" automated, there is a switch inside of the bus that you must control during "switches", and the switches are very sensitive to the angle/speed which your bus approaches them... for the longest time I can't do it, my eyes are so busy doing everything else (especially in downtown where there are a million delivery "silent" e scooters and bikers that likes to get in a few inches of your stupid bus) I just dont have the time to look up.. and sometimes the wires blends into the tree shadows... etc etc....
-we lost the bulk of our students here

6. Final evaluation drive on a trolley.... once again this comes down to luck... i got extremely lucky, in all the test routes, i got the easiest.... #41 bus.... its a straight line from Joyce to Crown and back... no routes to remember, just a few switches near the major intersections that I need to be careful of, nice wide lanes, nothing to "squeeze thru"... some of my classmates got the effed up routes with a million turns... or the nightmare.... a million turns in downtown that goes into DTES (nothing against DTES, but once again just one more factor that you can't control, they like to "hang out" on the street, and cross the road with 0 regards of what around them) etc etc.....

***oh and yes what dukes said, be humble, you are there to learn, once again they expect you to make mistakes, lots of them, as long as they are not super repeated, and you improve everytime you make the "same mistakes", if there are progress you are good, unless it is a blant dangerous action like running cyclist off the road or going thru a red light //// and yea.. the last thing you want is to start some shit with your instructor, they have a huge wait list of applicants, they are not here to cater to you, one of our classmates comes from a class 1 big rig background, not going into details, he argued that he has more "hours" driving large vehicles than the intructors, got into a heated argument and was escorted out the building and we never saw him ever again //// it could be down to personality, but I jivved with every instructor, all of them are easy going, thats why they are in the training department, if you dont bring an ego in, you will have a good time like I did //// did I think every note on my daily assesment is "fair", mayyyybbeee someone are a bit over critical, but I am not gonna start making excuses and defend myself /// let it go /// as long as it doesnt affect my graduation who gives a f


Now the real test starts.... probation is about 5 months, union basically told us, they are pretty much powerless to help us during probabtion, so dont fuck up.... once you pass probation, then the Union can fight for you going forward... so... wish me luck guys!!!!

I will bring the good new after Spring Break lololol


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