Sunbury Truck Driver From Ukraine Says Saint John Is ‘Paradise’ For His Family
When Denys Karzov stepped off the plane at the Saint John Airport at 12 am, the last thing he expected was a group of smiling people welcoming him with flags and signs.
“This was my first experience of Canada,” the Ukrainian-born truck driver recalls.
Karzov arrived in the city on June 14, 2018, shortly after Saint John’s Sunbury Transport offered him a job. He says the unexpected welcome party is just one small example of the support Sunbury has given him.
He’d been driving trucks most of his life in Ukraine, Russia, and other parts of Europe, but wanted to start a life with his family in Canada.
Karzov has a Master’s degree from a Ukrainian transportation college and speaks five languages. However, Canadian trucking companies kept telling him his English wasn’t good enough.
Eventually, he met a representative from Sunbury who was impressed with his experience and said his English was fine. Karzov filled out some paperwork for the job and the next morning an offer was sitting in his email inbox.
“It happened so fast. I was so surprised, and I was very happy,” he says.
That offer turned out to be a great decision for both Karzov and Sunbury. Chris Bell, Sunbury’s General Manager, says Karzov is a fantastic employee.
“Denys is the kind of driver we’re proud to have in our fleet. He’s driven and reliable and our operations team thinks highly of him,” he says. “We are happy he’s found success and a home in Canada, and hope he inspires others to follow in his footsteps.”
Karzov says it’s easy to be a great employee when his company treats him so well.
Early in his career, Karzov says he was doing grueling work in northern Russia on remote oil company roads.
“It was very hard work but I was very young,” he says with a chuckle.
Later, he started driving in Western Europe where he says conditions were much nicer. But even that didn’t compare to his current job at Sunbury.
“I feel that in Canada it’s very stable and much easier than the work I did before. I don’t know if I could find a city… where I would feel as good as I do here,” he says.
Karzov describes Saint John, with its easy access to nature and the ocean, as a kind of “paradise.” And it didn’t take him and his family long to set up permanent roots in the city.
Two years ago, they bought a house in the city and Karzov has spent the last two years fixing it up.
“Saint John is a good city,” he says. “My family is staying here because we love this place: environment, nature, fresh air. I live very close to the ocean. This is very good. This is a dream of mine all my life. This is like Paradise.”
Karzov says he even wades into the Atlantic Ocean “two, three times a day” on his days off, no matter how low the mercury dips.
“I never did that [before coming to Canada],” he recalls. “We were all the time thinking about money: what we would do for work, how we would get enough money to live.”
Now, he says, there’s stability in his family’s life and he’s excited about his kids’ futures.
His 11-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son go to school in Saint John and Karzov is happy to know he can afford to send them to university.
It’s that sense of stability in Saint John, along with the support he receives from Sunbury Transport, that has allowed Karzov and his wife to plan for their future in a way they never had.
Truck driving is a good job, and it’s treated him well. Karzov says he’ll probably keep doing it for a decade or more. But one day he hopes to own a small business of his own.
“Maybe a little restaurant, maybe I’ll go to work with plumbing, maybe electrical,” he says. “I’m not sure yet, but I want to be an owner.”
For now, Karzov says he and his wife are concentrating on getting their Canadian citizenship. They will start the process this fall and Karzov says he can’t wait for it to finish.
Sunbury Transport has a long history of supporting newcomers to Canada, with more than 10 languages spoken across its fleets. With headquarters in Saint John, the company is a proud member of J.D. Irving, Limited’s Transportation & Logistics Division.