If you have just been handed a contract in South Niagara, the first thing you work out is the commute. Everything else — the room, the kitchen, the parking — comes second to one question: how long will I spend in the truck, twice a day, for the next two or three months?
Here is the honest answer, measured from our front door at 664 King Street in Port Colborne.
Drive times from our front door
- Vale Port Colborne Refinery — 4 minutes
- Jungbunzlauer — 7 minutes
- JBL — 7 minutes
- Asahi Kasei battery separator plant — 9 minutes
- Niagara College — 20 minutes
- South Niagara Hospital — 22 minutes
- Peace Bridge (US border) — 26 minutes
- GM St. Catharines — 34 minutes
No highway. No gridlock. No hour each way.
Why nine minutes is worth more than it sounds
Run the arithmetic on a longer commute. Forty-five minutes each way, five days a week, over a ten-week contract is something like seventy-five hours in the vehicle. That is close to two full working weeks you do not get paid for, and you spend it tired.
Shorten it to nine minutes and that number drops to about fifteen hours. You get the rest of it back as sleep, or a proper dinner, or a walk down to the canal before the light goes.
There is a money side too. Fuel, wear and the occasional unplanned tow all scale with distance. Workers on per diem feel that immediately, because it comes out of the same envelope as everything else.
What a short commute actually changes
Our guests tell us the same handful of things, over and over.
You can go home at lunch. On a nine-minute commute that is a real option — eat properly, change a soaked layer, take ten minutes of quiet.
Shift changes stop being a crisis. If you get called in early or held back late, nine minutes absorbs it. Forty-five does not.
Winter stops being a gamble. Lake-effect snow is a fact of life down here. A short local route on roads that get cleared is a very different proposition from a highway run in a squall.
Where you would actually be staying
We have two mirrored triplexes — 664 King Street and 24 Charles Street — that we built ourselves. They are set up for people who work, not for tourists.
- Three bedrooms, three bathrooms in each main unit, so nobody is queuing at 6 AM
- A full kitchen with a real stove and a real fridge, not a bar fridge and a microwave
- In-unit laundry, so your work clothes get dealt with at home
- Parking that takes trucks and trailers
- Individual smart locks on every bedroom at 664 King A, if you are sharing with people you have not met
Utilities, Wi-Fi, laundry and parking are all included in the monthly rate. Pets are welcome. We give proper receipts for per diem claims.
What it costs
- HUGE 2 King Beds Family Home, 24 Charles St, 3 bedrooms, up to 10 guests: $2,995 for 29 nights
- BIG Family Suite, 664 King St, 3 bedrooms, up to 10 guests: $2,995 for 29 nights
- Spacious Guest Suite at 24 Charles, 2 bedrooms, sleeps five, private entrance: $2,000 for 29 nights
- Both side-by-side homes as a crew package: $5,990 for 29 nights
Online booking starts at 29 nights. For shorter stays, call or text us: 7+ nights get 15% off the nightly rate ($215, $225 or $112) and 14+ nights get 25% off.
If you are the one booking the housing
If you are a project manager or a coordinator placing a crew, the side-by-side package is usually the one worth looking at. Two whole houses side by side, nine minutes from the gate, one invoice, one point of contact. It tends to work out considerably cheaper per head than hotel rooms, and the crew actually sleeps.
Call or text us at (365) 652-6929 and tell us which site you are working on and roughly when you need the beds. We will tell you straight away what is open.
Call or text us: (365) 652-6929
