 We're getting close to 100,000 subscribers. We're getting there. This day deserves a hat. There you go. We're here in Ontario. Just stayed here for the night. We just woke up. I gotta go deliver my rocks that I got behind me. You saw them in yesterday's video, right? And a whole load of rocks. Limestone from Indiana. After we deliver that, we gotta go over to St. Catharines and my load in St. Catharines will be ready tomorrow at 7 a.m. So we have all day to get there and it's only a couple of hours away. So I'm not obviously looking for somebody. But he passed me by, he's not looking for me. Guess I'm not special enough. Oh, he's coming back. All right, let's go deliver these rocks. Let's get to show on the road, shall we? Thanks for joining. Again, please don't forget to subscribe. Help us get to 100,000. Filling up my whole system with air. Bite of my granola bar. That's the kind of man I am. Gonna roll forward. We're gonna pull the trailer brakes to make sure that the trailer brakes work and release. And also that the trailer is hooked on properly because I looked at it and it looks like it's hooked on properly. We're just gonna make double sure that it won't fall off. We don't wanna go too far. We move a couple of meters ahead, meter or two. So they work, gonna release them and it didn't fall off. Those are all very good signs in the morning. My E-Log has clicked into driving which means my day has officially begun. No take backsies. And that's it. Your day has begun. I've been driving at us 16 hours. In 16, a little less than 16 hours now I have to shut this truck down. I did a 15 minute break trip. So 15 hours and 45 minutes. This truck has to be parked. According to the laws. The laws of the land. According to the queen. She's the one that authorizes all these laws. So tomorrow morning it'll be ready probably before noon. And in the meantime, you know it never ends when it rains and pours. It's still pouring. We got to go replace our steer tires here. Came down to Fort Erie to get it done. I am going with Michelins this time because I've had nothing but bad luck. You have arrived at your destination on the left side, 1405 Commerce Parkway. I've had BF Goodriches now for the last three times and all three times I've had to replace them prematurely because they wear funny. And with alignment. King pans and everything in there. Wheel bearings been replaced. Everything's in tip top shape. These BF Goodriches tires though have just been treating me very badly. And that's what every tire guy who has taken a look at my truck and everyone who's tried to figure out what's going on with the shake. They've all said it's just cheaply made tires. Some people have good luck with BF Goodriches. Maybe I've just had bad luck three times in a row. And hey, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times. I'm more on. Okay, so we're switching brands. We're going to Michelin. Let's get these tire tires replaced and see how Michelin treats us. I know, I think it's the same company, isn't it? I don't probably. We'll see how this brand treats us. So the trailer is being loaded right now. We pick it up tomorrow, mid-morning or so. You know what I'm saying? We're just here at the Husky. So these bad boys are the new tires. These do better. We've got Michelin X-Line energies. It's a little dirty already, but yeah, it's crazy how these tires wear. So what I've done is I've gotten these rings. What do they call it again? Cent, I'll tell you in a bit once I'm inside the truck. What they are inside the rim here, what it does is it balances your tire all the time. So as your tire wears, that adjusts in there to balance your tire so it's constantly always balanced. Since I've been having so much trouble with my tires cupping and they checked all the lug lengths, they checked everything in here, the kingpins, the bearings, everything. They checked it all and everything is fine. So who knows why these tires keep cupping. But at least we have those in there now to help out. And if they don't work, I can get my money back within five years. So they're pretty confident that they're gonna work. They're called Centromatic Wheel Balancers. Centromatic.com, this isn't an ad for them, but this is what they are. They were 250 bucks for the pair and it's supposed to help out quite a bit. The Centromatic Balancers have been shown to increase tire life on steer axles by at least 25%. On drive axles by 35 and even more on trailer axles. Oops, oops, I was gonna show you what these were. Here, let's go into products up here. And you have a five year satisfaction guarantee or your money back. I'm not sure how easy it would be to get your money back, but why is this all acting all weird here right now? As I'm trying to show you. One second. Products, come on. Here we go, products. Wheel balancers, okay. So there you can see the same thing that I have in my truck. You can see the little ring inside the wheels. They work on all kinds of different vehicles. Apparently they have really good reviews. I mean, you guys can check them out if you want, but I'm gonna give them a shot. You can just watch my videos. I'll let you know how it goes. I mean, these last steer tires did not last very long again. They lasted what I changed them in October last year. So that means I drove January, February, March, April, six months on them, probably about a hundred thousand kilometers. I would like those tires to last about a hundred thousand miles. So a hundred thousand kilometers is probably about 60,000 miles. Unacceptable, not nearly long enough. So with these balancers, we'll see if it stops it from cupping and stops it from wearing unevenly. See if we can get longer life out of these steers. I also switched over to Michelin, Michelin. Over to Michelin. We'll see if that helps as well. I mean, if these do the same thing, I know maybe I'll try out Firestone or Goodyear. What are your favorite steer tires? I've always liked to stick between Michelin and BF Goodridge. I like Michelin the best though, but I was giving BF Goodridge a good run for it because they were cheaper and I liked the tread pattern. They were really, they worked really well in the deep snow, but man, they're all good. They're all good in the end, but Michelin I think is the best. I don't know what do you think? What do you think down below in the comment section? Let me know what's your favorite steer tire on a semi truck and how long do they usually last for you? And have you tried these wheel balancers? Questions, I have so many questions for you. I should have a whole bunch of comments, right? I tell you what, owning your own truck is stressful. When you drive someone else's truck, you don't have to worry about it breaking down. You don't even realize how expensive it is to fix these things. These tires and those, what have they called again? I told you in the last clip, all the work done today, $1,700 Canadians, probably around like $1,200 American. That's just tires, two new tires. They were about $700 each. So that's just tires. I mean, I'm so worried about this engine it's getting older. I want it to last till the end of the year. I'd like it to last a while yet, but I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. I just want to warn you guys, like if you are planning on getting into being an owner operator, just get ready for some stress in your life. I had an engine tick. My engine was ticking at one point after I got the valves adjusted and got it serviced. I had a tick in my engine. So I brought it back to Volvo and Steinbeck, right? And I told them, I said, hey, since you guys worked on this truck, I've had this ticking in this engine. And they looked at it and they looked into it and figured out, you know what? It's nothing to worry about. It's mostly all in my head. They said that's perfectly normal sounds that a Volvo D13 engine makes. And it's probably wearing as well. It's getting older. So I've got to keep that in mind as well. And just keep an eye on it, right? So the professionals told me not to worry about anything. So why am I still worrying? It's like my brain just goes in circles. What's next? What's next? What's next? Okay, we fixed everything we can think of. What's going to break next? Right Volvo, come on. Please, stop. Stop already. Let me catch up a little bit. I felt like I needed to vent there for a little bit. It's just like, you get this maintenance fund saved up, right? And then suddenly that gets depleted. And you got to borrow some money to get some repairs done. And then you're like, I just want to catch up and get a little bit ahead. But let's not forget, we're truckers. This is trucking. We don't even know what it means to get ahead. That's why I always tell you guys, I do this job because I love this job, even though it stresses me out and it's turning my hair gray. My hair is actually falling out. You got to love this job because if you hate trucking, you're really going to hate, hate, hate your life as a trucker. So I love what I do. I just, I really love what I do a lot more when everything's working smoothly. Come, I'll show you. Let's see if it's ticking now. We'll see what you say. Is it all in my head? Okay, I feel like I can always hear it when I'm at the front, right in front of the truck. Can you hear anything? That's abnormal. Can you hear that? Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. I'm crazy, aren't I? Please tell me I'm crazy. Let's go bump the RPMs up a little bit, okay? That RPM is that idle. Oh, you guys got a little bit of a one second there. Let me, let me clean you off there. Excuse me. Let's move the RPM up to 800, okay? Okay, a little above 800. This is usually when I hear it. This is usually when I feel like I can hear it the best, okay, let's go back to the front. She seems to be purring real nice now that I'm talking to you guys about her. Tell me if you hear a ticking sound, okay? Please tell me I'm crazy. Please, I need some assurance that I'm just going crazy and that my truck's not gonna blow up. Every time I spend money on my truck, I just like walk circles around it, staring at it. Don't you dare, don't you break, don't you break. Don't you pop, you stay full of air. All of you, I need you all in your best behavior, okay? No funny business, no funny business. You're filthy right now and that's okay. As long as you run right, okay? Look at this. This is embarrassing how dirty this is. I can't believe I'm showing it, but I don't care. I don't care. We need to make sure this truck doesn't break anymore. I just need this Volvo to last long enough for me to get into a Kenworth, okay? Come on, you can do it. You can do it, girl. I believe in you. So the drivers are all sitting in their trucks looking at me talking to myself, walking around my truck, looking all stressed out. Why would I be stressed out? I'm a truck driver, we don't get stressed out. I think I might need to work the truck a little harder to get that ticking sound to start again. I always notice it after pulling a load for a while. So it comes and it goes and it comes and it goes and Volvo took a look at it and they said, no, you're good. Your truck's got 1.14 million kilometers on it. That's pretty normal. You're just gonna have to keep an eye on it and if it gets any worse and you're gonna have to bring her in and hope for the best. It might be a rocker arm then. There's a what? What did he say, 18 rocker arms in the D13? Is that right? 18 and each one's about $700 Canadian. So hopefully it would just be one that needs to be replaced. It could also be like, cause they just did an oil service, right? But Volvo did the oil service. So they should have known what oil to put in there. They didn't even ask and I didn't even tell them. I just assumed you're a Volvo dealership. You know what to do. Service my truck please. So it's the same oil that's been in there since the beginning of life for this truck. So it's not like they put a thinner oil in that's not lubricating the valves properly, the valve train. That's the only thing I can think of is that the valve train isn't getting oiled properly. But it's got, it's full of oil. I don't lose a drop of oil between oil services. I don't add a drop of oil. It doesn't burn nothing. It doesn't lose nothing. Everything seems healthy about this truck. I've got no fault codes anymore. I think I'm just going crazy. I honestly, I think I'm just going crazy. Having an old truck is a little stressful, but you know, having a new truck would be stressful in other ways. Cause I mean, even the Kenworth I was looking at with the financial plan I had, I'm still looking at $3,500 a month, Canadian. So about $3,000 a month, American. And that's like pulling some strings here and pulling strings there and adding this and taking this away and using this and putting this down. And there's the stress of that payment then. And then you got to keep making that payment. You have to keep it. You can't park your truck then. You can't just park your truck and go home for two weeks for Christmas. No, you got to make that payment. You got to keep the wheels turning then. But you have warranty. So you don't have to worry about like having like a $20,000 a weekend when your truck breaks down. Everything's covered under warranty, but your time isn't covered under warranty. So if your truck is down for two weeks on warranty work, sure, you don't have to pay the shop for anything, but you're also down for two weeks and you need to make your truck payment. You see where the stress factor comes in? You still want to be a truck driver? You're going to go bald like me. All you kids watching right now, you want to be a truck driver? You're going to go bald and your hair is going to turn gray, but it's going to be fun. And you get to honk the air horn whenever you want. No, I won't do it now. There's people sleeping. I almost did it. Almost. It's hard to hold back. I know, but I don't want to be rude. There's people sleeping here. Tomorrow maybe. So I'm just going to get the truck all ready for night here, which means move my stuff from the back here on to, I usually put it on the driver's seat, but since diesel's not with me, I put it on the passenger seat here and get ready to just lay back and watch YouTube and get absolutely nothing done for the rest of the day. It's going to be great. I also want you guys to know when I talk about the expenses that I've had, I've had a bad first quarter, first, more than that. We're into the second quarter already and without the virus happening, it would have been bad, but with the virus, it's, it doesn't make it any easier, but we're doing okay. The reason I talk about all the expenses and tell you guys how much things cost and sort of go on and on about it is because it's not to complain, but rather to show people who may not have any connection to the trucking industry, to sort of show them the expense that we have out here on the road. Yeah, things are expensive. Yeah, we've gone through our maintenance fund and had to borrow a little bit. So yeah, I'm in a little bit of debt, just like you. I'm in debt, I'm a truck driver, of course, and we have a plan to pay it back. So it's not like we're in trouble or anything. We're doing okay, but it's not easy and it's not easy for anybody. I didn't get into this expecting it to be easy for me because I know what this is about. I grew up around this. I didn't quite know the stress it brought until I actually got into it. And I'm like, wow, Dad's been doing this my whole life. Man, I knew he was a strong man, but wow, he never showed it once. He never showed how much stress there is in a job like this and owning your own truck and having it break down on the road and having to have all these massive bills. Plus, he had to feed me. Can't imagine the stress he went through as a truck driver before me. And that was before all the technologies that I enjoy today that make trucking a lot easier. So I don't tell you these things to complain. I tell you these things just to highlight what it's like as a truck driver through my eyes there's tons of you who watch my videos who aren't truckers. You guys are all kinds of different kinds of people from all over the world and you have all these different careers that you've chosen to follow. There's some of you that are filthy, stinking rich and good for you. Good for you, I'm not jealous of you. I'm happy for you. I'm glad that you found success financially. And there's some of you that are struggling to get by and there's some of you doing the exact same thing that I'm doing. And I'm just showing trucking through my eyes and trucking is different for everybody. Every trucker you meet is gonna have a different story. He's gonna have a different problem he's dealing with. We all got problems though. That's the one thing we all have in common. We all got problems. So there's some people who haul refrigerated freight and that's a whole different can of worms right there that's stress you gotta deal with. A lot of people haul dry freight. That's what I did for the first six years over the road. I haul open deck freight just out on the open deck on the flatbed, on the step deck, whatever you wanna call it. There's people who haul heavy freight, heavy haul. And each person's gonna have a different story. So don't take my story as like, I'm not the spokesperson for trucking. I'm not the spokesperson for truckers. I'm the spokesperson for me. Okay, when you're watching my videos, this is just my life. There are millions of us truckers out here, each with our own unique lives. And that's what makes us all special, right? We all have our own unique lives and we're all trying to be successful. We all have our own dreams. And you know, my dreams are to own Kenworth W900 with a studio sleeper with lots of lights, lots of chrome that looks awesome. That's not my only dream in my life. That's just my dream in my career. We'll see if I reach it or not. If not, no big deal. If I do, well then, yay for me, right? But I tell you these expenses that I have to pay so that those of you who aren't in the trucking industry and have no idea what it is, these big trucks on the highway all around you, maybe you have no idea how expensive it actually is to keep these things running, to keep them on the highway. Like I was telling you just today, two tires, my two front tires, $700 each. And I changed them? Well, lately I've been changing them every six months. Really, I should only have to change them once a year. But mine have been giving me problems and that's part of the problems I'm dealing with in my trucking life. Some people have different problems with their trucks and I'm not trying to say I'm special or unique in any way, but what? I'm talking here. Who dares interrupt my rant? Oh, it's my wife. Excuse me, she's more important than you. Excuse me. Oh no, she just found, she just found a wood tick. The first tick of the season. Oh no, oh I'm gonna have to send back a very clever gift for that. She already sent this one. Oh, I can't, I can't show you. It's crazy, but yeah, so I'm gonna end the vlog here. Not much is happening today other than me just going to buy new tires and talking about how stressed out I am. But don't worry, I'm doing okay. We're doing okay. We're, yeah, we're a little behind, but we'll catch up. What trucker isn't behind, right? We're all behind, all of us. And especially now with this whole virus going around the world, everybody everywhere is behind. So I guess we're just watching my story and I'm telling you my story of how I'm behind. So we'll get there. We're having fun though. I love my job, I love what I do and that's what's most important because if you don't love what you do, if you don't love this job, you're really gonna hate your life. So before you buy a truck, maybe drive a company truck or someone else's truck for like a full year at least. Drive in every single season. Drive in every single train. Drive through the mountains, drive over the plains and the prairies, drive through the big cities through the countryside. First figure out if you're gonna like this lifestyle and if you're gonna like this job, don't get yourself into my position and then find out you don't like your job. Okay, because I'm in my position and I actually like my job, so that makes it tolerable. I'm just trying to get through my trucking life here and just like you, trying to get through life. But if I really hated this job, I would be a miserable human being right now. So it's very important. If you wanna be a truck driver, first find out if it's for you. Okay, just watching my videos, it's not good enough. My life is not going to be your life. My life isn't that guy's life or that girl's life or anybody's life. Anyone out here in the truck stop, everyone in their own truck has their own story and each one of their lives is different. So when you join the industry and you become a truck driver, your life is gonna be your own. It's gonna be different than anyone else's. You're gonna face challenges and problems and situations that I haven't had to face. Maybe I face something that you won't have to face. Maybe we'll share some of our challenges together, but please don't jump into this industry without knowing for sure at first. Drive someone else's truck first. But when you watch my videos, this isn't the be all end all. And remember, we're doing okay. So hope you're doing okay too. We'll all get through this, we'll get. People get knocked down. What's most important when you get knocked down, is get back up. Don't stay down. I'll see you guys tomorrow. From right here, we're gonna go pick up that steel. It's gonna be oversized, it's gonna be fun. I'm gonna feel pretty important to pulling that thing through traffic with all my flags and oversized signs and everything. It's gonna be pretty cool. It also has a shiny nickel attached to it. So I'm looking forward to getting that. But first I have to go pick it up and deliver it. So we'll start on that tomorrow. I'll see you right here. Don't forget to subscribe. Thanks for watching. And if you like my videos, share them with your friends. Chances are they might like them too. We're trying to get to 100,000 subscribers. That's my selfish reason right there. Help me get to 100,000. It's a big milestone. And I can't do it without you. See you tomorrow.