 I decided to take Highway 11 through Northern Ontario, I said this often before so you guys probably know this already but for those of you who haven't heard it, Highway 11 runs a little further north than Highway 17. Those are the two main highways that'll get you through Northern Ontario from like Toronto to Winnipeg. The reason I'm taking Highway 11 is because it's flatter. I have a really heavy load behind me. It's a big load of steel or copper rolls or copper reels just making my coffee right now. So I'm sitting pretty heavy and when I'm sitting this heavy I don't like to make my truck work so hard on the 17. The 17 has a lot of steep hills. But the 11 is 50 kilometres or 30 miles further around but if you think of all the slow moving I'm going to be doing pulling up the hills and a lot more small towns as well to slow down for on the 17. It takes about the same amount of time. So you really got to make the personal judgment. Is it worth it? Like you have 30 miles of extra wear and tear on your truck but you also save the wear and tear of pulling like 80,000 pounds up these steep hills over and over and over again. Like which wear and tear is worse in your mind? For me pulling hard up the hills and pulling heavy loads up these heavy hills is always worse for my engine than just you know a nice leisurely 30 mile drive. Just my opinion. So I'm into North Bay last night. We're going to start off right here. Get my coffee going and get the show on the road. Thanks for joining me. Don't forget to subscribe if you're new. I make a variety of content. It's not just trucking. There's actually a whole bunch of non-trucking stuff coming because this is my last trip before I take off for I guess what you call paternal leave. We're having a baby in a couple of weeks so I'll be at home but it should still be fun. You tag along anyway. There's a whole variety of stuff on this channel. I think you'll enjoy it. Next mirror came loose. Well it was getting a little loose on me yesterday. I had to tighten it up last night. It's still doing good there. I've got new mirrors on the way. So don't have to look at that brown spot on that. You know what's funny? That brown spot on the mirror right there. I forgot to show you at night. When I turn my lights on right, my lights on the other side of my mirror light up and it shines through that brown spot on my mirror. Not very bright but it glows. It makes that spot glow. So weird. I don't know what happened there. I mean the mirror cracked and there were cheap mirrors. I'm going to try to find out what brand they were and let you know so that you know not to buy these mirrors. When I get back to my shop I've got the box there and you can probably go back in my vlogs too because I showed it when I got them. I was all excited really. I just got new mirrors cheap. Same thing with all the other little things that I bought from my truck and I haven't gone cheap either. I haven't bought the cheap stuff. I thought that I was like it was paying good money for it. I thought I was actually getting the quality product. I wasn't trying to get the knockoffs or anything right but it's hard to find good quality parts for your truck. Parts that won't rust. Parts that won't break. Ready to go. Ready to go. Everything is set. Everything is working. Everything's in its rightful proper place except for the gear shifter. You're not in gear yet. Come on. There you go. Oh oh oh and the dash camera. Got to make sure this is on and recording. One second. I have it set on a different setting for night so it's not wasting. There we go. Zoom out a little bit on you. All right. All right. Dash camera's ready to go. Let's go. Let's go. I'm going to just double check my eyeballs. Make sure that's because I checked to make sure my trailer was attached. I'm just going to roll forward a little bit. Nobody hit me this morning. That's awesome. Oh and we're attached. That is awesome. Okay. You know what's weird though? You know that guy who pulled in last night late? He got here exactly 22 minutes after I put myself into like off duty after I got here. He got here after me. He left here an hour ago already and right now I'm rolling away as early as legally that I can. So he left after sitting here for seven hours instead of eight. How did that work? Is there a way of doing that? Like or is he like, is he whoops? You know? How did he do that? How did he leave after seven hours? Because it was a newer truck, right? So he had to be on e-log. Sneaky, sneaky. Holy, this guy who turned on here just cut that livestock haul right off and then just turning back in over there. Why would you do that, bud? His reasonings, I'm sure, are good. Off we go. A van trailer in tow. How the sweet highway. Come on, let's go. Come on, all blue. Take me home. I'm not going to quite get home today. I have 1,779 kilometers to go to our yard where I'm going to leave this trailer. Oh, let's say 20 hours of driving or so. 20 hours or so. Plus, I got to stop for night and, you know, maybe shower, go bathroom. So I'll be back tomorrow evening, tomorrow night. Provided that we don't hit any delays or anything. I'm also taking highway 11 around here because highway 17 looked like they might get a little bit of snow and I had just washed old blue going through the snow again. I wanted to keep it as clean as I could. I got to clean it again once I get home, but I like to take the 11. Sitting real heavy. Like I told you before, I insist. I've got a perk over here now, too. Check that out. Would you look at that? So where will we make it to tonight? If we started off in North Bay, I'd like to make it, let's say Thunder Bay. I want to get to Thunder Bay or Shania, just east of Thunder Bay. I think that would be a good goal. Who knows? If we can make it to Dryden, woo, we're laughing. I don't think I can get that far. I don't think I can get that far. We'll see what the day brings. A lot more than this, but I'm just, this is all I'm going to give it right now. Another 15 years, right? 15 years. Come on. You can do it. Maybe more. Maybe I'll never have to buy another truck again. Wouldn't that be nice? So this is called a splitter gear. So I'm in top gear right now. I'm in 17th. I split my gear. I go into 18th. I just release my throttle and it automatically goes down. Look at this truck. What a beauty. Let's all give them a wave. You deserve it. Respect. Oh, here's another nice one. Nice rail on her. He waved back. He waved back. I feel like juicing her up. Fuel up here. I have 14 kilometers to home from here. They should be able to get home without fueling. And then I'll fuel up when I go back to work. There's no point in parking the truck with full tanks of fuel when I'm not going to be driving for a couple of weeks, right? The scale was closed, right? Yeah. Close scale is a good scale. There's only one kind. A closed scale. The other ones are all right up here on the left. There's a Harvey. Is there? Probably is. We are going places. One parking lot at a time. You got any juice? There's a truck over there that seems to be blocking half the driveway. He's parked right there. I don't know why there's parking spots. Oh boy. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Somebody hit the top of this. Oh shoot. Oops. The trailer would hit that stuff hanging off the end there. Look at that damage. How would that happen? It seems like it would have to be like a dump truck with their who forgot their bucket was up or something or their dump, their dumper thinger. Somebody left their dumper up. Oh, this heavy trailer is making her so thirsty. For 150 tree liters. A whopping 4.88 miles per gallon. I mean, that was sitting in at that open house yesterday too for a while, but that wasn't that one. I didn't idle it all day. Didn't idle it very much at all actually. Just moved it around, took some pictures. Just, I just took a few pictures. This trailer is heavy, legal, but barely. Look at this paved lot. Look at that. Painted lines. Whoa. This guy still couldn't figure it out. This guy's not in. Both these guys are not in the lines. They're both in the driveway. They have parking spots right there, my friends. This is the driveway. It doesn't matter if you paint the lines. They're still not going to get it. It's okay. It's okay. I still got through. It's okay. It's okay. Doesn't affect me at all. Right? Right? Still bugs me though. Still bugs me. All right, let's go. That scale is still closed over there. That's fantastic. Look, good guys. Good guys keeping the scale closed. I think this will be my last fuel up before going home. I don't want to buy a bunch of fuel right before parking it. I mean, it's not very cold anymore and plus it gets parked inside anyway. I'd rather have that money on my check, you know. It's going to scooch on over here just in case someone wants to blow past me. You never know. All canucky tire over here got our renovation. Got a little facelift. Look at that. And a new gas station out front. Fancy. When did that happen? Or have I just not been paying attention? Very nice. Okay. We're headed, officially headed westbound. We're going to go past Kappa's casing, past Hearst, all the way to Longlack, past Longlack. I'm going to try to make it either to the Flying J east of Thunder Bay or to that Petro Pass parking lot west of Thunder Bay. Can you walk this road for 100-day kilometers? Flying J east of Thunder Bay. Let's see if I can find some parking here left at this time. I think we'll be good. There's lots of parking back here yet, but everybody insists on parking all the way up there at the front where we're not supposed to park. Because that's where the car is coming in park in the morning, right? That's the car's park. I guess it doesn't matter, but I find it interesting. There's like a whole big lot back here behind these trucks, behind these trailers. Big lot in park. No, everyone wants to park as close to the door as possible, even if you're not supposed to park there. The human condition, right? It is what it is. I'm tired. So I walked around the truck, made sure I was straight, had to realign myself so that I was actually straight. And actually straight straight, not straight lined up with the crooked guy parked beside me. He's crooked. I'm straight. So in my spot, I got a clear path to get out of here. If people want to come park beside me, they got a clear path to back in beside me. Everything should be okay. Every night we go through this. Every night. You got to circle a lot three times before we lay down. And then we got to go outside and look around the truck, make sure everything is good, and then make sure we're straight. And if we're not straight, we got to correct it and get straight. And if there's lines, you have to make sure you're nicely perfectly centered between the lines, or at least I do. And once everything is good, and once your mind can finally be at rest, knowing that everything is straight, you're in a safe spot, and that all the other people around you aren't going to drag their trailers over you, then you can go to bed. Unless if you forget something, or if it suddenly dawns on you, like, you know what, I think I'm actually crooked. Okay, okay. I'm not that bad, but I'm pretty close. I have to be straight. Everything has to be straight. I don't know why. I don't know why. Like, I don't think I'm, like, chronically OCD. I don't think I have a condition, and I don't really want to claim that I do and, you know, devalue other people's legitimate claims when they actually have OCD. I don't think I actually have, but when it comes to trucking, when it comes to certain things with vehicles and parking and road, like anything to do with road, I always believe driving a truck and driving any vehicle on the highway, driving in general, is an art form. There is a way to do it, and there's a way not to do it. There's proper etiquette, and there's just being lazy, there's being rude, and there's just ignorant. I try to have the good etiquette, try to be straight, and try to make my driving experience beautiful. Does that make sense? Or am I just tired? Like, you go to other parts of my life, like, a mess doesn't bother me. Like, yeah, my shop is messy right now. I got a whole bunch of stuff I threw in there tomorrow is my last day till before I parked the truck. I'm going to be spending a couple of days and they're organizing it, but that doesn't really, like, sit on my mind as much as driving does. If I'm parked crooked, I cannot sleep. If my shop is messy, it'll bug me while I'm there, and then as soon as I shut the door, I go home and I'm like, my mind is distracted. I go watch some TV or I go make some YouTube videos or something. I don't really think about it, right? Yeah, so the shop is messy. And then the next time I get there, I go, oh man, the shop is still messy. Gotta clean this up. I like it to be neat and tidy, but it doesn't bother me. Like, people who are, have bad etiquette on the road, and when they're ignorant of proper etiquette, please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks this way, because sometimes I feel like I'm the only one out here who cares. You look at how everyone else pulls into the truck stop and parks, and it pulls straight in across three spots, pulls the brakes, hops in the bunk, closes the curtain. That seems very common. And then there's me, like, just like, go back and forth, back and forth. Am I straight? Getting out of the truck looking, going back in, straightening out, getting out of the truck looking, getting back in the truck, changing my mind altogether. Go pick a different parking spot. Go park on the other side of the parking lot. Do the whole same thing over there again. Am I straight? Am I straight? I'll go into the sleeper. I don't think I'm straight. Ramblings at the end of the day, right? You can tell I'm tired. It's been a long day. So today we drove 1,052 kilometers. It's about 700 miles, maybe just under. And we have another 730 to do tomorrow, which is 480 miles or so, 475 miles. So it'll be a nice easier day tomorrow. I only have to stop here for eight hours today. I stopped in Kappas casing for a two-hour nap. That was really nice. I don't do that often, but today it was nice. So I stopped for eight hours last night, and then I stopped for a two-hour nap in Kappas casing. So I got my 10 hours all together. So now I only have to stop here for eight. So I'm going to get going as early as I can tomorrow because I want to go home. Thanks for listening to me ramble this whole time. I appreciate that. You know, sometimes I got no one to talk to out here. I'm all by myself. So I just talk to you guys. I can call my wife, but she's sleeping now. So I got no one to talk to you. So thanks for listening. I appreciate it. You guys are very good listeners. Appreciate that. Don't forget to subscribe, hit the like button, all those fun things, and I'll see you in tomorrow's video from right here. I hope we should be in the exact same spot in the morning. We usually are.