 Brainerd Minnesota, we're going to deliver this lumber that's tarped and on my trailer I have a step deck behind me, 53 foot aluminum step deck tandem. We're going to deliver this to that same indoor place that we delivered last week. And then I have a load waiting for me in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, which is a couple of hours back. I believe that one's going back to our yard, but it might be going into Ontario. I'm not, we'll figure that out before we get there, don't worry. Approaching destination in one kilometer, on the left side. There's two trucks inside that door right now, I've got to wait for them both to be finished and back out, and then I go in next. This guy came here a few minutes ago, I'm not sure why he pulled around like that. I feel like he's trying to cut the line, his line is behind me and he pulled up to the front, maybe he has special freight, I don't know, he's walked inside and hasn't come out yet. But usually guys line up behind at the back of the line. Well, maybe there's some unforeseen circumstances that I'm not seeing right now, but it feels like he's trying to get in front of me. We'll see. So I've gotten most of my bungees off my load already, I just kept the corners on just to save some time so that when I do get in there, it's got like six bungees to take off, roll up the tarps, take the straps off, it'll just save me, save them time, save me time, we can get out of here sooner. That's the second truck backing out there right now, as soon as he's out of there, I can pull in. To Thief River Falls, trailer 123 is waiting for me there. I'm going to take it home tonight, I'm going to take it to the yard, drop it there and I've made myself available to go right back out, we call that a turn and burn. I'm hoping something will be available for me to hook on tonight yet, that would be great. But you know, this is trucking, so we take what we can get, it might be tomorrow, but there will be a plan by tonight. Second here, I have to stop and clean this up, my garbage can fell over, I clean this up before I get out on the road, that was rude, that was rude, these shoes shouldn't be here anyways. I have a system and before I leave any yard and get on the road, I want that system to be in place. My hot water kettle went kaput yesterday too, so I got no hot water in here and I'd go buy another one, but I had sort of put it on my wish list for Christmas and I think my wife may have gotten me a kettle, maybe not. But just in case she did, I don't want to go buy a new one, now I'm going to wait to see what happens. It was on the list, so the rule is you never buy yourself anything in like the month leading up to Christmas, especially if you put it on a Christmas list somewhere for someone. That's just rude. You ask them or you say, hey, this is something that I might need, hit, hit, nudge, nudge, and then you go buy it yourself and then they go and buy it and you're like, well, now I don't need it and then you know what I mean? Oh wait, it's only what, two weeks to Christmas? Two weeks? Hell, holy smokes, it's less than two weeks till Christmas. Wow, yeah, I can go two weeks without a hot water kettle, whatever. And if I don't get one, that's perfectly fine. I'll be just fine, I'll just go buy one then. Until then, we'll just have to go and buy our coffees in the truck stop again. Or I can just go in there and get hot water for my soup and stuff. Some truck stops, they have a little hot water tab. You can go and grab some free hot water. Some charge you for it. Those places concern me though because I'm pretty sure one day they're going to charge you just to breathe the air inside their building if they're going to charge you for tap water. Remember when they started with bottled water? I can still remember that a little bit. I remember when it started to become a big thing. Everyone's like, they're never going to charge us for water. Water's in the ground, it's free. Especially in Canada, we have what? A quarter of all the earth's fresh water in our country? We're water hogs. We have a lot of water, lots. And what do you know? They started charging us for water. That's kind of crazy. And then, they made water more expensive than gasoline per liter. This is Detroit Lakes. But what's interesting about Detroit Lakes is it's in Minnesota. And nowhere near Detroit. All of you watching from Detroit right now, did you know that you have some lakes here in Minnesota? Have you visited your lakes yet? Why not? They're very nice. Nice little town going on here. I'm not too sure how this town may have gotten its name. Maybe people came here from Detroit and settled it? Who knows? We're just passing through though. Way up the Thief River. There should be a preload of trailer. Like I said, trailer 1, 2, 3. And I'm hoping I can get home with it or back to the yard. I think I've told you this already, right? I'm sorry, sometimes I repeat myself in my vlogs. I'll say one thing and then, you know, five seconds later in the vlog, I'll say it again. But for me in real life, it's been like a few hours. And I don't remember what I've all told you already. So bear with me. I try to edit out any repetitiveness when I edit it at the end of my day. Believe me, there's a lot of that. How annoying it can be when someone just keeps saying the same thing over and over and over again. Excuse me, bud. Excuse me. Excuse me. Why are you slowing down my signals on? So now we're on US Highway 59. You know what's interesting between Minnesota and Manitoba? Our province and the state of Minnesota are so similar. Not only are we similar in shape, if you look at the shape of Manitoba and the shape of Minnesota and where their capital city is and where our capital city is, it's like mirror image almost, right? And Minnesota's slogan is Land of 10,000 Lakes. Manitoba's old slogan is Manitoba, Land of 100,000 Lakes. We're very similar. And this Highway 59 goes right up into Canada and maintains that number all the way up to the city of Winnipeg and past the city of Winnipeg all the way up to cottage country. So Highway 59 in the US is also Highway 59 in Canada. Same thing with Highway 75. In Minnesota, it used to connect to Highway 75 on the Canadian side as well. But once they built the interstate there, Interstate 29, they connected the 29 to the 75 in Canada instead. But it used to be just 75 all the way through. Punching in the pre-trip of this new trailer that I'm hooked onto. I left trailer 115D here at the shipper and I grabbed preloaded trailer 123D. Punch that into the system here so that that's all connected to my e-log. Got it all tied down. We're ready to go. I had some problems finding the trailer. They had it buried in the back of their yard for some reason. There's probably about seven or eight of our trailers here to be picked up so I guess they ran out of space and they ended up in my mind, way in the back. No one told me. Why would they, right? Okay. Just got to do a little bit of paperwork here yet. It won't be on the way. We're crossing from Pembina, North Dakota into Emerson, Manitoba bringing this to the yard and then we have our new plan already. I'm dropping this trailer, hooking onto a flatbed and then heading out to Canora to load up something in the morning. Somewhere different than usual. Not that usual tarp lumber. I believe this might be culverts if I remember this place correctly. We're picking up in Canora and I got to deliver that up to Thompson in an attempt to avoid the snowstorm that's moving in tomorrow. The snowstorm is going to come through here in North Dakota, Minnesota and it should miss northern Manitoba up in Thompson. So while I'm up there in Thompson, about 10 centimeters or 10 inches or whatever of snow is going to drop in this region and by the time I get back down Wednesday evening, I should just be catching the tail end of the snowstorm. That's the plan. Here we are. We got a plan. This here is Pembina North Dakota. We're just going to go around the corner here and the Canadian border is just right there. Commercial lanes open. After midnight, you have to keep left and go through the regular lanes. So I was told the load is cleared and ready to cross. So I just give them my paper with my power sticker on it and they scan the barcode and all the information should be on their computer in front of them. It should show who I am. That should match the passport I give them. They'll show what the freight is, where it came from, where it's going. I got more snow since I was at the office last. Run the paperwork inside here. Go find a good spot to park this somewhere where they can unload it in the morning. Find a flatbed trailer. Hook on to that and start making our way to Kanora. Not a lot of trucks along the fence. A lot of personal vehicles. There's a lot of drivers out on the road right now. Everyone's trying to make that money before Christmas. Next week is Christmas. End of next week. Christmas Eve. Oh, smokes. Are you guys ready? We're not really New Year's people, Britt and I. So after Christmas, I'll be headed out on the road. New Year's this year is on a weekend so I might be home for it but I told them I'm available if they need me. If not, then I'll be home for New Year's. We can do the countdown thing and you know. But then January, February, I'm going to be running as hard as I possibly can. Getting as many miles as I possibly can. Because Britt's due date is April 1st. That's my birthday. Best birthday present ever, right? So around March 17th, I'm going to be taking parental leave. For four to six weeks, depending on how the delivery goes. If Britt needs a C-section, suddenly I'll probably be taking the six weeks. It also depends on our financial situation but we're trying to prepare ourselves for this now. I'll be taking at least four weeks, two weeks before the birth, two weeks after the birth. Just in case it's early or a little late, we'll figure it out. She's not planning to have a C-section but you never know. If it's suddenly needed last minute, then I have to be there a little longer because she can't lift anything and she's got to let her body heal. She can't do much other than feed the baby. And I want to be there for the first few weeks to bond with the child as well. That's coming fast. You think about it? I've got two more full months, two and a half months left of work before I take my parental leave. And I'm self-employed so it's not like there's a government-funded parental leave for me. I have my own truck here. It's contracted. So that's all me that I'm saving up for. We should be okay though. We have a good plan in place. We should be all right. It's coming quick. Coming quick. But yeah, we're going to be running hard up until March 17th. I believe March 17th is Friday and that's the last day. Around that time, March 17th, 18th, around that time, whenever I get home, I'm going to park the truck in the shop and go home and anxiously await the arrival of our first baby that we've waited for for so long already. You guys who've been watching my channel know that we've been waiting a long time and gone through a lot. Several rounds of IUI, the IVF, like everything Britt's been through. She's like a soldier. The amount of stuff she's been through to get to this point and it's almost here. It's almost time. Oops. Sorry, old blue. I always forget when I have the window open. I don't have to slime it so hard. When the windows are closed, you've got to give it an extra oomph. Okay, we're here in the yard. I've dropped my trailer over there in the middle, what they call the corral. Where they're going to unload it tomorrow morning and then they'll park it. And I've hooked up to a flatbed. It's only about minus one or like 32 Fahrenheit or something. But not 32, like 28 Fahrenheit or something. There we go, trailer 541. 53 foot flat. I've done the pre-trip. It's all ready to go. Safety sticker is good until August of 2023. Let's rock and roll. I'm going to make it to Kenora yet. I have plenty of time. It's about a two-hour drive and I have three and a half hours left on my clock. Not sure where I'm going to park yet. But we'll find a spot. We'll just get there in that general area. And then go load up tomorrow, head up to Thompson. Northern Manitoba again. But don't worry. We don't have to leave the paved road. The whole blue is a special truck. Special trucks deserve special treatment. Those roads are too rough. So this truck's not going to be going up on those winter roads. But we can go up as far north as the paved roads go. Besides south of here I explained already, right? Keep forgetting what I said in my last clips. There's a snowstorm rolling through southern Manitoba and South Dakota, Minnesota. I want to avoid that by going north. So for once in my life might be the only time ever we are heading north to avoid the snowstorm. Everything done. Trailer's right there. Old trailer. New trailer's behind us. Trailer's here. Trailer's there. Trailer's everywhere. Got my tarps on the trailer. Trailer, trailer, trailer. Let's go. Let's go to Kenora, yeah? Off we go. Three hours and 15 minutes available. Should only need about two hours and 15 minutes. So I should have an hour left over. I believe that's on my 16 hour clock already. So even if I stop and go off duty that timer's still going to keep ticking down. Open says me. Come on. Come on. To today. It's a slow gate. Forces you to practice patience before you leave on your trip. Oh, excuse me. I still got a little bit of a cough left. Four worker buddies. Parked here beside me tonight. We're in Kenora. He's already loaded. He's got a tarp load behind him. And I've got an empty flatbed behind me. I'm loading in the morning. I don't have to tarp my load. I don't think so. I guess we'll find out tomorrow. But 99% sure this isn't a tarp load. And I just got a load just around the corner from here. So it worked out good. He brought here for me right beside my buddy. And I didn't even know he was going to be here. He doesn't even know I'm here yet. He's sleeping already. So I've got to be quiet. I'm going to edit this video. Go to bed. Thanks for watching today, everybody. Tomorrow's going to be another day. We're heading up north after we get loaded. We're going to try to avoid that snowstorm. So please tune in tomorrow. Set your notifications. And we'll see if we make it. Let's see if this works.