 Morning everybody. At the end of last vlog I was talking about this winter front. It's an ominous sign. It's a sign that winter season is here. I can open up these two flaps to let more air flow through or I can close these to let less through. I can close it all up. It's fine, air will still get on the engine but you close it all up when it gets really cold outside. Keep your cab warm a little more. It protects your engine and stuff from the elements of minus 30. It is definitely starting to get cold out here though. We slept here near Alexandria Minnesota at the rest area right beside this beautiful interstate so that I could listen to the beautiful sounds of these trucks. So I just finished my pre-trip. It took me a little bit longer than usual because it was cold so not to keep warming up my hands and stuff. We're going to go to Oak Grove, Minnesota. We're going to unload this lumber that's underneath that tarp. Yeah it's probably going to be done outside. I'm guessing most places are going to roll these tarps up, try to get them all nice and tight. That's not going to be fun but we're going to do it because that's what we do. And then from there I don't know where we're going but we'll find out as we go. So let's just run down the road here to Alexandria. There's a pilot. Gonna quickly run in there, grab a coffee. Let's get out there. Let's get some work done. What's wrong? Lights are on. Wiggle the truck back and forth just to make sure all my brakes are not frozen. They're all going to release. Beautiful. Now we're just going to make sure that the trailer brakes work. Spike them. They definitely work. My trailer is attached to my truck. It's not going to fall off and they all release. At this time here I always take a look to make sure the wheels are turning as well. I definitely feel it by now because it's not icy but I'm just going to do a visual here in my mirror anyways on this side. All trailer tires are turning. When it gets really cold out if you set your brakes too soon before your brakes cool off sometimes the brake pads can freeze to the brake drum and then they're stuck in the morning and you got to go and sort of bang them free. That's not fun but you got to make sure that you see that your wheels are coming with you like they're turning because if you don't you're going to be dragging it down the highway and you're going to blow a tire. Two of them. At the very least you're going to be creating flat spots on them right. My truck is sufficiently warmed up. I'm quite going to be able to get up to highway speed at all but I'm going to hit the highway here. Put my hazards on. I don't hit any lights. For you guys I tried very heavy right now. I'm grossed out at about 79,500. Just below gross or just below max. So here exit 100. Literally right around the corner quickly grab that coffee, start the day off right and then we'll be rocking and rolling. I found a spot to park at the rest area last night. I didn't want to go and check waste time and go check to see if there was a spot here too because most likely this place would have been full. I stopped around midnight yesterday or I guess this morning. Usually that means the truck stops are full. I really wish we could just skip the winter season. Wouldn't that be great but you know you need snow for Christmas. That is something you'd definitely need. It would be nice if it would just snow, snow, snow on the weekends until Christmas. Have a nice white Christmas with a nice fresh snowfall on like the 23rd and then right after Christmas it can all melt. It can all go away. We have no more use for it. Me and Brett are on the same page with that one. We love snow until Christmas and after that we got no use for it. Next. A wonderful roundabouts here. Wisconsin's been, I mean pardon me, Minnesota's been taking a page out of Wisconsin's book with these things. They're popping up everywhere. So those of you that have been asking, my transmission is an 18 speed so I can split both high and low which makes it very nice when you're pulling heavy loads up hills and stuff. Helps out quite a bit. I don't think I'd want to go back to a 13. Definitely not to a 10. Oh 10 speeds are terrible in the mountains. 13 is okay. You can split the high gears right but I, I like my 18. Pull into one of these spots right here. Nice right at the front, right in the front. Just quickly run in for two minutes. I'm just going to straighten myself out here. Put my four ways on to let people know I'm coming back. There's no backup lights on the back of trailers which I find odd. I think European trucks often have backup lights like when you put it in reverse on the back of the trailer too. Why don't we have that in North America? Because when you're behind a trailer you have no idea if he's in reverse or not. That's why we put our four ways on when we're backing up right to sort of alert people that hey something's going on here. This guy's in reverse. I think that would be awesome. It would also give light behind the whole unit. So you can see where you're backing a little better. I don't know why they don't do that. That is what it is. All right I'm going to run in here. I'll see you down the road. So Oak Grove is a little north of Minneapolis. I think it's part of the same metropolis area. The same might, might even be a suburb of Minneapolis. I don't know the details but uh I'm up here on what is this Minnesota 23, Minnesota 15. Turn left on and at 15 and then turn right in 380 meters. Okay so Minnesota 15 this way. This is going to take me into the north end of the city. Still 88 kilometers or like 50 some miles away so I left the interstate because this is supposed to be shorter. We'll we'll see if it's shorter. It's shorter by distance. I don't know if by time. Let's see. So we just turned on to the 15 north here and now we're going to take the 23. Just to block down. A little bit confusing but we got our we got our bearings. We know where we're going. We need some help. Thanks. Short cut. Turned out to be a big. The bridges was out over a river or something. I don't know but we had to make this huge detour all the way around that. So it cost me a half hour. That's okay. We're still on time. I've now got my next orders for my next load. So with this and we're headed back up to Canora to grab a load down to Brainerd. So there's no rush. There's a little there's always a rush but there's no like time crunch where someone's waiting for me. It's just the right you know rush. My tarp's rolled up and started headed up that way. This day has been sort of it's been feeling like it's just dragging on for me but I think that's because the sun is setting so early. I feel like the whole day has passed already and I've just gotten started but still a lot of day left just not daylight. Turn left on Tanrax Street and then approaching destination on the right side at 70 meters. All right here we are. Okey-dokey freight entrance. Got your wood for ya. Did you have a good Thanksgiving? Y'all back at work? So they said come through the gate and go into receiving. All right simple enough. Through the gate and receiving doors just on the right. Okay beautiful. I'm gonna try to park behind this guy. Hopefully it doesn't back into me. I'll give him enough space to get out of there. There's a sign says stop here receiving in dispatch office. Beautiful. Beautiful beautiful beautiful. On time and on schedule. 53 minutes from when I parked here. It's when I had the tarps rolled up, bungees put away and frayed off the trailer. Nice and quick. It is chilly. Oh it's not bad. 54 minutes now since I got done and talked to you. Or you did good old bloke. You did good. Another happy customer. Another one. Whoo! Getting a little nipply out there. Not too bad. Not too bad yet. I'm still wearing a thinner toke. But it's enough that I need my jacket. All right. Great. Karen! We're going back to Kanora. Take me to Kanora. We're going to Rainy River. I think. Well actually it might not be worth it to go there from here. We'll see what the route looks like. Okay so we're going. Yeah we're gonna go. Rainy River is a bit around from here. But it's there's no toll. I have this problem. I don't like paying the toll man. He almost doubled his price at the international bridge. You guys know that. Or international falls. Whatever that bridge is called. And I don't want to pay it. I don't want to cross for free. I'm a Canadian. I want to go home for free. I don't want to be charged to go home. It's rude. For those of you new to the channel I cross at international falls in Fort Francis all the time. To cross into the United States from Canada it's free. To cross into Canada from the United States you have to pay $21 now US. It used to be $13. Now it's $21 just like that overnight. They're just like you know what I'm not making as many millions as I would like to. Let's make billions. Yeah that probably wasn't like that. But still now all of us trucks that go through there which is quite a few because we have regular roads going through there. You see it in my videos. All the guys I've talked to we all switched our crossing to Rainier River now because it's no toll. So they're actually probably making less money now that they raised the toll. That'll teach them. Maybe probably not. No probably not. Okay let's get out of here. Let's go find a truck stop or we can get another coffee. What? Let's see how much longer it would be to go through Rainier River. 650 kilometers that way. So how far is it this way? It wasn't true. 679. 39 kilometers further but $21 cheaper. Now would I burn $21 US in 40 kilometers or like 25 miles or so? 30 miles? Probably not. Maybe. Maybe it'd be equal. But I still don't give my money to the toll man then. I don't know. Like sweating up a storm here. I gotta get out of this. That's jagged. Oh you. Thanks. And you thought trucking was just sitting holding a steering wheel. Maybe if you drive hand drivers. Barn door swingers. That was real truckers. Just kidding. Just kidding. Us flat bedders. We actually have to do some physical work. Let's go. Let's go. If we're assigned. Turn left and then turn right in 40 meters. Oh maybe. We'll see. We'll see. I always feel good after I get a big job like that done. Rolling up three tarps in the cold, in the wind. Not even inside. Makes you feel good when you get it done. Turn left and then turn left in 140 meters. Maybe I will. Okay. Only because there's nothing to the right. Okay. The dead end to the right. One second here. One second. I won't cut you off. Don't worry. Don't worry. Light as a feather again. Such a difference. Wow. 100 meters. Turn left on. Viking Boulevard. CR22. That was about 46,000 pounds of lumber. Plus about 35,000 pounds of truck and trailer. Tarps and equipment. Probably a little bit. I think I have those numbers off a little bit because I was sitting at 79 something gross. Two more from the left. One more Cadillac and here we go. Mission complete. Operation successful. Sun would stay up longer, but it is what it is. I know that's all I ever talk about, right? Before kilometers. Turn right on NN 65. I need to stop bringing that up. You guys know that already. I'm also saying that because I have a lot of followers that are further south, like down near the equator and in other parts of the world, and they don't experience the same differences in daylight hours that we do here. So to them, it's pretty interesting that at this time of year, the sun goes down so early and then, you know, in summertime, it just never goes away. Life for us here, right? Especially us northern people. Swan River, Minnesota. Not Swan River, Manitoba. Swan River, Minnesota. Both have a Swan River. According to my card and my app, this is where the cheapest fuel is I can get on my route today. I don't need much, so I'll just top off the tank so that I can make it up to Canora and back down to Brainer tomorrow. I've also got to deal with my, uh, a washer fluid on my driver wiper. I have winter fluid in there, but it looks like the driver's side is frozen over. It's not spraying. So I gotta figure out what's going on there and fix that. So I recently drained my entire windshield washer fluid reservoir under the hood because it had summer stuff in it, right? I drained it out and I put Raynex minus 40 winter washer fluid in there. It's good down to minus 40. And then I ran it through the whole system for quite a while to make sure that all the lines were cleared out and that it was replaced with this new winter stuff. And I still have a frozen line of washer fluid underneath my hood. My passenger one is working just fine, but my driver's side one is packed full of frozen ice. So I had to go out and get a little lighter. Actually, I went out and got a nice one because I was sick of the lighters I had that wouldn't stay burning. So I went into the truck stop there and I got a new Zippo lighter. Actually, I really like it. It's one of these things here, right? You have to buy lighter like Zippo fluid for it too. I learned that after I bought it. I went in and got the fluid and, uh, this will stay burning even when it's a little bit windy. Or you can just close that and that shuts it off as well. Right? That's the, uh, it's kind of a bother. But, uh, so I used that and I ran it up and down the washer fluid line, uh, for my driver's side windshield wiper and had to melt it all from underneath there. But I kept wanting to re-freeze before I could get in here. So I fought with it for an hour to get it going. Maybe I didn't clear out the lines well enough. I'm pretty sure I did though. Either way, my, my passenger one is fine. Driver's side one was for all the non-manus. It's not even that cold out yet, but it's my first hardship this winter season. Figured I'd share that with you. At least it's my windshield washer freezing and not my diesel fuel gelling. I'll take, I'll take that. Yeah. Much better to have that. Then we fixed it up and, uh, hey, now I got a new lighter. I don't smoke or anything, so I don't use the lighter a lot, but it's always handy to have a lighter just in case you need to, you know, light stuff on fire, bonfires. Or, uh, when I'm replacing lights and I do that shrink wrap or that shrink tube around, I gotta heat it up. It's nice to have a lighter that will stay lit, even if it's a little windy. So I have this little torch. Where'd it go? Very disappointed in this thing. Where is it? Did I put it down here somewhere? Ah, I'll have to show it to you a little later. I guess I lost it. Oh, is that it? Here it is. This thing. You've probably seen it at truck stops. It's supposed to be, uh, like a torch, right? Oh, oh, now you work! Now you want to work! Where were you before? Seriously. Now it works at the camp. Really? I don't believe that. I went out and bought that zippo because this thing wasn't working. Come on. I was going to show you how this thing was garbage. It doesn't work. Well, you could use one of these to heat it up too, but this one didn't want to light for me before. It lit up for like 30 seconds and then it didn't want to light again. As if! As if! I got a new zippo lighter anyway. Guess I didn't need it. We're in Podette, Minnesota, right across the border from Rainy River, Ontario, where there is no toll on the bridge crossing into Canada. I want to point out that I really don't like tolls. I don't know if you've gathered this or not, but in case you haven't, now you know. That's a massive Trump sign right there. Apparently this town really likes Trump. That was huge. It was just off in the dirt. They should light that up. Couldn't see it. When we come through here during the day sometime, I'll have to see it. It's like a massive billboard. We got to go over the bridge here and then turn right. Gotcha. I always think it's before the bridge. I'd love to. I'd love to. Yeah, it's right. Right by the big fish. Remember, we turn at the big fish on the right. It's kind of in the dark, I know. My GoPro doesn't do the best in low light, but it's the best option I have for a dash camera. That destination is the toll free bridge going into Canada. Is the toll over on the international bridge or the international falls crossing? I wonder if they're going to lower it again now that they're making no money. You were making more money before, man. Or they'll just put a toll on this bridge, right? And that's the big problem, right? If we all just start going somewhere else and they make less money now, they're just going to find a way to make the money somewhere else. They'll probably just put a toll over on Rainy River. I bet you they will. That bridge is a lot smaller though, a lot smaller. So I have my doubts. I don't think they would actually throw one on there. It's not a commercial crossing either. So it's not like trucks that are loaded can go through there and take advantage of that. It's just when you're empty, you can go through there. At least that's what I think. If anybody knows different, let me know. Can you cross there when you're loaded too? In that case, I should ask next time. I could probably just Google it. Is Rainy River Bodette crossing commercial? Probably not. But it might be. I'll get back to you on that one in the future. I got to wrap this up though. It's the next day and I'm getting loaded. So no time to talk. Thanks for watching, everybody. Remember to drive safe out there, think of me and we want to get home to our families. Keep your head up, keep your stick on the ice and pay attention to the road. We'll see you tomorrow.