 Morning everybody. Getting ready to go here. Time to go get some freight. Fill up this trailer. I'm picking up some steel today. Gonna bring it up to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Starting off here near Duluth, Minnesota. It's about an eight-hour drive once we're loaded. So let's get started. Quick wipe. Didn't do this yesterday. My trusty bull snot. That's nice. It's a good smell of bull snot in the morning. If you haven't heard of it before, that's what I'm talking about. This can is kind of old already, but it's bull snot visible. It cleans everything. Great stuff. If you don't leave one out, there's no man left behind, no gauge left behind. Get them all cleaned out. Even the big guys. Yeah, I'll deserve a clean start to the day. Oh, that's nice. That is the steering column here. Put that down as well. Gotta go just around the corner pretty much. That's a little further now. About 15 minutes down the road. Once again, like every morning, I'm just gonna make sure that my eyeballs are working correctly. I checked to make sure my trailer was still attached to the fifth wheel. But just to be double sure, we're gonna roll forward with 10 feet, spike the trailer brakes. It didn't fall off and the brakes work and they release. Morning checklists are done. Let's get out of here. So we're near Duluth, Minnesota. Hope you guys all had a good day or are having a good day at whatever time you're watching this and wherever you are. Hope that the weather is treating you good. Hope that life in general is treating you good. As I drive towards the sun, I realize I need to clean the inside of my windshield. And as I drive this way, I also realize, can I turn left from here? Yes, I can. Okay. I want to turn left. And for a minute there, I thought that I went out the wrong driveway. But no, there's a thank you sign right there, which means no, you can go this way. Why would they say thank you if this was only an entrance? Thank you for entering. Okay, there's nobody coming from that direction. Nobody at all. That direction? There is people coming from that direction. That sign is in my way. I can't see. Okay, two cars coming from that direction. Nobody coming at all from there. Good. Gonna wait for one more car. Come on now. Come on, I could have cut in there. I could have. I'm too nice. Until next weekend, and then I think we're pretty much on the downhill, headed towards spring now. We're over the mountain of winter. Daylight hours are getting longer. Snow is gone here in Duluth. It's not gone at home yet, but soon, right? Soon. This'll be our first summer in our new house. Excited to get that backyard. Or excited to work in that backyard, I should say. Get that lawn, get that lawn mowed. I'm excited to mow the lawn. It's gonna be a good day. It's gonna be a good year. Minus 7 degrees Celsius is 19.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay, let's get out here. So we got loaded over there. We pulled up over here to tie down. As per their request, I'll quickly throw these straps over and get out of here. I already got all my paperwork sent it all in. So on these, I do one each direction. I do one strap this way, one strap this way. Wish I had a few shorter straps for this. I have shorter ones on that side. I'm gonna use them to throw this way so that they don't roll out into the road too far for the minute or two that it takes me to walk around and pull them back closer to the trailer, if that makes sense. I'm gonna make sure that we're... Most trailers nowadays have these sliding ratchets. Make it very nice. The old trailers and some of the new ones still have fixed. They're welded on. I don't like those. I like to be able to put these ratchets exactly where I need them, right? So six on this side, then we got six on the other side yet. Clever with how we do this because the tires are here. In here, yeah. Okay, now we go to this side. You see how they roll out like this? Because the straps are pretty long. I just pull them all tight now. Gotta watch out here. There's a whole bunch of landmines around here. Our Canadian Air Force like to leave their droppings here. By Canadian Air Force, I mean our Canadian geese. They have lots of them here. They'll be coming back soon with this weather. And they graze here, I guess. These tires are good. A little bit of extra weight because the truck is leaning this way. It makes the tires look lower than they are. I checked the PSI. They're all at 105. No, 100. Yeah, they're all at 100 PSI. That's what I have them at. If I quickly throw this side over, I'm going to ratchet them up. And we're going to book it. Book it all out of here. We're loaded. We're tied down. Lights are on. Everything's ready. You know what I'm going to say next? We're in a rush. So I've got to bring this load to our yard near Whittepag, Manitoba. It's about eight hours from here. Seven, eight hours. I drop this load in the yard, take my equipment off of it, and then grab another empty flatbed, head back to Canora. Got to be there to load at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning. Or first thing in the morning as early as we can, anyways. We're not even that heavy with this load. Usually this load would bring me right up to max weights. I'm only at about 76,500 pounds. If you're not familiar with trucking, I can have a maximum of 80,000 pounds in the U.S. Oh, there's my new load. Actually technically in a rush. I'm just saying we're in a rush because I'm always in a rush. I don't want to drag my feet. I want to get to Canora tonight as early as possible. I want to be first at the gate tomorrow morning. It's hard to do. Guys there are on the ball. They don't want you there a minute before 7 a.m. I want you there at 7 a.m., but there's always a lineup. We'll see. As long as I'm among the first, I want to get loaded tomorrow, then unloaded tomorrow afternoon. And then I believe I'm coming right back here to Duluth for another one. So we're just doing a circle. We'll be right back here tomorrow night. Am I going too slow? No, I'm going. I'm going. Yeah, I'm going speed. Why are people tailgating me? I'm turning here anyway. See, I'm not even that heavy. I was expecting to have a little bit more weight on me, but I'm actually quite happy with this. I'm not even close to being over. There's a little bit more on my trailer. I would like to have a little more weight up on my drives, on my truck. But hey, it'll do. For a quick eight-hour drive, it'll do. We're illegal. Come on. My dirty mirror. I can't wait to get to a truck wash. There's my next load already. So yeah, my next two loads are sitting in my computer here waiting for me already. We know what we're doing. So we got work today. We got work yesterday. We have work tomorrow and we have work the next day. That's a good week. Maybe I'll go home and get my truck serviced on Friday then. I'll have to call in and see if that'll work with what they need me to do. I just didn't understand the assignment. I'm not coming back here for steel here. We're picking up different steel in Wisconsin. They just said steel. And I thought, oh, I'm coming right back to Duluth. No, we're going to pick up different steel. We're going to load in Brainerd tomorrow afternoon. We'll load in Canora first in the morning. Wait, let's start right from the beginning. We're going to drop this load off that I have now at our yard here at Winnipeg, Manitoba. We'll go to Canora, sleep there, load their first thing in the morning, get down to Brainerd, Minnesota, unload in the afternoon, clean up all my equipment again, stop here for some juice. The cheapest juice on my route today by a long shot. Congratulations, pilot. Okay, so grab a coffee. Karen. I told them that. What I was trying to tell you, because you care so much about what's he going to do next, well, we're going to fill up the fuel both sides, all the way to the top. It's a parade of trucks. You going to let me through here, bud? How many more stops unless we have to go to the bathroom? Until we get back to our yard on the other side. Oh, I haven't gotten my confirmation that I'm cleared for the border yet. I better call in right now about that. I don't want to get there and have to wait because I don't have border clearance. My belt. I've gone down a belt size. I got to say in yesterday I've lost six pounds in the last week doing my fasting schedule where I pretty much, I eat for eight hours of the day and then I don't eat for 16 hours and then I eat for eight hours. Don't eat for 16. Pretty much from the, whenever I eat supper, I don't eat for another 16 hours. So either I skip supper and stop eating or eat a late early supper or I skip breakfast or eat a late breakfast. It's been working. It's been a new app that I've been using. I mean, I'm not trying to do an ad for it or anything, but it's called Fast Easy. It's been working. Lost a belt size. Nothing else has worked for me so far. So that makes me happy. Oh yes. I love driving a W900, but there is no room in a W900. You can't have both. You can't have a spacious cabin and a sweet-looking truck. You know, I guess some people would disagree with me. I like the T680s. I'm a Kenworth guy straight through and through. I think I'd only ever drive or buy Kenworth. So if I wanted to buy a big condo unit, I'd buy a Kenworth T680. My father-in-law drives one. He drives a white one. You've seen it. He runs here for us as well. Those are nice trucks. That's a condo on wheels. I couldn't get ahold of anybody at work. Maybe they're on break or something. So I sent an email that goes to everybody then on the deck division. I'd like to know, am I clear for the border? Nobody has sent me anything. I can't cross until they send me confirmation. That's our rules. That's to make sure that we don't show up unannounced. Because if you show up to the border and the border is not expecting you yet and your clearance isn't done yet, you get a fine. And if I do that, that fine goes to me, not to them. My responsibility to make sure I'm clear first. So I have to make sure I get that confirmation before I get to the border or I get fined. I think it's like $2,000 or something. I might be wrong on that, but I want to say it's $2,000, but it's a lot of money anyways. The border doesn't mess around. They're still working on these pumps. They only got two of them open. Two out of six. It'll be nice once it's finished. All right, old blues filled up. I'm filled up. Lights are on. Oh, I actually got a half hour out of this here. Noice. I didn't need the half hour break, but I got it anyway. I'm on a patch of ice. Why can't I get moving? Tires are just spinning. There we go. He is definitely in the air. It's coming. I'm excited. I still haven't gotten my customs clearance, so we might end up just going to the border and waiting there. Hopefully that goes through very soon. I'm wondering if they forgot to send it in. That's why I always give them a reminder about an hour and a half, two hours before I get to the border if I haven't heard from them. Just to let them know, hey, how's it going? I said, oh, we're working on it. Ah, did you forget? Or maybe it's just taken a long time. I don't know. Go by the time we don't want to spend the night at the kind of mess up my plans for the rest of my trip. It wouldn't wreck them, but it would definitely mess up me getting home. I want to get home at a really good time on Friday because I have an appointment on Saturday to get Old Blue serviced. And I want to bring it to the shop Friday afternoon. So that means I've got to get home at a good time midday on Friday. Just waiting for a car. Just waiting for a car to come from the left here. I've got to get home at a good time like around noon. Get all my stuff out of the truck and bring it over to ABX. North US 81 North. And if I don't get through the border today, that means I'll probably get home late Friday night. That means I'm going to have to bring it there for a Saturday morning. Which, whatever that works to, but... 81 North. It's not as ideal, you know what I mean? One and a half. I'm sure they'll get it cleared by then. I'm sure they'll get it cleared. I'll call them again in about an hour. It's 3 o'clock right now. We'll call them around 4 o'clock. North Shulker Highway, Highway 75. This is Morris, Manitoba. It almost feels like the sun got higher in the sky as we got into Canada. I think that's just because the sky is cleared. It makes it look brighter outside. But it is almost 5 o'clock, and look at this. Look at how much sunlight we have at 5 o'clock. Remember, like a couple months ago? This is the time of year that gets me excited. And spring is on the way. Just a couple of weeks away. Figured you were turning. 600 meters. Go straight on. North Shulker Highway, Highway 75. Okay, everybody. We've got a new trailer. Got a little bit of snow on it. We'll have to take care of that before we go. For now, we're going to roll up the landing gear. Get the tarps up here. Do the pre-trip on it. And then we'll be off and on our way. Look at all my equipment off the other trailer. I was hoping to find a trailer without snow on it. I guess that happens. You know, it snows around here. There was no snow in Brainerd and no snow in Duluth today. We still got snow here at home. Oh, look at that. They got a big building coming up there. Cool. Good for them. I saw this. Actually, the safety is valid and good. Safety is good until November 2024. It's the first thing you check. Should have done that before I even rolled up the landing gear. So that'd be a waste of time if it was not safety. See, my center tarp always has three bungees on it. That's how I know it's my center one. Because they all kind of look the same when they're rolled up. And I don't use the center one nearly as often as I use these end tarps. Uh-oh. Shoot, look at that. One of my springs broke off today. Just now. Probably fixed that in the shop. Well, it's okay. For now, it's whatever. Still has these two. I needed to get new strings for this anyway. They're kind of old, as you can tell. Old and rusty. I can just bend this back. I could bend it back now. I'm just wondering because it's so cold it might just snap. Like this did here, right? Yeah. I wonder if I can just take it off of here. I don't want this banging around against my headache rack. My glove's off for this. It's always something, right? It's always something. This is like, I don't have any tools for this. This is out of stiff. Okay. Shoot. I wonder if I could bend that around there. I'll try doing that first. Like I always say, it's always something. At least it's not a big issue, right? Here you are. Those are the ones I was looking for. I wonder if that'll work. Well, let's just break if I try to bend it. Nope. Oh, wait. Yep. Yeah. It's going to break off, isn't it? Put it around there like that. Oh, come on. Hook on there. What's going on? It's just going to break again. I can definitely tell it's just going to break. See? Okay. So, yeah, this is too old. Still got those two. I'm just going to have to replace all three of these. I'll order them right away. Let's get this thing off of here, though. It'd be easier from this side. I just need this piece. Come on. I could probably just break it. There it goes. Oh, maybe not. Nice. Oh, there we go. Yeah, it wants to break. Ah. It's harder than it looks. It's definitely harder than it looks. Come on now. Might need to grab the vice grip. Oh, can we get this off now? Come on. That's why we got three on there and not just one. What would these springs be called? I'll have to look them up on the interwebs. There's Mike. One of the Mike's. He says, hello. This is garbage. This is not garbage. Still got to do the walk around of the trailer. I'm going to need my gloves on for that. Why did I take those off? There. So, I'm going to go finish up here. Get ready to roll to the pre-trip. I'll see you on the road on the way to Canora. That's about 600 miles. Here we sit, waiting to get loaded the first thing in the morning. I want to be in the gate. They open up at 7 a.m. I'm going to get up at like 6.15. I'm going to try to get in there at 6.30 so I can wait. Or at least up to the gate at 6.30. The first or one of the first two to get loaded tomorrow. Earlier the better because I want to get unloaded tomorrow as well in Brainerd. But I can do it. I've done it before, many times. And then from there we can head on down to Evansville, Wisconsin. We won't make it all the way there. It was six hours down to Brainerd from here. It's probably about another six hours down to Evansville, Wisconsin. I've had comments before where they say, George, you have a lot of deadhead miles, a lot of empty miles. Yeah, I'm an international driver. So, I go where the money is. And the rates are good enough that it covers my empty miles. Otherwise I wouldn't accept it. I would just say no. But I can't pick up freight in Minnesota to get me into Wisconsin. That's illegal. It's called interstating. You get big fines for that. That's an American job to do. As a Canadian driver, I bring freight from Canada into the U.S. Now the load that I take back to Canada has to go directly back to Canada. I can't make any stops in the U.S. on that load. So the next good-paying load that's nearest to me, going back to Canada, is in Wisconsin. So I go there empty, pick up that load, and that load has to go directly... Hold on one sec here, let's actually check my messages here. Pretty sure I'm just bringing it to the yard. Let's go to Saskatoon. Oh, maybe I'll bring it to Saskatoon. Maybe I'll bring it right there. They want it there. Doesn't say. But they wanted a $12.30 on no specified date. We're picking this up on... Getting back home on Friday, which is unfortunate because we have a doctor's appointment on here. We'll see. That's in the future. Ah, future Josh, don't worry about that. Very often those loads that we pick up of steel beams, they're made to build steel buildings, commercial buildings. So very often those have like specific dates, and it's not always like right away. Sometimes they want each load there on a specific day, and it's multiple loads that build the building, right? Maybe this load needs to be there on Tuesday or Wednesday. You've watched right to the end. 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