 Hi, I'm Anthony. This is my dog Rosie. We're from Hayden, Alabama. You're watching Trucker Josh and his dog Weasel and TJ. If you want to see yourself in one of my vlogs like you just saw that intro, I'd love to include you as well. What you can do is film me a little intro just like that saying, Hey, my name is so-and-so. I'm from so-and-so and you're watching Trucker Josh vlogs. It doesn't have to be exactly like that either. You can say whatever you want to in there. If you have a social media channel or a YouTube channel you can give yourself a shameless shout-out to help people where to find you as long as you keep it under 30 seconds. That's all I ask. It'd be great to include you all in the beginning of my videos and I can sort of get to know you because you've gotten to know me pretty good. So if you're comfortable with that and you want to see yourself in the video, I'd love to include you. What you can do is you can send the video file to my channel email address, which is Trucker Josh vlogs at gmail.com. It's linked down below in the description there. If the file is too big, like sometimes it's too big to send through email, one way you can get it to me is by using Dropbox. It's an app on your phone and on your computer. What you do is you upload your video to Dropbox and then you can share the link with me at my email address, Trucker Josh vlogs at gmail.com. And then I can click the link and download it from there. That's one way you can get it to me. There's a bunch of other ways of file sharing that you use. I try to use pretty much all of them. If it doesn't work, I'll let you know. We can figure out another way. Sometimes it works just to send it through email. The way you do it is you press record on your phone. Just sit for about two to three seconds. Okay, just give me that extra time to edit. I need those extra couple of seconds at the beginning and the end of the clip just to cut and edit just so that it transitions smoothly into the vlog. So just like press record, wait a couple of seconds, not too long, just a couple of seconds and then say what you want to say. And then before you click stop, just wait another couple of seconds. Just give it a little bit of extra time so I can use that to blend it with the next clip. That would be great. But I've done this a couple of times before. I want to do it again. The truck world is being a truck world really got me excited to get to know you guys a little bit more. It was really awesome meeting you guys that did come out. Like I've been saying with the new truck, I want to do more truck shows and more truck events where we can all hang out and meet and talk trucks and just get to know each other a little bit. So this is one way we can, I can include you in here. And then it's not just me talking all the time. It's you guys are involved as well. So if you want to email one more time is truckerjoshblogs at gmail.com. The only thing I'm going to add to that is that I want to keep these family friendly. So just no swearing and stuff. You guys know this already. I don't really have to tell you this. But just in case someone wasn't aware, us truckers are a little rough around the edges sometimes. And around the truck stop, we get a little carried away and stuff. But here on the channel here, I just want to make sure that anybody can watch my videos and you can let your kids watch my videos. And if they don't like all the language and stuff, they don't got to worry about that here on my channel. So that's the reason why I keep that off my channel. So as long as we just keep the intros family friendly, you can make them, you can say whatever you want to say. Just say your name and wherever you're from or if you don't want to say where you're from. If you don't want to even say your name, that's fine. I don't really, it doesn't bother me. Just something to open up the vlog for the day would be great. I really look forward to seeing what you come up with. I'll leave the creativity up to you. It's a weasel. It's a weasel schnauzer. It's a weasel schnauzer. We're going to get to the vlog right away. I'm just going to tell you right now, there's not much footage. I'm moving over to a new format. We're going to be releasing the videos again the very next day. I've done this before. I've gone back and forth, releasing the next day, releasing a week later. Releasing it seven days later, like usually what I would do is I'd film on Monday, I'd release it the next Monday. That gives me seven days to get the video together. When you make videos every day, it just works out great because then my evenings would be free. I'd get home, my evenings would be free, and I'd dedicate a day on the weekend to editing all my videos from the week and, you know, schedule them to go out the next week. But that takes a day out of my weekend as well. Then a whole day on the weekend is shot. Oh, I shouldn't say shot. I like making these, but I'm going to try releasing them the next day again because I do like that better. That is my preferred releasing method. It keeps it more relevant and you can see what I did yesterday instead of what I did last week, right? It makes it more relevant to me in the comment section as well when you're commenting on my day and I'm trying to remember what did happen last week. What are they talking about? Well, then I got to go back and watch the day again and figure out what they're talking about and then, oh yeah, then I can respond. It's convenient for me to do it that way. It makes it a lot easier for me to do it that way, but I want to step it up a notch on my channel again. I've been doing this a long time and I go through periods where it gets a little slower and more blend and then I have to pick it up and make it interesting again and reinvest myself and I figure what better time than now we bought a new truck and I really want to launch this channel into the next chapter and start doing things different and get excited about these videos again every day so I'm going to release them the next day. I'm going to do my best. I'm going to try to have them out first thing in the morning the next day. Sometimes I'm not going to have time to edit at the end of my day and I'm going to have to figure out make some time somewhere to edit during the day. If you want to know when they'll be released, go to my Facebook page. That's where I'm most active, but I'm also on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. I'm on all the socials so you can find me there. But if you go to my Facebook, the link is down below in the description. You can always just type into the search bar Facebook.com slash official Trucker Josh. You'll see it's me. I got the little blue check beside my name Trucker Josh there. You'll know that that's my account and follow me there. I'll let that's where I'm most active. So that's where I'll be letting you know when the vlog will be released or if it's going to be late or let's try this for a while and see how it goes and if it just doesn't work, I'll have to go back to releasing it later but we're going to give this a good shot. So anyways, there wasn't much filming from today. This was on Friday, May 20th, I believe, 2022. Let's see what the day had to offer. I was in the middle of shuffling everything over here so I'll talk to you at the end of the vlog. Enjoy. No joke. It's snowing right now. Can you see it? Camera's probably not picking it up, right? It's snow. There's snow in the air falling to the ground. This has got to be some kind of crime. There's got to be some kind of punishment that somebody has to serve. Like somebody did this. Somebody's messing with us, aren't they? There's some weather weapons going on, isn't there? What's going on? We got so much water, our whole backyard is flooded again. It rained like crazy overnight. Now it's snowing. End of May. But wait, wait, wait, wait, no. Oh, I know what's going on now. No, I know what's going on. No, there's no conspiracy. I live in Manitoba. What's going on? That makes sense. This is what happens here every now and then. What a place to live, hey? This is why it's so cheap to live here and why no one wants to come here. But like I've said before, we kind of like it quiet. So we don't complain about it being kind of empty. There's not a lot of people that were a fly over province. People usually fly from Toronto to Vancouver or Calgary and forget that we even exist down here. Because of this, it's snowing in the end of May. But happy Friday, everybody. There is some good news. It's Friday. Focused on the positive here. Pretty soon I'm not going to get Fridays anymore. So actually, well, depends what my routes will be. I don't know what my routes will be yet. So we'll see. If you're just tuning in now, go and check out my past videos. You can go through the playlist on my channel. I have over 3,000 videos on the internet right now. I have a playlist all the way from vlog number one when I started counting. There's also vlogs from before that, before I started counting. They're all in my playlist there. If you want to go check them out, go do some catching up if you feel like it. I've recently bought a truck. Yesterday I signed all the paperwork for it. It's a 2008 Kenworth W900 flat top. I'm excited to show you guys the mess I've gotten myself into. And I'm excited to give you the tour and see what life has in store for me as an owner-operator. This is going to be the third truck that I've owned. Owned or leased together. I had a Freightliner Sentry. There was a Volvo that I leased from the company here for a while. And now this is my W900. This is the truck that I've always wanted. It's my dream truck. I'm very excited about it. It's going to be good. It's going to be really good. It's going to be stressful. It's going to be hectic and crazy. Fuel prices are through the roof, but we're doing all right still. We're doing all right. Our rates here are keeping up with the fuel prices and rising costs of operation. I've talked to owner-operators. I've talked to payroll. I've talked to our dispatch. I've talked to everyone in the office about it. And our owner-ops are still doing good. I'm confident that this is a good decision. I put a lot of thought and energy into this. We're still building our house. Don't worry. That's on track too, but I put a lot of thought into this. A few sleepless nights. And I've talked it through with the wife. And I decided to pull the trigger and go for it and buy it. So that's my decision. Can't go back on it now. Stand by it. And I really do honestly think this is going to be a good thing in the future. Diesel will be coming with me in the truck again starting next month. He'll be with me every day. We're going to be on our regional fleet here, so I'm not too sure what that looks like yet. Not too far from home, but we'll see where the truck takes us. I'm out on the highway again, but we'll be staying close from them because we still have our transfer coming up with our IVF. And all that. I'm going to be home for all of those appointments still. It's going to be fun. I mean, you have four minutes now already. You want to see some trucking. I don't have anything planned right now yet, but I'm going to go in and see what they got. It's snowing. Did I tell you that already? It's snowing. Oh, Manitoba. Why do you hate me so much? That's a pull through here. It's empty by me. I just had to bring a quick load into Winnipeg. This is that spot right there where I have to blindside it in. Not going there right now, but this is still a tight street for me to get through. Don't want to hit that fence. Don't want to hit that curb. Beautiful. Look at me. Wow. Friday before a long weekend. Can't believe I forgot it was a long weekend. It's a long weekend. So that makes this weather almost tolerable. It's awesome. That means that there's... I'm hoping to have my truck by the end of next week. That means I only have four more days of city driving, possibly before I get into the W9. All depends on a lot of things. It might stretch a little longer. I had worked in... agreed on a few things that the sale is... what do you call it? Conditions of sale. The truck's getting safety to fresh safety. It's getting new diff fluid, new transmission fluid. It's getting a new clutch. It's getting a new bumper. A bunch of stuff that's... that the sale is... that's the condition of the sale. So I'm hoping all those parts will be readily available and they'll be able to get that truck fixed up and ready for sale very soon. I know the truck's already been polished because the... a friend of mine knows the guy who polished it already. He told me it's looking good. Southeast Manitoba. Everybody knows everybody through somebody. All goes well. June 1st. We'll be hitting the road sometime around then. I'll be able to take you on the journey of that truck. Man, that's going to be a lot of fun. I've got to get around this corner now. Oh man, I got to turn right. Okay, I'm going to need the whole road to do this too. But I don't know if there's any cars coming here yet. Looks like we're good. Looks like... Ah, there's a guy coming here now. I hope you're not coming this way because I own this road now. Oh, oh, one more guy. One more... Oh, and another one. And another one. Why not? Just bring on the parade. Yep. Okay, I'm going for it. I'm sending it. That wasn't so bad. School zone. Remember, you got to go slow in the school zone. 30 kilometer an hour. That's 15, 20 mile an hour speed limit. And they're pretty strict about it, which I agree with. You know, once my kids are in school, there better not be anybody speeding through their school zone. Chase you down myself. I saw one of your comments in my comment section last week with some constructive criticism. And I said thank you to that. I was actually in the middle of... We were out and eating out. I didn't have a chance to properly thank you for that comment. I just said thank you and I hope you understood that. I do appreciate the constructive criticism. I don't like it when people come on here or come in there and start insulting the way things are done and the way things are going with my channel. Making vlogs every day for over a decade. There are times when they're super exciting for a while and there's times where I struggle to come up with interesting content, but I keep going anyways. That's one thing I've told myself is I'm not going to stop. So what do they call that? Creator block? Creators block? Ever now and then? I think that's going to end now with the new truck. I mean, that's all I keep talking about now because that's sort of all I'm thinking about. Everything is signed now. We just need to... It needs to get through the shop. Get all of its... Get it ready for me. It's getting a fresh safety. So new bumper. I've told you all this already. So we actually have it in our possession that I can give you the tour and tell you more about it. But what I wanted to say about that comment is thank you for the constructive criticism. They were very nice the way they worded it. They weren't trying to insult me. They were just kindly saying, you know, my vlogs used to have more of a storyline and you could tell I probably put more effort into them and lately I've been busy behind the scenes with things and haven't invested 110% into my videos and they were just giving me a little nudge saying, hey, we like watching your videos but we've noticed that you've been slacking. And they put it in a way that was nice and that wasn't insulting and I want to say thank you. I appreciate constructive criticism. Don't be afraid of doing that in my comments section. I'm not the kind of guy that gets easily offended by everything. If you come in all heavy-handed and hot-headed and start insulting me, I may receive that a little differently but new wording is important. A lot of you, most of you are very good with words and you don't want to insult but you want to say, hey, come on, pick it up. We want to watch the old trucker Josh. They want that energy back, right? Come on, let's go, right? And that's okay. We should all be able to receive a little bit of constructive criticism now and then. I mean, if it was every day, it would be a little bit much. Then I'd be like, hey, what can I do to make these people happy? I've gathered a really good audience. You guys are all great people. I don't know who you all are. You guys could be billionaires sitting out there in your mega-yacht right now while I'm sitting here in my little, like, 800-square-foot house. That's okay. I'm happy with this. This is all I need. I'm not judging you, but I'm happy for you. If you're rich and successful, good for you. Good for you. I hope I can be there one day, too. Maybe one day I'll be there, too. Maybe you're a truck driver watching this on the road right now. Maybe you're at home, have nothing to do with trucking, but you're just kind of interested in what the trucking life's all about. You could be in all different corners of the globe right now. I have no idea. I haven't met you guys. You guys know me. I don't know you. I have no idea who I'm talking to. My boss is probably watching this right now. Hi, boss. Or maybe he's not. I don't know. I never really know who's watching, but I do appreciate when people help me along and say, hey, we've noticed this, and we think you could do a little better in this area, but you're doing great, something like that. I wanted to address that comment anyways, because I did read through the whole thing. We were just out for dinner at the time, and I didn't have time to leave a big response to you, but I did appreciate that, and I do want to invest more into my videos. I will do my best, and I'm not going to stop. So there will be more videos coming in the future. I have probably 35 years left of my career yet. Who knows what's going to happen in my career, in my lifetime yet, right? The way the industry is moving. Who knows? This truck I bought now, I might have it for 10, 15 years, and then the next truck I have might be one of those weird electric ones. They might force us into that. I'm hoping not. I don't really see that happening. I'm not really afraid of these self-driving trucks that they got rolling down the street. I think they are an accident and a lawsuit waiting to happen. I don't think they're going to take over the industry. They might take over certain easy routes, point A to point B, but there's no way you can get a robot to back in a truck to a dock way up in Northern Saskatchewan. They don't know in the middle of winter what if the truck gets stuck? Who's going to be there to pull it out? Or what if you get to the customer and you want to unload, this robot drives into your yard in parks, and who's going to take the tarps off? Or who's going to roll back the Conestoga? Who's going to go and talk to the customer and say, hey, I'm here. Get some paperwork signed. And what if the robot parks in the wrong side of the lot? What if they want to unload you on the other side of the lot because this side of the lot is under construction right now. They're paving it or something. They don't want trucks there. They want you on the other side. Who are they going to tell? They're going to walk up to the window and like, hey, Mr. Robot, can you move over like 10 feet? What's it going to do? Beep, beep, beep, beep. It's not going to know what you're talking about. It's not going to happen. And I remember winter roads. As soon as it gets a layer of snow over it, it's not going to know where the lane is. It's going to be all over the place. It's going to hit the ditch. It's going to hit cars. It's going to kill a family. And there's going to be a massive lawsuit. They're not going to. I'm not worried about them. I'm not worried about them. They're going to take over like major roads, point A to point B, probably in the U.S. where they got these big fancy highways. I know they're already on the roads. That's crazy and scary. I don't trust them. But these self-driving trucks, they're not going to take over the industry, guys. They're not going to take over the industry. I'm more worried about the politicians. I'm more worried about what they're doing to the industry. They're like forcing us towards zero emissions, which is good. I'm not saying that's bad. Good save the planet. I'm all for the earth. I like breathing air. But they're pushing us to a point that we don't have infrastructure for yet. You want us to drive all these electric trucks? Okay. How are we going to charge them? Where are we going to charge them? How is the grid going to handle all of that energy? We don't have the grid for it. Our power companies have already come and said that they've come out and said that if everybody got an electric vehicle, just a personal electric vehicle, never mind semi-trucks. If everybody in Manitoba here and everybody across the world got electric cars in like this year or even in the next 15, 20 years, they don't have the grid. They can't power all of those cars. Look at California. A first world country, they have rolling blackouts because their power companies can't keep up with air conditioners. Can you imagine if everybody had an electric car that they're charging to? It can't. They're not ready. I'm all for moving towards that. It's slowly one day. We have a diesel station and a gas station on every corner right now. Until we have an electric charging station in every corner of every city and every point of the continent as well. I don't see that happening anytime soon either. It's electric trucks. They're a good idea, but I can see what Edison Motors is doing out in BC, like a diesel generator power, sort of like a freight train. I can see that. A mixture between electric and diesel power. Where the diesel power just pretty much generates power for the electric motors. It gives you really good torque and gives you reliability and range. I can see that, but I can see where they're pushing us towards it. I'm more afraid of these politicians making laws and policy that's going to destroy the industry because they're trying to move us in a direction that the world isn't ready for yet. We need to get the world ready first and then move into that. I'm rambling now. I'm rambling now. But these are issues that come up in the industry all the time. Are you afraid of your job being taken away by a robot? No. Are you afraid of, you know, the industry changing and moving towards electric trucks? No. I'm not afraid of electric trucks. I mean, I obviously like the diesel trucks way better. But I trust the engineers of the world to make some pretty cool electric trucks, whatever, you don't have electric trucks. Are you afraid of the politicians? Yes. I'm afraid because they're making things happen that shouldn't happen and they're driving up prices of everything and it seems to me. Now, like I said before, I don't know who's watching. I don't know who's watching. They could be watching my video right now. I don't want to insult them. Constructive criticism. Remember, constructive criticism. Say this in a nice way. Let's be careful what policies we push forward because we don't want to bankrupt the transportation industry in the process of trying to make it better. We want to make sure that everybody is kept afloat as we transition to cleaner and cleaner technologies. But we've got a lot of infrastructure to build first. We've got to get our power companies even at least capable of handling that kind of load of power. That's my constructive criticism. I think we should slow it down a little bit. Stop being so ambitious. I get why they're pushing. I get why they're all freaking out. But that's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of government policies coming into effect that destroy the industry because they're trying to move us along in a direction that the world's just not ready to be in yet. Not that we don't want to be there. We want to be over there. It's just we need to build it first. Am I making sense? Am I a good constructive criticizer? I have no idea. I'm kind of blunt sometimes too. So I understand when sometimes people are blunt in my comment section like giving me advice or criticizing me a little bluntly. I sort of smile when I read those. I'm like, yeah, I know I'm kind of blunt too. People think I'm rude sometimes. But I like to say things as it is. It is what it is, right? But I have to remind myself and my wife reminds me sometimes that you got to be tactful. You got to say things nicely. Words matter. You got to say things nicely. It goes a whole lot further if you don't make the person you're talking to feel like you're insulting them. If you make, let them know you're on their side and that you're trying to help them. It just makes the whole world turn a lot easier. Right? Have I babbled long enough yet? Are you still here? Okay. Thanks for watching all the way to the end, my friends. I will see you in my next video. Take care. How about these couches? Huh? I love them. I can't get enough of them. This is my spot. Don't sit here. This is my spot.