 Hi, this is Debbie from Socan. You're watching Trucker Josh with his friend Diesel. Enjoy the show! Good morning from a familiar sight. The shop. How you guys doing? I'm gonna find a place for these when I get back later. I'm gonna leave these right here front and center so I don't forget. Got this calendar from the guy with the Kenworth cab over. You guys all remember him right from the truck show at Truck World. I'm gonna hang this up. There it is right there. Beautiful, beautiful truck and I also am keeping safe in this calendar a very special picture that someone drew for me. Brought all the way to Truck World to give to me. Cool as that. His name is Dayton. Sorry, I think he is from Drayton. His name is Joel. Sorry, Joel got your name mixed up with your town name there for half a second. Don't worry. We figured it out. His name is Joel. He's from Drayton, Ontario. And he says, hey Josh, I hope you like this. Does it look like your truck? Because it's supposed to. It sure does. It actually looks better than my truck. Look at that hood. Nice long classic Peterbilt hood. It's even got my unit number up at the top there. That is awesome. That's going up on the wall here. It's got a flatbed trailer behind him. I'm gonna find a perfect spot on the wall here somewhere, maybe front and center. So that every day when I come to my shop, I can see it and then you'll see it in my vlogs too in the background, but It'll be right there probably. We're gonna decide after work today. I've got to get going because I got to get trucking, but it's gonna be right in here in this calendar so it's safe. Put that right there. Grab these gloves. I'm off to work. It's back to trucking. We had lots of fun in the truck world, but you know, real life always has to come back around. We have to get back to work. I'm gonna be a van hauler today. We're looking for van trailer 5058. We're gonna pull it down to Thief River Falls USA. It is full in the yard here. I hope I'm not gonna have to dig it out from behind all these trailers. Yikes, what's going on here? 5058. Man, there's just trailers everywhere. 5058. Please don't be in the back corner there. Please don't be in the back corner. Okay, good. I don't have to dig it out. I don't have to move one trailer, but 5058. Do you guys see 5058 anywhere? 5051. That's not even one of ours. Someone else's. 50, here's 5058 right here. We're off officially back on the road after truck world. Well, it's straight to America. Crossed down at Pembina, North Dakota. I'm already cleared to cross there. So they're expecting me. Thief River Falls. They're not sure if they're gonna live offload me. There's a chance that they'll, what that means is they'll unload me when I'm there. When truck drivers say that they're gonna live, get live unloaded or live loaded, that means they're gonna load me while I'm hooked up to the trailer right there and then. If that's not a possibility today, I'm gonna drop this trailer there in Bobtailback. That's the plan. I don't make the plan. I just execute the plan. That's my job. That's our job as truck drivers, right? We get a plan given to us. We execute the plan professionally, flawlessly, and with style. At least we try to, right? Execute it with pride. Do your job with pride. This is Highway 59 South. I got to find a way to get over to Highway 75. I'm pretty sure our spring road restrictions are still in effect. So I can't take the 210 or whatever this road is here, 206. Whatever that road is there, that goes to Santa Dolph. That is restricted. I'm loaded. I'm pretty sure I'd still be legal because it's 90% restriction, and I'm not very heavy. I've only got about like 10,000 pounds in the box. So I'd probably be legal, but you know, I'm gonna try to avoid getting pulled over and like the mobile scales and stuff just to get let go. Whatever. Avoid that. I'm gonna go down to Highway 23 South of St. Pierre, Jolli. That road doesn't have any restrictions in spring. That'll take me through to Morris, Manitoba on the 75. From Morris, we'll stop at Timmy's. Actually, no. We'll wait for on the way back. I have a coffee here. I forgot. I brought my coffee from home. We're gonna save our money and drive past Timmy's down into the United States of America. And we're gonna go up to the window and promise to be very, very good. I usually don't have a problem crossing there. I cross there often enough that they know me. And plus all of my information pops up on their screen when I get to the window. So before I even get to the window, they already know who I am and what I'm doing, where I'm going. But they're gonna ask me those questions just to corroborate. It's good to be back trucking. I tell you what. This is what makes me most happy. Trucking right here. At Truck World, there's a lot of suits. Suits walking everywhere. You know what? That's good. That's awesome. We need suits to keep things running and stuff in the office, right? But I'm definitely not a suit. I'm a blue collar, boy. I like being out here working, getting my hands dirty, driving, burning diesel fuel. Here in the hum of the tires. That's where I'm happy. The lineup is all the way back here. All the way up there around there. You see that? I guess the fisheye lens sort of distorts everything. US border and customs is way out there. Probably about a mile up. Close to a mile up, yeah. And we've got a long lineup of trucks here. There must be a little bit of a back up there. Maybe I came in the middle of a rush, or maybe sometimes when they're on shift change at the border, they'll shut down everything while the customs border agents change shifts and stuff. And they do it pretty quick. It's not like they take forever. They do it pretty quick. But sometimes in that short amount of time that it takes to switch them out and bring on the next shift, there's a long back up. Long lineup right away. A lot of freight moving back and forth between Canada and the United States. Billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars. The United States is definitely our largest trading partner. Well, because they're right here. And also we're very close. Canada and the US are like BFFs for life. Best friends forever. We're actually not best friends. We're actually brothers and sisters. Or brother nations. Two brothers from the same mother. The only difference is for those of you not from North America. The only difference, political, there's a lot of differences that are small, right? But the two biggest differences between Canada and the United States is the United States gained their independence and fought for their independence in 1775. In Canada, we stayed loyal to the Crown of England, which is what we're called the loyalists. So the Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II, is our Queen here in Canada. She is Queen of Canada, sovereign of the nation, head of state. And in the US, just over there, their president is the head of state. They don't have a monarch. They have a constitutional republic. Up here in Canada, we have a constitutional monarchy. So we each have our own constitution. They're both very similar. The only big difference between the two is that the United States has the right to bear arms. Whereas in Canada, that's not enshrined into our constitution, unfortunately. So that's the only big difference in our constitution. We still both have freedom of assembly, freedom of speech built into our constitution. Whether or not the government on both sides of the border adheres to that all the time. That's another story for another vlog channel. Not here, but it is in our constitution. In Canada, we have our own, US has their own. You hear about it a lot in the US because they're very proud and protect their constitution very, very diligently. Same thing up here, we just, you just don't hear from us, mind. We're like the quiet neighbor. Like the quiet brother. You know, we're the quiet brother in the US next door. He's the loud brother. You know, everybody knows him. He's the popular guy. He's the school jock, like the football player. You know, he's got big muscles and everybody likes him. Whenever he walks into a room, everybody goes, ooh, America's here. And then we walk in right beside them and they're like, who's that? Oh, there's his little brother. That's nice. America! We're very close. Our militaries are very intertwined. We have combined defense across North America and our Air Force and all other military. Last week, we had military vehicles and troops on our soil in New Brunswick, I believe, training with us, so they come here all the time, train with us. We go there, train with them, and we work sort of as a single unit. Two separate countries, but we work very closely together. Okay, an attack on one is an attack on the other. Sort of like, you know, it's like NATO. Sort of, but this, we're very close. Yes. That's what I'm trying to say. That is going to be a long wait, I think. Ah, bye. Ah, bye. The good people let us in. Here's the sign as evidence. North Dakota. Be legendary. Remember that. I always remind you. If you come to North Dakota, that's the one thing they ask. Be legendary. It's on their sign. Minnesota is right there. Oh yeah, it's out of those trees. That's a river right there. That's the Red River. I'm going to go into Pembina here and go over the Red River into Minnesota, and we're going to head down to Thief River Falls, Minnesota. The port of entry that I have to go through is just on the North Dakota side. That's why we're here. North Dakota is a beautiful state, though. It really is. I bug them about their slogan, be legendary, but you know, it may look boring and flat here on the west side of the state, but you go to the east side and start getting into those hills. It's beautiful. Beautiful. It's a beautiful state. Anyone living here should be proud to be from North Dakota. Okay, and I understand the rest of the states always forget that you exist. I understand because I'm from Manitoba, where I'm from, all of the rest of the provinces in Canada forget that we exist, too. But you and I, Manitoba and North Dakota, we both know each other exist. We got each other's backs. Flyover states unite. Right? We got you. People may not want to come here touring all the time, but that's okay with us, right? That's okay. We like the peace and quiet. We like the open space. Just a bunch of peaceful farmers and truckers leave us alone. We'll leave you alone. Right? Make sure you come to a complete stop. I promised I'd be good. I'm actually going to pull in the gas tracks here real quick. I'm going to use their facilities here for a second. I'm going to go right down that way around town and down Old Highway 75. But first, it's the first truck stop into the United States from Manitoba, and they get quite a bit of business here. It's usually quite busy. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, potholes. That's okay. I forgive you because Winnipeg's potholes are worse. Believe me. I just about got thrown into another dimension driving through Winnipeg on the way back from the airport the other day. Couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it. The state of the roads in Winnipeg right now are... There's no words to describe them. You have to bring a helmet, okay? So I've dropped off my trailer in Thief River Falls, and I'm on my way back, Bob. No trailer behind me. And I finally got the opportunity now to stop in Carlstead, Minnesota. I want to check out these mattress tracks or whatever these track systems that they make here. Remember I always talk about them when we go through here? I make them here. And I want to go and take a look at them. Remember they had that smart car with tracks parked on the side of the road? This is where we're at now. They don't got the smart... Oh, it is there still. Yes. It's awesome. Okay, look at this thing. So this is what they make here. Mattress. I guess they work on any vehicle, right? Even smart cars. Look at this. I want a smart car? No problem. Mattress got you covered. Who needs a snowmobile? Take this thing to work and then take it into the bush right after. Can you go down the highway with these things, I wonder? It's plated. It means it's registered and licensed, right? Is that legal to take it down the highway with the tracks? I wonder, right? You can get the tracks for these side-by-sides too. This is a Kanan. This is a Canadian brand made in Quebec from Bombardier. But those mattresses are all American made. Correct me if I'm wrong. I believe Kanan is Canadian, right? I might be wrong on that, but I'm pretty sure that's Quebec. And then you got a Hummer H1 here. I wonder why the tracks on the bottom come out so far like that. I guess just to go underneath the body, right? That would make sense, yeah. Look at that thing. I wonder how much they want for this? Think it's for sale? $5. It's probably worth a lot more than that. I'm just joking. That's a real H1 Hummer. This thing's worth probably $100,000. Super cool, eh? We're just over the border back into Canada now. And remember how I said it was all Ukrainian settlements as soon as you get over the Canadian border? We're into the first Canadian town, the border town, inside Canada. And this is Tolstoy. And right here is the Tolstoy Ukrainian national home. And you can see on the flag pole up ahead there, there's a Ukrainian flag. The wind has got it all twisted up on the pole there. And over here, the general store, it's got a Ukrainian flag flying up there. Canada flag down below on the bottom right. This is all Ukrainian settlement. So here, the next town up and pretty much all the way up Highway 59 here is all Ukrainian settlement until you get up to, say, Malo where it then turns into French settlements. And you go through the French settlements and you get to Hanover municipality which is where I hail from. The Germans and the Dutch. Together we have built a great land right between the rivers because the French settled along the rivers, right, in the inland part where Steinbeck is and Lakeler, that was the Mennonite reserve, the East reserve that was reserved for us for our exclusive use by the Crown. And later on they took that away from us, but that's a story for a different time. That's a different part of history, we'll talk about it another time. But Steinbeck was the East reserve for the Mennonites and the Germans and Dutch Mennonites, right? And then you come down here, you get our Ukrainian friends. So Manitoba has a deep connection to Ukraine. This is just one of many, this is a small town but Canada, especially Manitoba here, has the largest population of Ukrainians outside of Ukraine. And since the whole conflict out there has started and since the war has started out there and their country got invaded many millions of them have fled as refugees and many many of them have come here to Canada and many have landed at our airport in Winnipeg and when I was traveling to Toronto there was a big sign there with the Ukrainian flag in our airport and said welcome Ukrainians. So personally, here right now I want to welcome Ukrainians here to Manitoba in Canada. If you're here in Manitoba and you've been fleeing the war in your home country first of all, I'm glad you're safe. And I hope all of your loved ones made it out as well and if you have any loved ones back there fighting we pray for them and hope the best for them every day and we hope for victory. But I welcome you here to Canada. There are many of your fellow Ukrainians here already and we're blessed to have you here with us. So enjoy your stay here and have some Tim Hortons. Enjoy the full Canadian experience. Go see a hockey game and go play in the snow because we still have snow and it's April. I'm sure you're itching to get back home and rebuild as soon as you can. So until that day comes, enjoy your stay. I can't imagine having bombs falling down in your home region. Like living here in town I look outside of like, can you imagine just one day you're just living your life and then the next day is like... Everything's blowing up all around you and you have enemy tanks coming into your town and like firing indiscriminately, blowing up apartment buildings, blowing up houses. You got soldiers coming up to your house here stealing your TV and for some reason they're stealing people's washing machines and stuff and just tying people up and shooting them and can you imagine? So I feel for them. And so if they end up here at our airport, absolutely, I welcome them into our community. I hope they have a nice stay and I know that they're going to want to head back when this is all over and rebuild. So enjoy your stay. Have a cup of Tim Hortons. Don't forget. Okay, go see a Winnipeg Jets game if you're able to. At the very least, I hope you find comfort here because you're safe, you're safe here. This is a very safe area of the world. That's why we're here. Thanks for tagging along with me today, everybody. Tomorrow's another day of truck and I hope you join me. 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