 everybody it's another new day it's Thursday how you doing our topic of conversation for you guys in the comments section today is once again related to the shortage of truck drivers now remember what we talked about last week yes there's always been a shortage of truck drivers that's been for decades that's why there's many people who come here from all over the world to drive truck because we need drivers and there's not enough people here not enough Canadians here who want to do the job for some reason I think it's an awesome job and I think you would love it as well just as well as I do but for some reason Millennials around my age want to start at the top at the top bracket of wage they don't want to start at the bottom work their way up so with that attitude it's very hard to get people into the industry because you have to start somewhere and work your way up you can't start at the top but anyways all you hear on the news and media even on like podcasts online they're talking about the shortage of truck drivers nothing's changed there's still a lot of truck drivers out here yeah there are supply chain issues and we're gonna talk about this if you want to go to transportation nation calm and click on their article it's called shortage of truck drivers not to blame for worsening supply chain crisis group argues it was written on October 13th 2021 the author on here is not listed as far as I can see maybe it's listed at the bottom I would like to give credit to who wrote it but transportation nation calm so let's read a little bit from here I'm gonna read a little bit to you and then you can go to their site yourself and give them your traffic and read the rest of the article I just want to discuss the main points they write as a supply chain crisis worsens by the day one trucking group is urging politicians and media not to blame the shortage of truck drivers in a statement in response to the US president addressing the nation's supply chain woes Todd Spencer is a CEO of the owner operator independent drivers Association of the OOIDA said the growing narrative that a shortage of truck drivers is contributing to the problem is false there have been many posts that I've seen online myself that have been going viral lately show that the problem is not with a lack of truck drivers the problem is at the pickup and delivery points at the ports there's truck drivers they're waiting for hours and even days for a load long lineups of truck drivers further down the article says most of what we are seeing is not a surprise to our members who have been plagued with dysfunction in the supply chain for decades and it's not realistic to expect the supply chain will suddenly operate efficiently on a 24-7 schedule when drivers aren't being fully paid for their time he argues drivers are experiencing the domino effects of supply and staffing shortages which are preventing them from complying with federal regulations so what he's saying is drivers get paid by the mile on the road when they're sitting there waiting for a load they're not getting paid so they're sitting there waiting for hours and hours and sometimes days for free to get a load from the ports it's the ports that aren't unloading the ships and loading them onto the trucks fast enough now I'm not an expert in any of this I'm just reading you the news you can go check out the article for yourself but I've been seeing these posts go viral on the internet with hundreds of truckers lined up at the ports waiting for a load and the cranes are just sitting still all day not unloading any of the ships not loading up any of the trucks so I don't know what's going on I'm way up here in Manitoba we're not a port city we don't have a big port here but we do have trains that bring in the containers from the ports as well and if those guys operating the forklifts or those big machines that unload the trains here onto the trucks if they're just not working or if there's an employee shortage on their end well yeah it takes a lot longer for the containers to get unloaded here at the train train stations as well and at the rail yards but at the port cities on the coasts they're having problems unloading the trucks fast enough we shut everything down for for a while right everything was stopped and now to kickstart everything everything's backed up everything's backlog plus you have a shortage of employees unloading trucks it's not entirely a trucker shortage that's causing this supply chain issue like I was saying last week yeah sure there's a there's a truck driver shortage we're all fighting over the same pool of drivers we'd all love you to come work for us but it's not just that the media and politicians in Canada here as well seem to be blaming it purely on a trucker shortage when there's a whole lot of other factors that play as well does that make sense the link to transportation nation is down below the description of every one of my videos at least it should be there for some reason it's not it's easy to find transportation nation comm you can go find the article for yourself it's a very interesting read you know I don't want to get into the into the trap of you know finger pointing oh it's not my fault it's their fault oh it's not their fault it's it's their fault there's a lot of issues at play right now and we are in the middle of a supply chain crisis in some regions like I said Manitoba is not a port city there's always been a shortage of drivers here but I don't think we're feeling the effects as much as the people on the coast the American Trucking Association has long argued trucking is plagued by a labor shortage like I've been telling you of courses labor shortage or there always has been it's not new this isn't a new thing the news is just talking about it all the time now and every time I hear to roll my eyes this isn't new this didn't just start this year or last year this has been going on longer than I've been alive we need truckers that that that's a fact but it shouldn't be blamed for the supply chain issues right now is what I'm saying so the US Senate's recently passed a 1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill that's a lot of money it includes an apprenticeship program which will allow US drivers as young as 18 years of age to operate big rigs cross-country I agree with that I got my big rig class 1 license my CDL when I was 18 because here in Canada where I'm at in Manitoba you can do that at 18 and I make that that makes perfect sense to me when you're 18 you're old enough to be trained in the military to fire a weapon to go off to war and die for your country but you're not old enough to drive a big rig across the highways of your own country but you can go and you know drive tanks on the other side of the world or go to war so I agree with that yeah they should lower the age to because by the time drivers get to or by the time kids get to the age of 21 they've already decided on a career path you know when they get out of high school they go through college by the time they get out of there they're not thinking about trucking they're thinking about something else so we want to grab them as young as possible and I think 18 is a reasonable age as long as they're well trained and responsible now we all know some 18 year olds out there should not be behind the rig behind the wheel of a big rig okay I I hear you there but my argument is if you're old enough to go to war and die for your country you're old enough to drive a truck down the interstates and highways of your own country that's my opinion what do you think let me know down below in the description is 18 too young it's going to be a very messy day here but that's okay I'm looking for a flat roll tight I gotta go to too long I guess what we were gonna pick up yesterday wasn't ready and it's gonna be ready today or something I don't know I'm not in charge of that but I am in charge of getting that freight and bringing it over here there's four drops on it one's going to Utah and three are going into California you want to come drive here that's a route that you could be on you kind of nice to go down there it's a lot warmer there palm trees that's always a bonus I miss palm trees here's a flat roll to go there's one here no that's a step I'm gonna see this one the blue one right here see what's in here see if it's empty 604 604 are you empty take a look taking 604 they unloaded the freight that was in here because this is the only flat roll tight we have in the yard and I need one to pick up into one so the other phrase being moved on to a different trailer that freight didn't need to be on a flat could probably go in a step now I have a nice fancy roll tight for my stuff big thank you to the yard guys you've got this unloaded real quick we go like I said about an hour's drive we traffic is doing all right I've been hearing rumors that there are unmarked patrol vehicles patrolling the highways going around when it's a good thing I can't speed I literally can't speed I'm limited at 99 kilometers an hour I think it's supposed to be a hundred or 101 but it's actually 99 sorry about getting any tickets on the highway at least that's about 60 miles an hour you know you try to raise them right keep them clean I'm gonna just end up getting dirty anyway but at least I only have today's dirt on it and not yesterday's I'll probably give it a wipe down here yeah just to keep up with it as long as you keep up with it it's not that much work to keep it clean just gotta keep wiping it down all the time but you know the weather doesn't really help sometimes but that's part of it you know some people say why would you clean it it's just gonna get dirty again well you clean it now and if it gets dirty and you clean it again that's why I have lots of microfiber towels with me it's not that shiny but it's a little bit a little bit still anything looks better clean so I opened up this roll tight here for them it still rolled like butter this trailer went all the way down to California and back through all kinds of weather into Western Canada and back to the yard and still rolling good the last time I loaded this trailer was a few weeks ago week or two ago and I gave it the bullsnot treatment then used greaseable on those wheels now the old lubricant we used to use used to you know wash away every rainstorm or snowstorm it went through and I have to do it every single time this trailer came back this time it opened up smooth as butter that greaseable still working good so again product does what they say it does if you're wondering what product that is all the bullsnot lineup is at brown ox calm you can find the link to that below this video in the description there's a whole bunch of stuff down there you can scroll down till you see brown ox I think I have it labeled bullsnot and then you can click the link there it'll take you to the site where you can look around the store there and check out all their products they they do work that's all I use so I got a whole pocket full of these microfiber towels in here these are the ones I'm using today this is the one I'm using right now this is one of my dirty ones it's what I used to wipe dirt off the truck with and then I would polish it or clean it with the visible with a clean rag but for now I'm just trying to keep as much dirt off the truck as I can and I know as soon as I get on the highway it's gonna be right back on there but at least it'll be new dirt and not old dirt and I'll do it again when I get to the yard I get a chance there you see this is all there you go you see just needs a little bit of love a little bit of just a little bit dirty we are fighting a pretty strong wind again the wind is coming from the south we're headed the south right now right into it certainly from the southwest over there but it is supposed to get warmer this weekend maybe this wind is carrying some warm weather with it we'll see what happens the last time we drove through here there was a lot more leaves on these trees and it does look like very wintery out here doesn't it like doesn't look like a good snow any day mid-october right now some sometimes it does maybe it will sometimes we have snow on Halloween with a trick or treating in the snow sort of limits you to what kind of costumes you can wear because they got to be warm four pieces in my roll tight behind me not sure when it's leaving the yard but I'm guessing it'll probably be leaving today or tomorrow it's got to be in Utah for Monday for St. George Utah so that's like at the southern end of Utah that I've been through there before and I'm pretty sure that's like a three-day drive or two and a half day drive so what is it Thursday Friday Saturdays I guess they could leave tomorrow morning all depends on the driver when they want to leave a headlight there my friend I don't think they care oh your signals are broken too huh how about that here's a pike coming up here you'll see right in front of us in just a bit 253 foot trailers behind sometimes most times they pull it with the sleeper and they pull it across the prairies that's just a daycap I don't know why he's parked there it's I know they have limited areas of where they can park maybe he broke down there do you see them just parked on the side of the road like that just because they have nowhere else to park it's safe but what else are you gonna do I don't know why he'd need to stop there but often I see them parked on the shoulders by a truck stop running in to get a coffee or by a Timmy's because there's just no way for them to get into the actual truck stop or maybe they need to use the bathroom and what are you gonna do you gonna build every truck stop big enough to fit that big unit in there that's a lot of space you need to turn those around and if you get yourself in a corner there's no backing up you have to go forward so if you get yourself all twisted up in a parking lot mess I don't want to clean up the second trailer get the first trailer out of there unhook it go back to the second trailer hook that up bring it back out out to the open where you can re-hook up to the first trailer I don't even want to think about that sounds like a lot of work everything is messy hop in here now this is what I loaded four pieces of this one two three four I have to see how much trailer space this actually takes up they want to know I guess for their records so they know for the future so my feet are exactly one foot long isn't that convenient they're exactly 12 inches long in my shoes so it's very handy when you want to measure things in feet I just use my feet who knew a foot is a foot long at least my foot you know what they say about guys with big feet right they got big shoes all the space back here yet okay let's see how many feet might heal up against that one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fourteen feet in the back let's try it one more time from here okay from the edge here one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve 13 14 and a bit so 14 feet yeah I always count twice just in case I counted wrong the first time you never know sometimes my counting I'm a truck driver I'm not a mathematician don't look now but there's a real nice Pete behind me I said don't look can't help myself either another rainy drive home both yesterday and today have worked out perfect where I don't have to work in the rain during the day but both days on the way home it rains pretty good so I'm okay with that I get to stay dry the earth needs the rain it's okay not too much though don't go crazy a little bit scared as long as it doesn't turn to snow right I like I was telling you earlier we're expecting some really nice weather this weekend on Saturday and Sunday hopefully we get that my vehicles will stay clean for more than a day more than an hour I should say and I'll stay clean at all in this they look clean right when the vehicle is wet it looks clean you're like yeah nice and then it dries and you're like