 That's good. Good news. I'm in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, South Central Manitoba. I gotta go pick up a load that I'm taking up into Northern Manitoba next week. So we'll pick it up now, go home for a weekend, and then head up there. I've never gone that far north before. I'm pretty excited. I know we'll be okay, but it'll be something new. That's for sure. Gotta go explore my own home territory a little further. We don't go north that much. Well, we do. I mean, we have a lot of freight that moves north, but I don't always get the opportunity to go up there. I'd rather go south myself. Every once in a while, it's nice to go check up on, you know, what's going on. It's gonna be past Thompson in Manitoba, and I've never even been up to Thompson. The furthest north I've been in Manitoba is Grand Rapids, I think. We'll talk about that in the coming days. Let's go get our freight first. Bucking myself in so I don't fall out. Truck is all ready to go. Lights are on. Nice clean Peterbilt. Let's go. It's just in town here where I gotta pick up. It's not very far away at all. And I have a van trailer behind me. If you guys didn't watch yesterday's video. Pull in a box. It's not very often that I do this anymore, but it's a nice little treat every now and then, you know, a little bit of easy freight to move. Just open the doors, throw it in, close the doors, and we're done. It is a slow lane right away. This year at this time, we had a ton of snow on the ground already. And people were all, this year we have no snow on here. We have a little bit of a warmer fall and people are, the same people are telling us it's the end of the world. But I don't know. I'm just enjoying the day. If it's the end of the world, at least I'll go out enjoying it. It's always best to go out doing what you love, right? There's my door over there. There's my truck over there. I'll see if I still got the skills of backing into a dock. I'm gonna put you down right here. This is okay. I get one excuse. I didn't want to drive on their grass. Possible excuse. My other, if I was allowed to, I'd say, well I don't drive vans anymore and I haven't actually backed into a dock in a few months. I'll have to pull forward a few more times than I wanted to but that's okay. At least we don't have to strap or chain anything down, right? Besides in the trailer, you just got to sort of tie it into the front so that doesn't fly back. I was gonna have my coffee ready when I got here. I had my kettle going but I forgot to turn it on. My hot water. This thing works really well. I'm showing it to you. It's really happy with it. It makes a nice medium cup of coffee or a large cup of coffee, depending on what your sizes are in your mind. It's just now while I have that heating up, I got to leave my engine running for a little bit so that doesn't kill the battery. I don't think it would kill the battery, honestly, unless you leave it on for hours and hours and hours. But it says on the packaging, make sure your motor's running when you use it. Is it really necessary? I don't know. It takes about 15 minutes for it to get hot and it takes about a half hour for it to start boiling. It says on the package that it takes an hour to boil, but it didn't take that long for me. And I bought it at Flying J. It's not the biggest one, like I said. It makes a good cup of coffee and then makes a bowl of soup. It's nice to have hot water. Apparently I'm early. I thought I was a little late. I had to wait for my e-log to let me move from the truck stop to here, right? So I got here at 10.30. I was like, oh shoot, they probably wanted me here at like 8.39 o'clock. I rolled in here. I'm ready to apologize and explain. The law is the law. I really wish I could get around the e-log, but sometimes it just holds us up a little bit. Not a big deal, right? But no, I got here. They're like, oh, you're early. Oh, yes. Yes, absolutely. I'm the early one. Always early. Earlier on time, never late. Uh-huh. We only had you booked in at 1 p.m. Really? So I'm thinking in my head, so I could have slept longer is what you're saying. But they're gonna get me loaded here right away. Oh, I got itchy nose. Which one of you is thinking about me? They're gonna get me loaded here in about a half hour. They said they're gonna get started in about a half hour and then they have to hand bomb the freight in. I think it's like mattresses and bedding supplies. It's going up north to a reserve up there. So we'll see how long it takes. Shouldn't be here too long, I guess. But I got all day. But every every minute I do spend here is one less minute I spend at home. And today is my weekend, really, because Friday, Saturday is my weekend. Sunday, I'm back to work. And I've got to miss a family gathering on Sunday. I feel real bad about that. I just assumed like it was on October 23rd, right? And I just thought, you know, family events would be on Saturdays. So I'm like, oh, it must be a Saturday. I didn't even look at the calendar. And so I went to work. And I said, hey, I'm available on Sunday. I'd like to get an early start on next week. If you have anything for me, keep me in mind. What do you know? A little while later, the phone rang up said, hey, we've got a van load that we need pulled up north. Are you you want to do that on Sunday? Get an early start on the week? Sure. I can go get loaded Friday, have half a day off on Friday. So I get a day and a half weekend. That's not bad. Good deal, right? Good deal. I forgot to look at the calendar. October 23rd, when our family gathering is an extended family gathering on my mom's side. It's on a Sunday, Sunday. And now I've already committed to work. And we need the money too. I mean, we got some debt to clear up. We got a baby on the way. Christmas is coming. And we got a host to build. So I need to work. But I got to miss the gathering now. I committed myself to work. They, we already told the customers that I'd be here today and then I'll deliver Monday up north. And I can't just go and like tell them, oh, sorry, sorry. Actually, just kidding. I can't move your freight. Sorry. That's a terrible business practice. I can't do that. This is one of our good customers too. So go take care of them. So off we go. I got to miss this gathering. I'll be at the next one. But if I had a say in it, I'd say we should do it on a Saturday next time. Where is me? We have a big family. So my voice is very small. We have a lot of a lot of people that it needs to work for. So I guess Sunday just worked better for the majority of people. We'll see. I'll throw my two cents in there. Can we do it on Saturday next time? With my luck, if we do it on a Saturday, then I won't be home on Saturday either, right? Because sometimes I work late. If I, if I'm not, if I can't get back Friday, sometimes I work into Saturday. So Sunday is usually a safe bet that I'll be home. So actually Sunday is the best day to do those things, I guess. What do I know? I feel bad and I'm babbling about it. I double booked myself. Heat up. I want my coffee. Can you see it heating there? Can you see all those heat waves in there? Is it picking it up on the video? You see it? I don't know if it's focusing or not. Why didn't I turn you on before? I could have been drinking my coffee now. Green light means we're ready to go. These tarps are like your children to a fly better. You got to take them everywhere with you. You can't leave them alone or they get kidnapped. It'd be terrible. So we're gonna drop this trailer in the yard. Leave with it on Sunday. I promised to all blew a bath this weekend, so I've got to be a man of my word. I have to give it a bath. Otherwise, it won't trust me next time I promise anything, you know? It took an hour and a half since I got here. So that's not bad at all. And they only had me booked in at 1 p.m. It's just after noon right now. So I technically got loaded an hour before or I'm leaving loaded an hour before I was even supposed to be here apparently. That's a good day, shall we? Like real good care of this freight. Somebody way up north needs it. We're gonna bring it to him. So that's what truckers do. We bring you your stuff. Okay, should I be nice? Should I? Yeah, I'm gonna be nice. I'm always too nice. I hate how nice I am. I'm gonna wait. It wasn't so bad, right? Being nice isn't so bad. I just know I'm gonna be slower than them. I'll let them get in front of me. And there's a train up ahead anyway, so I would have to wait at the train anyway. Or from our yard where I'm gonna drop this trailer. It's in a nice secure yard then. I'll be home before supper. Excited to go home too, Old Blue. I'm excited too. Friday. Yep. Well, actually those are the sounds of any day that ends in Y. Those are my favorite days. Another week done. You did good. I'm gonna be getting you a service very soon. What do you think about that? Oh, you like that? Yeah. I'm gonna get you some fresh oil. Yeah. Get you some new filters. Uh-huh. Thanks for taking care of me this week. I'm happy that I've been able to build a trusting relationship with Old Blue. You know, I bought it used. And right now it has 3.0 2.9 million kilometers on it. Almost 3 million. So it's probably about 1.9. No, over 1.9 million miles. Because once we hit 3 million kilometers, that's 2 million miles. Still doing good. I was a little nervous at first. You know, you buy a used truck. Very often when you buy used things, whether it be a used house, a used vehicle, or anything else that's been used, very often what that means is that you're buying someone else's headache. But in this case, the old owner wanted to be in a different line of work. Well, still trucking, but home on a more regular basis. Sort of like I wanted to be for this past year. Right? Once COVID hit, I had to be home every night. It was, we didn't know what was going on and the world was going crazy and just came to the point where I needed to be home every day. And that was my reason for it. The old owner of this has other reasons for it. He has a young family from what I could see as well. Probably wanted to spend some extra time with them and I don't blame him at all. It's not easy being on the road. That's one thing, one piece of advice I can always give new drivers. I make it look fun in my videos. So does every other trucker on YouTube. There's so many good trucking channels out there. We make it look fun, right? We don't always include the hard days and the hard parts and the mentally hard parts of the job. It can get depressing. It came in very hard being away from family and this job is not for everybody. It works out for me and for my wife. And in our marriage, it works out. My dad drives at the same company actually as me. My father-in-law also drives at the same company. So both sides of the family were all truckers. We get it. My wife grew up with her dad being on the road and she knew what the life is all about when she signed up for it. So it was a little bit easier for our marriage to thrive with me being on the road, which I'm so thankful for. Not every marriage can handle it and not every person can handle it. But I encourage all of you who want to try it, try it. I can't promise it's going to work for you or your family, but give it a shot. I love it. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing in this world than driving this truck right here down the highways every day, bringing you your stuff that you need. I love my family. I love my wife. Our baby's on the way. I love them already. And I also love this truck and I'm trying to find a good work, life balance. But unfortunately, when you're a trucker, the work life balance is always kind of skewed in favor of work. You always got to be working more than you're at home. But if you want to try, give it a shot. Because, you know, I found a good truck. I found a good partner to work with here. She was taking, or he or she, it was taking, the previous owners took really good care of it. This truck has never sat outside. Every owner that's had it since it rolled off the lot has parked it indoors, just like me. And that does amazing things for a truck, especially in our climate. You park a truck outside in wintertime here in Manitoba. It's not going to last half as long. Seriously, it's not going to last half as long. Just parking it inside here will extend the life of the truck. Oh, maybe a decade. Like I said, since pushing 3 million kilometers, 2 million miles, I'm going to get it to 5 million kilometers and 3 million miles and then make a decision. We'll probably keep going. That's what I'm thinking right now. We'll probably keep going. But at that point, that's the goal right now. And if we make it to there and we're still feeling good, we're still doing good. We'll bump it up to like 8 million miles, 5 million miles. We'll see. Just got to take really good care of her when she needs help. Get her the help she needs right away before it turns into something big. We may have to rebuild the engine again. This engine was rebuilt about three years ago, I think. Just keep on keeping on. Keep on trucking. Time for me to go home now, though. You have a good weekend there, boy. Oh, my. Oh, another one in there. Who's that? Sunny. Hey guys. Hey, kids. Hey, kids. Hey, guys. Yes, I missed you too. I missed you too. Can you sit? Can you sit? Sit. Hey, Sunny. It's sad to step on the dog, Sunny. Hey, buddy. That's my. That's my brother-in-law