 Tony here watching the ups and downs of Trucker Josh Poison Oak and All. Have a good day. Getting our butt into gear to St. Paul, Minnesota. We're just pretty much west of the Minnesota border on I-94 on a quick trip. I spent the night here and now we're going to roll into St. Paul, pick up another piece of freight with a little utility trailer, some kind of security surveillance trailer. Tie that down and then make our way down to Nicolette area, Minnesota, which is just a couple of hours southwest. 8am tomorrow morning to load my last piece. A little icing on my cake. Throw a little bit of extra freight on me. I got room on the trailer and I got space weight-wise. Why not, right? Load me up. So that means we'll load tomorrow morning and be home tomorrow evening. So it'll be Friday evening till Tuesday. I want to get mudflap brackets like this guy has here. See they got the three stop lights and signal lights right integrated into it. Just doing some shopping around right now to find the best price. One of mine is getting a little bent up and doesn't look very nice anymore so I want to fix that. Put something that looks nice on there, you know. I know it's a Volvo and it's nothing to brag about. I mean I drive a giant minivan, I understand. It's not a big old fancy truck that I'll take truck shows, but it does the job. It's a tool. But I still want it to look nice, you know. It's as nice as you can make a Volvo look without it being tacky, you know. It's got to stay classy. Again, as classy as you can get with a Volvo. I want a Kenworth. The next truck is going to be a Kenworth W900. Thanks, Karen. I've already decided whenever I hold the next couple of years I want to get another truck. I'm going to keep this truck and hire someone to drive it for me. And I want to get into a Kenworth W9 and then I want to pay that truck off and get another maybe two trucks. Hire some drivers to drive those for me. That's the plan, but for now we're just trying to get one more truck. That's the goal, so I got to get everything in order and trucks aren't cheap. Tell you what, I would go for used. I'm not going to go for brand new because brand new, they're like... I spend $150,000 on a brand new truck easily. It's $3,000, anywhere between $3,000 to $5,000 a month, payments. So I'll get a lightly used one, maybe a little warranty left on the engine, maybe not. I want all the maintenance records on it, you know. I want to make sure that it's a good truck, there's not a lemon. And yeah, very specific desires though for my next truck. I want a Kenworth W900. The longest wheelbase I'm allowed in Canada currently I believe is 280 inches. Correct me if I'm wrong, my fellow Canadians. It used to be 244 inches from the center of the steer tires, the steer axle to the center of the rear axle. They extended that recently to I think it was 285 or 280 somewhere in there. So I want the longest wheelbase I can legally have in Canada. And I want a studio sleeper, which is an 86 inch sleeper on the truck with the bed that folds up into a couch. I want it to be manual, 18 speed if possible. I mean I settle for a 13 speed, I'm not too picky with that, but I want an 18 speed if I can. But that's not a make it or break it deal if it's got a 13 speed okay as long as it's manual transmission. And yeah, from there on, whether it has chrome on it already or not, all kinds of accessories that's neither here nor there because it's gonna, I want to make that thing shiny. We'll see. I'm hoping that, well really hoping that that less than five years I can have that truck. Between you and me, I hope it's gonna be less than that. I'm not shopping around right now though, so I mean if you're a truck salesman, don't waste your time right now, but maybe keep me in mind for the future. I'll let you know when I'm looking and it doesn't matter how far I gotta go for it. As long as I get a good deal on it. I mean whoever wants to sell me the truck I want for the least amount of money as long as it's a good shape. Sometimes you get what you pay for though, so sometimes, I don't know, you know what I mean. Truck shopping is exciting. I've never actually gone official truck shopping. I bought this truck, it was a fleet truck right now. I bought it to get the ball rolling. I had my freight liner before, I had a little bit of bad luck towards the end of its life with the transmission. So I had to park that one, I went back to being a company driver and got a few things in order and then bought this truck. So that's the story. It's supposed to be a stepping stone to get to the next step. The freight liner was supposed to be that too, but you know back then my life was a little different. I could have used it a little bit better and used my money a little bit better to get up to so that at this point now I might have had three trucks. But you know I was learning, it was my first truck, learning what works and what doesn't and you know, I'm lucky I have my dad who's been an owner-operator most of my life that I can get advice from firsthand. And different things work at different times for different people. I'm not going to give up this time. I want that Kenworth W900. Just crossed the line into Minnesota and they welcome me with an open scale. That's no way to say hello. So this is one of those scales where you drive over the preliminary scale out here. And then it'll tell you whether or not they want to take a closer look at you or not. They're watching you on the cameras and stuff too so if they see anything on your load, if you have like a burnt out headlight or a burnt out tail light or something and they notice it on the cameras they'll pull you in. They don't like the way you tie down your load. These guys always drive over this too slow though. The speed limit is 25 miles an hour over here. A lot of people think that means 25 kilometers an hour. See he's getting pulled in. Watch these lights above us here. Aha! How do you know that Karen? Well you think? Okay so I got the bypass but that guy over there, they want to see. So I don't know, maybe he's really heavy? He only has a single axle on his truck so maybe he's got too much weight? Karen, it's too early for all this talking. You'll learn I don't like talking lots in the morning. And that's that, that was the way scale. I rarely ever get pulled into this one here. The 31 kilometers are about 20 miles to where we're picking up this little trailer. It should be pretty easy to tie down, I'm guessing two chains. There you go. So I'm here at the dock. They're going to be loading me up with a little trailer at the back. One of these things. It's like a mobile video surveillance trailer. Look at this thing. Just this little trailer here worth $65,000. Isn't that crazy? US dollars. I don't know if it's like, I think these are all the same here right? I mean like it all folds down and they'll put it on the back of my trailer there but better be careful with it. There we go. The only weighs about 2,500 pounds. It's not that heavy. Let's do it. Got one more pickup before we can go home. Honestly I would have liked to have used chains on that little thing at the back but like I said it's only 2,500 pounds and both those straps are good for 5,400 pounds. Got strap protectors on it all and they said here they want absolutely no chains on their equipment because it damages it and these trailers aren't like the trailer I'm hauling. A little guy isn't designed for chains. There's no hooks for chains anywhere. You'd have to wrap it like right over it or around it, right over the paint with the chain, right? So I checked into it and everything checked out and that's what they want me to do and that's what I'm supposed to do so not worried about it, it'll hold. I would just I don't have chains on it. I thought I put it in such a way that I'm not worried about it. It's just a preference. I like to go big or go home. I like to over secure. It is already way over secured. Don't get me wrong but you know what I mean. We're going to go down to Mankato or Mankato. I think that's what it's called. Mankato, Minnesota. They got a quick trip truck stop there. Now we're going to stay the night there and the afternoon and evening there for a bit. Apparently it's a really nice truck stop. Not too much parking though. So we don't want to take our time too much getting there. We got to make sure we get a spot. It fills up quickly in the evening, I'm sure. This is Mankato or Mankato. Mankato, I think. Mankato, Minnesota. Just a little ways. Oh no, no, no. This is St. Peter's, Minnesota. Mankato is coming. That's right. The speed limit reduced ahead. Thanks Karen. One thing I like about her is that she, I can connect her directly to my, I can tether her to my phone internet, right? So she gets regular updates. She knows where all the speed limit zones are. She'll warn me when there's a speed zone coming up like this. I mean don't trust that 100% all the time but it is really handy to have that. Well it's supposed to be downtown St. Peter's. That's a yellow light. That's a yellow light. Okay. Easy. This looks like a typical small town in America. I love these main streets of all the small towns. You know, it's sort of like they haven't changed in a couple of centuries. Unlike the big cities, you know, where they keep knocking everything down and building new stuff on top of it all the time. It's kind of nice to see these small communities still, you know, surviving and thriving too. It's easier for them to survive and thrive here in the US because there's so many people everywhere, you know. Everything's developed from, you know, border to border from ocean to ocean for the most part, you know. You can go into some wilderness areas in the US but start walking in any random direction. Eventually you'll hit civilization. It's all mainly developed. Either for agriculture, you know, West has been developed into cattle ranches and stuff. You know, you get dropped in the middle of the forest up there. You know, if you start walking in the wrong direction, you'll never see civilization again. You'll end up at the North Pole. You might eventually find some civilization up there but chances are, if you walk in the wrong direction, you're never going to see people again. You'll die before you find something. It's not so much the case here, especially in like this area, like Minnesota. There's a lot of forested areas up in northern Minnesota but, you know, pick a direction, any direction and walk less than a day, you'll find something. With that being said, that's what I mean. These small towns, they've got so many people all around them. Whereas in Canada, the small towns, the further north you go, the less people there are to buy the products and all the businesses, right? So the towns don't always grow and thrive like they do here. Look at these flags. What's this? The War Memorial, I guess? Yeah? Yeah, City of St. Peter. With that sign set. Beautiful little town. Very well kept. Very, very nice. Any of you from around here? I know I've got a lot of subscribers from Minnesota. So we're continuing this a little bit the next day until we go and get to our next customer, at least. Checking all the freight that is still here. I've already checked all the chains and I'm just walking around again for your benefit. So here's this new trailer. I've added some more securement onto here. Like I said, I like to go overboard. I've tongue-wrapped the tongue here. Right, tongue-wrapped the tongue. What it does is the strap goes around the tongue and I pull it tight here and I also pull it tight here. So what that does is it, first off, holds this thing down. But most of all, it holds it from moving this way or that way. This thing is stuck right here now. And then I put this one over here as tight as I could, just as an extra precaution, again, to make sure that this doesn't vibrate or bounce and that it stays firmly on the donage here. And then I've got another strap in there with strap protection holding the whole unit from moving back. And I've got another one on the back there holding the unit from moving this way as well. Now, like I said before, yesterday for me, I wanted to use chains on this, but they said absolutely not. Absolutely not. And I called in and I checked out and checked everything out and they said, yep, this is the way to do it. So that's the way I did it. But I did add these on here now because now I know for sure that that tongue is not going to move around whatsoever. It's going to stay planted right there. So I've got to end it here. I've got to go pick up my last piece. It's going to go up here on the step. It's a few pallets of some kind of aluminum, I think, for boats. You'll find out. I'm just like 15 minutes down the road and it will pick it up right away. I'm going to include that in tomorrow's vlog. I've got to end today's vlog somewhere. So I've got a pretty good load. It's actually three loads in one, three LTL, which means less than truck load, which in the end, if you can get a full load like this, you actually make more money than if it was just one full load. I'm okay with that. So we'll see you later, everybody. See you in tomorrow's video. It'll start right here. So don't forget to tune in, subscribe, like, and share my videos. It helps me out a whole lot because YouTube doesn't always recommend my videos as much as they used to. I'm not hit as hard as people doing commentary on real-world events, but the YouTube algorithms, they keep changing. And the best way for my videos to get out there to new people in front of new eyes is if you share. So if you do share it, I really do appreciate it. Thanks and I'll see you tomorrow. Say bye, Diesel. You are not. You are not doing what I think you were doing in the background there, bombing me. I'm gonna have to cut that out now. I'm sorry. Don't feel bad, Diesel, as now. So you gotta have a bath sometime. You didn't do anything wrong. It's okay. Come here. Come here. No, don't come here and look me right now. Never mind. Bad idea. It's okay. Just don't worry about it. Hi, I am Eric. I'm from a northern small town called Luleå in Sweden. And you're watching Trucker Josh vlogs on YouTube.