#3586 | SMOKEY GREEN BAY | My Trucking Life

Good morning everybody. We're in a town or near a town called Dora, Wisconsin. D O V R E. Stopped at a rest area here. This is where we spent the night. We've got to get going though. The sky is smoky from the fires up in Canada. Not as bad here as it was last night in Duth, though. So hopefully it'll clear up. Hopefully we uh can enjoy a summer without smoke. Heat. Heat. Here's my load. Nice and clean under the tarps. Let's go get this off my trailer. It's about 3 and 1/2 hours where I have to unload. So, I just got a hold of the receiver to confirm my delivery appointment. We are bang on schedule. Get unloaded once we get there. Zip our way on down to Indiana's Indiana. Well, just barely Indian into Indiana. I got to go to northern Indiana town called Bristol. I got to pick up some utility trailers there. I got to test out some of my new equipment and straps that I bought recently. for that specific load. Pick those up tomorrow morning, start heading home. It'll be about a day and a half to get home. So, it'll be Friday, Saturday afternoon that I'll get home and then I have to deliver that Monday morning. So, it'll be a short weekend at home. But after next week, I have a week of holidays scheduled. So, there is a silver lining. Holidays are on the way. Our plans are to do a station. I've explained this already, right? Those of you who've been watching a little while, a station, it's mostly just family time at home. Just family, me, Brit, boys, Chevy. Going to do some family activities. Go to Tinker Town in Winnipeg. It's like a kids amusement park. I don't know what we'll all get up to, but I know it'll involve us being together. Look at this smoke out here. You see that? Is the camera picking that up? It's getting thick up ahead here again. What's going on? Well, I know what's going on, but come on. Right. I keep forgetting I have armrests on this new chair. There we go. Oh, there we go. Oh, I love this chair so much. Oh, the Boston Wide Ride and the Serta in there. It's like riding on a cloud. My back is straight. It's like arched properly or like positioned properly. Got proper lumbar support. Nice and smooth over the bumps and squishy on the butt. It's like sitting on a heavenly cloud. Sitting on cloud nine. You know what I mean? Wonder how far down south the smoke goes. Like I'm going past Chicago later today. I hope it's clearer there. We're here in Green Bay and boy is it smokier here. Even worse than it was before. I look at that. Huh? That's not fog. It's hurting my lungs. We've got to unload here right away, though, and then head south. And hopefully hopefully the air will clear up as we get past Chicago. >> In 200 m, turn right onto the Wisconsin 54 and then turn right. Now, turn right and then turn right onto Hinkle Street. I've got to roll up my tarps in this. Better than the cold, don't get me wrong, but in 500 meters, turn right onto Hinkle Street and then turn right. >> Hankle Street. This guy's mowing the sidewalk. We got to get onto that road just to our right going the opposite direction. Turn right here and then right again. >> Now turn right and then turn right onto West Mason Street. That's what I said. Nice to see you've been listening. Right. Is that here? That's right here. Yep. >> In 100 meters, turn right onto West Mason Street. >> Right here. This is a tight corner. >> Turn right. >> I'm not going to be able to turn until that pickup truck moves. I'm going to need this whole road. Oh, shoot. Now I might have to wait for him to uh Oh man. I'm going to try to button hook it here once this pickup gets past me. 700 m turn left onto Star Court. That was a tight corner. We made it though. up around here. We were just on that road over there. And apparently I'm supposed to just like park out on the street and take my tarps off there. Apparently it's they say that's what they always do. It's like a culde-sac so it won't be very busy. There won't be any through traffic or anything. All right, here we are. I am 1 minute early. That's pretty good. I told them I'd be here at 1:30. It's 1:29. They said just park out on the street here and uh take your tarps off here and then go in that gate once I'm ready. I'm going to give him a call though just to let them know I'm here. We made it. That feels good. I mean, I like to be 15 minutes early, but even if I'm like, it's 1:30 now. Bang on when I said I would be here. Like that was a not a rough estimate, but an educated guess about approximately when I'd be here. And I was like I said 130. I just gained a few confidence points in my my time estimation abilities. I'm not always I'm not always that bang on. It's usually off by a little bit. Oh well. Okay. Okay. Well, anyways, I'm going to get out there, take my tarps off, get them ready as fast as I can so I can get out of this smoky town and run further away from the fires that are burning in Ontario right now. That sucks. All right, everybody. Just going to grab those bungees off my trailer there. We are empty. The smoke is still filling the skies and I'm heading to Bristol. It's about 6 hours from here. I stayed here for a little bit already. Trying to take a little bit of a breather here. I'm trying to avoid as much Chicago rush hour as I possibly can. Just going to put these on here just in case. Oops. Put these on here just in case I need these. That's that. So, let's get going to Indiana. Heat. Heat. Heat. Yeah, Heat. Heat. So, I slowed down a little bit to avoid what rush hour I would hit in Milwaukee here. So, we're cruising through here now after most people have already gone through or after they've gone home. I just didn't want to deal with traffic. And I could tell by my trucker path GPS that there was just crazy traffic here before. So, I just slowed down, had a bite to eat, and uh had a coffee, a little bit of a break. But now we are here. There's Milwaukee. You can't really see it cuz it's still so smoky. We're going past downtown over there. Probably have about 2 miles of visibility. It's not that great. The air quality here is uh pretty bad. I haven't checked it exactly what the numbers are, but got to go right through the city, too. I'm going to hit a little bit of traffic up ahead here for about 2 miles. Should take about 5 minutes to get through according to that. Move myself into this lane. I got out of that lane because there was construction in there before. and set the cruise. Make sure that I don't get carried away up and down these hills here. Yeah, I hope that we invest into some serious fire fighting like firefighting prevention or whatever in Canada. We have constant wildfires every summer and it's starting to affect people's health. It's ruining the summer for so many people. You'd think at this point, you know, it happens every year. >> Thank you. Thank you. I see it there. You'd think at by this point, right, that we would have figured it out like maybe we should invest into some like more water bombers. Maybe like I don't know five dozen of them. Maybe more. Maybe a hundred of them. a whole fleet spread them across the country. Probably we could probably do 500 of them. How many do we have now? Not enough. And we have satellite technology that watches the entire country. We could tell when a wildfire starts immediately, right? So, as soon as they see that heat signature register on on the radar on on their sensors, we should be dispatching water bombers there. Take care of it right away. Just water bomb the whole thing. nip it in the butt right away, right? So, why aren't we doing that? How are we still having wildfires? Like, I know Canada's very remote. It's a long way out there where these fires start, but it's we're not a new country. We've been here for a long time. We know this happens. I don't know. I'm just rambling and venting now cuz I'm just I'm so tired of smoke every summer. And you know there's always those loonies out there that are going to be like, "Oh, it's climate change. It's going to get worse." Okay, so you believe it's climate change. Whatever. I'm not a scientist. Why aren't we doing something about it? Right? If you're expecting there to be more fires for whatever reason you say there's going to be there's going to be more fires more frequently, why are we not investing into hundreds of more water bombers? We know it's coming. It's like nothing. I think we bought what? Another or we're building a couple more. Couple more. Like this should be like one of the top priorities. It could be like considered almost national security. Not that we're being attacked by a foreign nation, but we're being attacked by nature. Are you going to protect us and our land or what? Right. Let's do something. I'm just tired of this smoke. That's all. That's why I'm ranting right now. Tired of this smoke every year. And all they do is they try to fearmonger us like, "Oh, climate, you know, it's going to get worse. It's only going to get worse." And then they do nothing. Like, we need to tax them more. That'll fix it. Well, we tried that. It didn't work. Paying more taxes did not stop anything. How about try a few more water bombers? You know, a couple more firefighting thingabers. You some more firefighting equipment is what I'm saying. You know, like maybe hire some more people training. Maybe a few more outposts out in the remote wilderness just so they're a little closer by, faster response. Maybe that would be a little bit better than just jumping straight to tax the people. We're having more fires. We need to raise taxes. Come on. Come on. We're not that dumb. We are not that dumb. We understand what you're doing. We also understand what you're not doing. You agree with me or not? Let me know down below in the comments section. Am I Am I totally off? Do you agree with me? Like, I have no problem with us spending money here at home. Like, we're investing a lot into our military right now in Canada, which is fantastic. I totally approve of that. We should be investing into saving our forests, stopping fires faster, detecting fires faster, responding faster. Don't get me wrong, we have top-notch firefighters. They're awesome. We need more. We need a lot more. They need better equipment. Spend money on that. Build our roads. It seems that money just disappears. We always have this huge deficit, but we don't see any benefit from that deficit. We just see the increased interest rates and inflation. What do we actually get for all that inflation? You're not giving us anything. The money's all going somewhere else. Oh, you got me rambling now. You got me venting now. You got me all mad. Got me heated up. Breathe. It's the traffic. It's not helping either. I specifically slowed down to reduce this traffic. So, it would have been way worse. Can you imagine going through? We're going down to one lane here. I'm gonna let two cars in because I'm generous and I'm grumpy right now. So, count your lucky stars. Two car. Don't you dare. A third one was trying to sneak in there. I will run you into the cones, buddy. Two cars. That's That's twice twice what would be already considered kind. Supposed to be one go. One go. One go. I let in two. You trying to shove your nose in there yet? That was actually a pretty nice guy. Usually they would just shove their nose in there, right? And then I would back off because I don't actually want to shove them into the cones. And I'm a nice guy. I don't want to have an accident. That's just paperwork. I don't want any of that. So I always let off and let them in. But I still I try to be tough, right? Try to be, no, no, you can't come in. Unless if they really, really want to. Then I be like, "Okay, fine. You can come in." Right? This is not a battle I'm willing to fight right now. I don't want to do the paperwork. Just get in front of me and get lost. Get out of my sight. Shoo. You know what I'm saying? Shoo. Yeah. So, we're going down to one lane here. Can you imagine going through here at the peak of rush hour? That's what we would have almost been doing before. I'm glad I slowed down a little bit. We got another 1 kilometer or 3/4 mile and we should be out of this according to the GPS. Man, I love these new modern GPS's. Like they tell me when traffic's coming up ahead. They tell me exactly how long this traffic is going to be here for. They tell me where the construction is. And it's pretty accurate, too. Like, man. Still not sponsored by Trucker Path, though. So, I could sing their praises all day. >> Road construction ahead. >> I'll do it for free. That's some good stuff right there. Did it just say road construction ahead? Are you Are you I was just saying how good you are, not I guess you're saying there's more road construction ahead in case you didn't see the orange flowers growing out of the concrete. There's more construction ahead. Watch out. Just in case you thought it was over, nope, there's more. Just cuz traffic is speeding up doesn't get your hopes up. There we go. There we go. Come out. Let's go. Oh, look how smooth this road is, though. Wow. They've been doing a good job on it. Wow. This is like glass. >> Milwaukee. >> 900 me. Keep left. >> Keep left. Can I keep left? It looks like the left is closed. Are they going to let me keep left or do I got to keep right? I think I'm going to have to keep right. Oh, there's a detour. Oh, ma'am. Fantastical. Oh, boy. All right. Well, we'll see where this takes me. >> In 400 meters, keep left towards Interstate 41 South Chicago. >> I would love to. >> Road construction ahead. >> Yes, I see. I see. I can't go that way. There's a detour. >> Now, keep left. >> No, I can't. Oh, yes. Yes, I can. Yes, I can. Sorry, Karen. You were right. You were right. Sorry. I thought you were drinking again. My apologies. You have a reputation. Okay. I'm sorry. Chicago this way. Oh, no. I can't go that way. Well, now where am I going? What's going on now? I was supposed to go that way. Where am I going? I'm just following these cars. I don't know. Are they going to Chicago, too? What's going on? Detours. This reminds me of Minneapolis. Let's not even start on Minneapolis and how many times they changed the intersection of the 494 and the 35 >> in 2 km. Keep left. >> That's one interchange I go through all the time, right? I go around on the 494 and then I go south on the 35 or I come up the 35. And that whole interchange there every it seems like every time I go there, they've changed it again, keeping me on my toes. Now Milwaukee in their construction, but look how smooth this highway is. Wow. Can you please give Winnipeg a phone call and tell them all of your secrets? There would never be a road this smooth in Winnipeg. Ever. Ever. Wow. The bridge connections could use some work. I'm just trying to be nitpicky here. I know. But okay. Do I need to go? Everyone seems to be going into this lane cuz I want to get onto that highway. Like just we're just like gliding over this. It's like >> 400 me. Keep left towards Interstate 41 south. >> It's like we're floating. Now keep left. >> Forgot to turn on my floor lights before. Felt like something was missing. >> 1 km. Keep left. >> Okay. And we're back on the highway then. That wasn't so bad of a detour. You see, Minneapolis, it is possible to make detours without confusing everybody. And Winnipeg, I'm not going to leave you out of this. It's possible to build roads that are smooth. Look at this. It's possible. Stop telling us it's not possible. Give Milwaukee a call. Ask them what their secret is. I have a feeling their secret is money. So, find some money. >> Keep left towards Interstate 41 South Chicago. >> All right. Chicago this way. Look at that. We made it. Now, what's the speed limit here? >> Keep left. >> Speed limit is 55, right? 55. That's what I'm doing. All right, we got through it. We're alive. We're alive. We made it. So scary. So scary. So scary. Made it. Okay. Are we still at 55 here? 55. Okay. 55. Another thing, this thing shows me the speed limit. Most GPS's do nowadays. I can always just look down there and check what the speed limit is. Oh man. Well, that was our journey through Milwaukee. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll see you down the road. We are trucking, trucking, trucking. We made it through Chicago. I'm now in Indiana. I just crossed the border. So, we'll be going up Interstate 94 until we get to uh what exit is that? Where uh the US 20 comes off just around on the other side of the lake. And we'll take US 20 that runs parallel to the tall way. That'll take us up to the south side of Bristol. So, we're getting close. We're almost there. About another hour and a half. And we successfully dodged all major traffic. Heat. Heat.