The $4,000 Truck
We drove a 1997 GMC Sierra to Winnipeg to pick up a fridge. We never picked up the fridge. We flew home with a floor jack in a suitcase, and somehow I made money on the whole thing.
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The plan
I've always wanted to do a proper road trip across Canada. I've driven all over the States, but in my own country, the furthest I'd ever gone was Ottawa. Embarrassing, honestly.
The excuse came from a buddy of mine whose family is from Winnipeg. He lives in Toronto, but at some point, at a bachelor party I think, he won a raffle for season tickets to a bunch of Winnipeg's sports teams. So now he's a Toronto guy with season tickets in Manitoba.
Then someone remembered that his uncle had an old chest fridge from the 70s or 80s sitting in Winnipeg, and it would look sick in the bar we'd built in the basement of another buddy's cottage. That was it. That was the whole plan: drive to Winnipeg, catch some games, bring the fridge home.
We just needed a truck.
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The truck
I started scouring Marketplace for anything that ran and drove on short notice. I would've loved a Toyota, but they were way out of our budget. Then I found a 1997 GMC Sierra 1500 listed for $6,000. Eight-foot bed, two doors, and a three-seat bench. Three guys, three seats. Cozy, but it would work. It looked good, it drove fine, and I talked the guy down to $4,000.
The first sign of trouble came almost immediately. On the way to a buddy's place to work on his Jeep, I stopped at Canadian Tire for washer fluid and a phone charger. I came back out and the truck wouldn't start. Nothing. I'd literally just driven it there.
I bought a portable jump pack. Nothing. I figured the starter was heat soaked, so I crawled under the truck and smacked it with a hammer. Still nothing. Eventually I had to call my buddy to come rescue me. He jumped it with cables while I hit the starter again, and it finally turned over.
We spent the next couple of hours under his Jeep swapping out part of the transmission mount, then faced a new question: where do we put this thing? I didn't trust it to start again, let alone make it to the cottage. So I drove it back to my place, parked it in the garage, and left it there.
Over the next week, I threw everything I could at it: new tires, a new battery, and a pile of odds and ends. It still had an intermittent misfire I couldn't pin down. Not what you want right before a 2,000-kilometre drive. But we'd committed, so I did the only reasonable thing: I packed two giant totes with every tool I owned and a pile of spare parts and threw them in the bed. If this truck was going to die on the side of the Trans-Canada, at least it would die next to my entire workshop.
Then the three of us packed onto that bench like sardines and left.
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North
None of us had ever done a trip like this, and it showed. We rolled into Sudbury late at night with no plan and nowhere to stay. We found a motel, luckily.
We also learned on that first leg that the headlights were dog shit. Driving through Northern Ontario at night, we could barely see the road. So the next morning, our first stop was Canadian Tire again, this time for new headlight bulbs, just so we could see where we were going.
From there, we grabbed food in Sault Ste. Marie and pushed toward Thunder Bay. That stretch is beautiful, and it's also terrifying at night. We saw moose on the side of the road, and if you hit one of those, you're done. Add a 30-year-old truck with brakes and acceleration that feel more like suggestions, and every dark stretch had us on edge.
Somewhere along there, the misfire got bad. Flashing check engine light, the whole truck shaking. I was pretty sure it was the EGR valve. These old trucks have one that's supposed to route some exhaust gas back into the engine to burn off what's left over. When it sticks open, the engine chokes on exhaust instead of getting clean air. So we pulled it off right there, soaked it in throttle body cleaner until the valve moved freely, and bolted it back on. After that, the truck drove better than it had since the day I bought it.
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Thunder Bay
We rolled into Thunder Bay in the middle of the night and couldn't find a room anywhere. Wildfires were burning across Northwestern Ontario, and thousands of evacuees had filled every hotel and motel in the city. We called place after place.
The only room left in the entire city was at the lowest-rated motel in Thunder Bay. Fine. It is what it is.
Something told us not to leave anything in the truck, so we hauled every tote and bag into the room before bed. The next morning, we walked out to find corn nuts scattered all over the dashboard. Someone had clearly gone through the truck overnight. Thank God there was nothing left to take.
Later that morning at Tim's, I was chatting with the person behind the counter and mentioned where we'd stayed. You could watch her face drop. What the fuck, you stayed there? Apparently everyone in Thunder Bay knew about that place except us.
The drive from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg ran right through fire country, with towns along the highway under evacuation alerts. We checked the road reports at every stop and kept moving.
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The prairies
About fifteen or twenty minutes after crossing into Manitoba, the world went flat. Completely, dead flat. You could see hundreds of kilometres in every direction. I'd never seen anything like it.
And then, on the way into Winnipeg, we drove past a meat rendering plant. That was hands down the worst smell I've ever experienced in my life. Welcome to Manitoba.
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Winnipeg
Winnipeg turned out to be great. We saw the Blue Bombers play, and I got to meet a buddy of mine who plays on the team. We caught the Goldeyes and the Sea Bears too. Good few days for Winnipeg sports.
But the drive had taken its toll. Three big guys shoulder to shoulder on a bench seat for two thousand kilometres will do that. Somewhere along the way, one of the guys made the executive call: fuck this truck, we're flying home.
Then there was the night we discovered that in Manitoba, bars have VLTs and slot machines. We figured we'd walk in with $20 each, have some fun, and walk out with nothing, like normal people.
That's not what happened. One of my buddies hit a jackpot on slots and turned his $20 into $300. Another went all in on blackjack twice and walked away up $500 or $600. I was starting to feel left out. I'd worked my way from $20 to $100 on a slot machine when I accidentally hit a $100 spin, and it landed a mini jackpot. I walked out with about $800.
Nobody wins at the casino. Nobody wins at slots. We all won.
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Getting home
So we made it official: fly home, sell the truck, and forget about the fridge, even though the fridge was the entire point of the trip.
I listed the truck on Marketplace, and somehow it sold for $8,000. I'd paid $4,000 for it. Between the sale and the VLT money, the gas, the parts, and the repairs were effectively free, and I still came out ahead.
That left one problem: my tools. Every tool I own was in that truck, floor jack included. Shipping it all back would cost a fortune. The plan was to hit Value Village, buy a pile of cheap suitcases, and pay hundreds in baggage fees to fly it all home.
Then I looked at the booking confirmation. We'd grabbed last-minute flights from some sketchy discount travel site, and somehow they'd put us in Porter Reserve, their top tier, which comes with two free checked bags per person. Six free bags.
So we sat in our Airbnb and packed every socket, wrench, and jack into suitcases, shuffling tools between bags until each one came in under the weight limit. We flew home up front in the nice seats. When we landed in Toronto and picked up our bags, every single one had been opened and inspected by customs. I can only imagine what they thought when they found a floor jack.
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The fridge
We never got the fridge. It's still sitting in Winnipeg.
But I got to see Northern Ontario the way you can only see it from a bench seat at night: moose in the ditch, wildfires on the horizon, and a truck that might not start in the morning. I fell for Manitoba, the flatness, the people, and even the smell, a little. I bought a truck, drove it across a third of the country, fixed it on the side of the road, sold it for double, and came home richer than I left.
Best $4,000 I've ever spent.