Doing it yourself? Rent a couple of trucks, a month apart, and drive for two days to get to your new house. And to make it really interesting, both times have the truck malfunction in some way! If you read my earlier blog about our first truck from Plano to Las Vegas, you know that we had a rent truck with a clogged fuel filter. So, what are the odds that the second truck would have a problem? Here is story number two:This time we picked up the truck on Saturday, November 28th and had the help of Dallin, Chris and Eric (our sons-in-law), Staci, and K.C. Jones and Tim and Carolyn Brown from the ward. They took their time fitting everything in the truck - a work of art. And we managed to fit a lot of stuff in there. Staci, Eric, and baby Wesley flew back to Utah Saturday evening and Steve and I started cleaning and getting the last items out of the house. Sunday was not a day of rest for us, as it took from 1 p.m. until 9:30 p.m. to clean out everything and load Steve's Sportrac with the lawn and garage equipment and the cleaning supplies.
We got in the truck Monday morning, November 30th at 6:15 a.m. and pulled out, heading west toward I-35 to head north toward Amarillo, TX. I was driving the Sportrac behind the rent truck, but just before we got to I-35, Steve pulled off the road into a Sonic drive in and when I pulled in beside him, he told me he couldn't get the heater to work. He got his warmer work gloves from the Sportrac and started driving again. The outside temperature was 39 degrees.
Throughout the day as we drove, we tried to get in touch with road side assistance with the rental truck people, but were put on hold for up to twenty minutes or we drove beyond cell phone towers and lost the connection. So when we stopped in Amarillo for gas about 1 p.m., we drove the truck to a repair shop. They wasted 45 minutes of our time to say Budget didn't have any report that our truck needed to be repaired and they couldn't look at the truck. Steve was annoyed at this point - we had called the Preston store where we got the truck and told them the problem at 7:30 a.m. They didn't report it to roadside. We trucked on west toward New Mexico. I got on the phone and called the Preston store, asking them to have roadside call us. I finally got a call one hour and 45 minutes later, when we were past Tucumcari, NM and still 150 miles from Albuquerque. They lined up a repair shop there but that shop closed at 6 p.m. We didn't make it. The temperatures near Albuquerque were 27 degrees. By this time Steve had a huge blanket wrapped around him, but he was still cold!
We stopped for the night in Gallup, NM, putting a tarp over the truck window. Tuesday morning at 7:30 a.m. there was no frost on the window, but the temperature was 17 degrees. We drove west, getting warmer as we got closer to Nevada. By noon it was close to 50 degrees! We arrived at the house in Las Vegas by 2:30 p.m. The high priests and elders showed up to unload us at 4 p.m. By six we had the truck unloaded and furniture in the house and in the proper rooms. What great support they were!
Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. Home Depot delivered our new black fridge and new LG washing machine and gas dryer, installed them. After they finished we drove the rent truck back to the turn in place, and when I called the customer service department to see what kind of refund they would give us for a defective truck, I was able to talk them up to $120. Not enough, in my opinion, but better than last month's refund of $103!
So the picture was taken about an hour after we arrived, just before we unloaded. Does Steve still look COLD! He felt a little under the weather on Thursday but quickly recovered. He is amazing!
So my counsel: Don't use Budget rent trucks for long hauls! It was obvious to us that they don't maintain and check out their trucks!
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