#365a Texas truck

After all of this fiasco with the truck, It just seems like all we ever do is spend money and it never quite becomes a new truck. I bought the truck with 300,000 miles knowing that these things last forever. I paid $12,000 for it and 4 years later I believe I’ve spent about $20,000 in upgrades and I still don't have a new truck. I had told everyone with a laugh if I keep on putting money in it sooner or later I'll have so many new parts, it'll be a new truck, but it's just not true.

I talked to India and I suggested we do the unthinkable and just buy a new truck. Like my little sister said, we had some investment income so buying a new truck would not be the world. I just always thought my deceased in-laws would be ashamed if I spent the money foolishly. They would think buying new RVs and new trucks is foolish. It finally comes down to the only person I have to please is India and she thinks it's a good idea so we went forward with it. We started shopping around and some of these trucks can go for 80 and 90,000 sometimes they're 75-78K. All of the big three manufacturers have trucks in this class meaning diesel, dually, and sized 3500. The Chevy has an Allison transmission and that is the best the industry has ever made so Chevy wins. I found one in Texas that was 67Kand was a brand new 2020. It was 77K in North Carolina. I figured for a $200 plane fight and we could drive it back and save a lot of money. I asked my son Ben to join me to help out he said okay which was great.

It's funny, at first, I thought I'm not going to even look at white trucks because they're hard to keep clean. I'm not going to mess with four-wheel drive because that's just a lot more stuff to fall apart. Turns out there's a lot of white pickups out there and most have 4 wheel drive. I wanted a certain interior as well. I didn't want black which was apparently the popular thing in NC. I did want the two-tone tan interior, I wanted seats that are heated and cooled. Eventually, I had made peace with a white exterior and four-wheel drive so that's what I ended up with. They had an excellent deal down in Texas so we hopped on a plane and took off.

When I talked to the dealership in Texas, I had to get them to reassure me that first of all everything that you're saying about this truck is accurate. You really have to take it off the sales lot if I'm going to fly all way down there. They took a deposit and assured me of all these things. It worked out great in the end as they had been telling the truth.

While truck shopping in North Carolina I would see something that would be perfect. I would make an arrangement to go see the thing and then within 5 minutes of being on the phone and being switched around they would say that truck is no longer available. I got to tell you that happened like three times so I was persistent with the people in Texas that we can't have any of that. My son Ben and I hopped on a plane the next day arrived in Texas around 4:00 in the afternoon. The salesman met us at the airport and we rode to the dealership signed some papers and got it all wrapped up. We were heading back towards North Carolina by about 6 or 7:00 p.m. I think we just decided to get on back as quick as we could. After leaving the dealership we drove for many hours till maybe 2:00 in the morning or something. I drove a little but good son Ben took over after one hour and I was so thankful. We found a low-priced hotel which was just for sleeping and even though that's true, man this thing was rotgut. They had no breakfast downstairs. They had no coffee downstairs. They had no shampoo or anything in the room. The only amenity they had was a bar of soap. It was the cheapest. low rent place I think I have other stayed. On the positive side, it didn’t have any bad smells.

Imagine that review. It might read; A cheap place with no amenities and didn’t smell too bad.

We kept on making some pretty long strides so the next day it was like a 14-hour drive and we were somewhere on this side of Atlanta. This time we stayed it is a nice place like a three-star. We got a good deal on hotwire but it was not cool to stay in a horrible place twice.

We were in a parking lot the next morning and my son and I got a kick out of a guy who was having some sort of truck lust. He had an old white truck that's kind of a beater maybe one of those 20-year-old things like I just had. He drove around and saw this is a 2020 Silverado and he just kind of did a pass and then he kind of did another pass and he just stopped and just started staring at the truck, drooling. We were kind of like, dude get a room, but he really liked the truck. We were trying to get back as fast as we could because on Sunday afternoon they were going to have a nice barbecue over at my little sister's house with practically everybody there. I thought that would be just great but we had to keep moving to get there in time. We made a phone call and you know there's always some kind of weird family politics going on. One of the relatives said they would be comfortable with us with the covid crisis going on as we've been flying and driving all over Texas and all. We have this to skip it I was a little put out by that but you know at least at this point we would slow the pace down and just get there we get there.

We finally arrived in Hillsborough North Carolina with the brand-new truck maybe 4 or 5 p.m Sunday. We were very burned out so I took a nice hot bath and went down for a nice 10-hour nap. I was very thankful to Ben for being my partner in this crazy road trip to get the truck.

As soon as possible I wanted to get my 5th wheel assembly installed in the back of the new truck. As they are somewhat expensive, I removed my fifth wheel from the blue truck as we sold it or as we got ready to. I contacted a number of people that can do hitches and I started hearing horrible things like we're a week or two out. I just thought oh my God this is not great so I contacted someone called superior trailer in Burlington. It's not that far 20 minutes or so away and they can do the work they said they needed a few days to kind of get the parts together and I said okay.

There’s a good bit of infrastructure that goes underneath the truck bed to support the fifth wheel. It was kind of expensive going towards 7 to $800. They said between the kit and the labor it would be around $1,200 and I'm like dang man. I thought we had things taken care of and the guy doing the work called me back there's a shortage of these parts. Finally, he said I've got one but you have to come in and prepay. Well, I did, and then and the part he wanted was gone but I desperately needed to get out of town. We needed to get on the road to Sedona and it was about a Wednesday. He said if you're willing to pay 250 to 300 I can get the part here overnight and it'll be installed by Friday. It might sound crazy to a lot of people but I was just so stressed out about the time that we had left to get to Sedona I said ok. I paid the money he got it installed and we were able to leave Friday. It was just such a drag but these are things that you do you have to do. Whatever.

I had assumed that I could leave the blue truck with Ben and using craigslist somehow, he would be able to sell it for me. I just wanted to get it done I wanted closure I wanted to be done so I put it on craigslist for around 6,000. I listed all the parts that I had changed out and I had just put in a brand-new transmission and blah blah blah and no matter what it sold it for it would be a loss.

One or two people and responded. One guy wanted to know if I would take 5,000, I said probably so we went through a test drive. He said something like you know this is just not as good as shape as I thought it would be, I think I best I can do with like 3,600 or whatever. I said I'll take it. I just wanted to be done. It seemed so sad to give the truck away but I just need to be done and that's that. With the truck sold and the hitch installed we were ready to head out towards my sisters in Winston-Salem and then West.