Saga of the Truck - Chapter 3

 My last post left off with me headed to California to retrieve the truck I just bought.  I dreaded the thought of getting on another airplane.  I had sworn off airplanes in retirement after a 35 year career that had me traveling an average of 200 nights/year.  It seems it has been long enough (ten years) that my memories were only half as bad as I thought it would be.

My departure airport, Atlanta, is the busiest airport in the world.  So that place is pretty much a zoo 24/7.  It doesn't matter what day, what time or what airline you book, it's a mess.  My flight to San Diego was Spirit Airline's earliest flight out and I was required to be at the airport by 5:00 am to check in for an 8:00 am departure.  They were adamant and hounded me with multiple emails telling me to arrive early, specifically 3 hours early.  I wish they had been so conscientious about emailing that the flight had canceled during the night and that I was rebooked for the next day before I got to the airport.

With me standing in front of the ticket agent just as the email notice arrived about the flight cancellation I got a little extra consideration and was booked on a Delta flight that left in ninety minutes.  Besides getting moved to a plane that has adult-size seats I also got a direct flight.  Score!  My Spirit flight had me making two stops, one with a plane change.  So now I am leaving later in the morning but getting to my destination earlier.  What a deal.  But still, what a mess.

The pleasant surprise of the whole airplane ordeal didn't come until boarding.  I was really dreading the smell that had always been present during my traveling days.  Every plane had it, some tried to mask it with air fresheners but the smell was always there and it followed you out of the plane, permeating your clothes, your hair, your very skin.  But on this day I stepped into a plane that had no smell.  It would seem that the protocols for cleaning airplane cabins during the pandemic was doing a job beyond its primary function.  All the deep cleaning, wiping, fogging, and removal of items that could harbor germs was also good for eliminating the accumulated odor of thousands of people.

Okay, enough about airplanes and my 35 year accumulation of aversion to them, this post is about the next chapter in the saga of getting Cyndee and I a new truck.  We're essentially stranded, not in the strictest sense, we could do a tow of our 5th wheel if we had to but it is unlikely we could get where we are going without a major breakdown.  So staying put is possible (we're in a great situation regarding somewhere to be) and that is what we are doing until we can get something reliable to move our home on wheels.

As a recap, it has been roughly a twenty month process to find and acquire a replacement truck.  The pandemic and all the shortages it has caused really mucked up anyone's ability to buy a special purpose truck.  In particular a chassis cab, class 5, medium duty truck.  The Ford truck plant in Kentucky went so far as to completely halt production because of shortages of more than 200 components with computer chips being the most problematic.

Chip shortages affected nearly everything, but
particularly "specialty" things like chassis cab trucks

Everybody really honed in on the chip shortage, seemed like that is all the news talked about for months.  But there were at least another 200 components in short supply that kept trucks from being built.  Case in point; rear differentials.  Factory closures shut down manufacturing plants and even when they started back up it was barely with enough people to function.  There just weren't enough parts to go around.  Ford typically makes and sells 250,000/yr of the truck that I am getting.  During the twenty months I have been in the hunt they topped out at 50,000/yr.  That kind of a change compressed a lot of purchasers, most of them commercial, into competition for the few trucks built.  I was up against large fleet purchasers looking to replace critical service equipment.  Of course I too, to me, was replacing critical service equipment but in the big scheme of things what I was doing didn't even register in the medium duty truck world.

F-550s, like I am trying to acquire,
are used heavily as ambulances.

Or as dump trucks.

Tow trucks too just to name a few.

And Fire and Rescue.

Despite everything said, there was a spark in the universe and Cyndee, through exhausting, dogged searching, found us a truck.  It is a shame that it was someone else's hard luck that made our good fortune but their inability to take delivery of what was undoubtedly their dream truck (it was an individual like us) made it possible for us to move in the direction of being mobile again.

The flight itself was uneventful and we even got to approach the runway from the west, circling out over the Pacific and then back into San Diego.  For those who have flown to San Diego you know that typically the approach is from the east and you essentially have to do a nose-dive as soon as you clear the mountain in order to make the approach to the runway.  It can and does take your breath away.  Landing from the west was so nice.

Oh, and another nice thing about dealing with El Cajon Ford, they met me at the airport and drove me to their facility.  This, plus the process of making the purchase was the best dealership experience I have ever had.

Within a couple of hours of arriving I was on my way east.  Interstate 10 was to be my road of choice until Texas where I'll jump to Interstate 20 and make a stop in Dallas to see my brother and sister-in-law.

I had no more than left the city limits of El Cajon and, BAM!, 70 mph crosswinds started hammering me.  They were coming straight out of the south and carrying half of Mexico with them.  Large amounts of fine and coarse sand were airborne up to a couple thousand feet high.  My brand new paint was getting peppered.  While the wind storm was unexpected, the stiff ride I was anticipating did not disappoint.  This is a truck that has gigantic leaf springs that were meant to handle a 5 ton load and I had absolutely zero weight on them.  It might as well have been a rigid suspension, there was no comfort what-so-ever in the ride.  Every crack in the pavement was a stab in the back, I can't even describe the molar dislodging pot-holes. 

The leaf springs are a temporary thing though.  I just have to endure this drive from California to Georgia and soon after from Georgia to northern Indiana and the leaf springs will get tossed in favor of a four-bag air-ride suspension.  Plus a couple thousand pounds of tow body.  It will still be a heavy truck but the ride will be significantly better.  But it is still a truck, Cyndee keeps saying.

The wind storm raged as I crossed California and Arizona.  The coming of night didn't slow things down any.  The window of my hotel room whistled and groaned with the pressure changes and sleep wasn't an option by 3:00 am (local time, my body thought it was 6:00 am) so I checked out of the hotel and got in several hours of driving in a less windy (only 50 mph) and relatively cool night.  As the sun rose so did the wind.  It resumed its 70 mph howl as the heat of the day set in.  The rest of Arizona and all of New Mexico was an exercise in not getting blown off the road coupled with dodging flaws in the road that would knock my teeth out.

My second night layover was in Van Horn, Tx.  Typical southwest desert town, severely weather worn and probably looking worse than usual because of the dust storm.  This night was a repeat of the last, up in the wee hours and many miles down the road before the sun came up.  On this day I also plied the maze of highways that are necessary to get to my brother's place.  The visit was all too short but I had a long way to go.  Although I didn't get far.  By the time I got to Tyler, Tx the past 72 hrs of very early starts and physically demanding driving I was spent, a stop for the night was necessary.

I was out of the wind storm area now and it was a quiet night.  Sleep came easy late in the afternoon and I did not stir until the sun was well up the next morning.  But that good night's rest gave me the energy I needed to complete the drive to north Georgia, nearly 900 miles away.

I pulled into our Allatoona Lake campground well after dark and had a heck of time backing this half-of-a-truck into the campsite.  It was pitch black outside and backup lights so small that they might as well have not bothered.  I got in without banging into any of my other equipment in the driveway but was definitely not square with anything.  That would be corrected the next morning.

Well, here it sits.  It's the first week of March '22 and while having cost a pretty penny, it is of no use.  But the work to change that is about to begin.  A trip to the upfitter in Indiana is in the works.  We're being told to bring it up immediately and that we could expect to pick it up in August.  Sheesh, talking about an exercise in patience.  Twenty months to get to this point with another six months to go.

We're calling it Quasimodo for the time being.  Gonna figure out a better name once it's finished.