Broken Down U-Haul, Don’t Count on Luxury Car Driving Women to Help

Yesterday I had one of those days where everything that could go wrong, went wrong. I needed to pick up some furniture from two different houses to bring back to mine.

I started off the day by renting a U-Haul van and with the help of a couple guys we loaded the furniture from the first house without any problems. As soon as we got to the second house and took a look at the size of the furniture to move and it became apparent to me I needed a much bigger truck.

So I had to drive all the way back to U-Haul and explain that I got the wrong size truck. Well, U-Haul said that they would not let me upgrade and that I would have to pay the full price of the van and would have to pay full price for the truck. They also made me re-rent all the moving equipment such as the dollies and blankets.

I accepted the fact I was the one who screwed up the size of the truck and just signed off on the charges and paid the full price for the use of the van even though I only used it for an hour.

After unloading all the furniture from the van to the new truck we drove back to the second house and finished loading the rest of the furniture. We then made out way back onto the highway to head back to my house.

As we were on the highway, I felt the truck start to sputter and after some clanking noise the engine gave out disabling the power steering and leaving me stranded in the middle between the slow and the fast lanes.

Cars started to pile up all around me, honking their horns. I tried to get the engine to start again, but the truck was just dead. So I called the U-Haul office where I rented the truck and they said that

THEY WOULD NOT HELP ME

I had to call the national U-Haul number where after 15 minutes of being routed through an automated switch board I was finally told someone would call me back 30-45 min.

About a half hour passed till I got a phone call that someone from the other side of the valley would be there to help in about 45 min. Living in Los Angeles there are dozens of U-Hauls with in a few miles of where I had broken down and it was just my luck the only person who could assist was on the opposite side of town.

As I stood on the highway, it was high noon and the sun was beating down on the asphalt which felt like 98 degrees.

Even though I had my hazard lights blinking, people just could not figure out how to go around my truck, thus causing a massive grid lock giving people the excuse to pound their horn and scream out of their windows.

I decided to be helpful by directing traffic. I stood behind the broken down U-Haul waving people to go right or to go left, depending on how traffic was building up. For the most part people were following my directions and the congestion went away.

There I was standing on a highway for almost two hours with the sun pounding down on me directing traffic to prevent accidents and congestion.

During those two hours I have learned a lot about how helpful people are to stranded motorists.

Here are some interesting things I discovered.

Almost everyone who drove a low-end model vehicle had no problem following my direction. If I pointed right, they rent right. If I said go left, they want left. And if I said to stop, they stopped.

Drivers on their cell phones are the worst. I would wave people to go right or left as they came over the hill, which gave them all plenty of time to make that lane change. But I found those on their cell phone’s did not react until they were close to me, thus having to stop their cars, turn their blinkers on and wait till they had the space to make that change. They were the biggest cause for congestion.

I am not sure how many cars I directed in that two hour period, but I assume there were thousands. Out of the thousands, apart from some guy who wanted an excuse to use his Hummer to toe the U-Haul off the road, only 5 people pulled over to see if they could help me. And those 5 people all drove low-end model cars.

One lady in a mid-level class car offered me her cell phone.

Ladies who drive high end vehicles such as a Mercedes or a Lexus were by far the worst drivers. The majority of them were on their cell phones. The majority of them would not make a lane change until they drove their cars all the way to my broken down truck. And even then it took some of them a few seconds to realize I was telling them to go into another lane. And many of them would not go into the lane I was directing them. I would say, go right and they would try to go left causing more congestion and creating the backup to be much worse. I could say with out a doubt the majority of congestion was caused by ladies in high end vehicles.

For these women that didn’t take the opportunity to follow directions, they did however have the opportunity to see me sweltering hot from the sun. Even with that been said, not one of them offered me help. A few even honked their horns at me. CLUELESS!!

Finally, the mechanic made his way and after checking out the truck he told me the gas gauge was broken and the truck was out of gas. He filled up the tank with 5 gallons and we were finally on our way.

After unloading the truck, forcing and breaking a few things as they did not fit in our hallway we completed the move and took back the U-Haul.

When I dropped off the truck and told them about the break-down not one of them apologized and they only offered me a discount of $10.

Obviously I refused to pay for the truck and walked away.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Shandy Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.