Weird Lincoln Tales #2: The Ghost Truck

What follows is a true story, though some events are fuzzy due to the passage of time and the red vision of anger that clouds the entire story.

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The couple of months leading up to our move had been extremely busy. We had our first-born child that January, and Carma was finishing her dissertation and looking for a job at the same time. When she landed one in Iowa City, I had to find one as well. Finally we started making all the normal moving arrangements. You know; finding a new place to live, getting people to help you move, and reserving a truck for moving all of our goods.

Not too far away from our apartment was a Ryder truck rental place. I called through their reservation line a couple of months before the move to reserve our truck for the weekend we needed. I checked it off my list and moved on to other tasks. Little did I know, that I had just sealed our fate for one of the most frustrating times of our lives.

Three days (or so) before the move, I either called to confirm my pick-up time for the truck, or they called me. I can't remember which. Either way, I was informed that the trucks for our area had been overbooked, and that we would not be able to get a truck on the day we had reserved it for. I was in a bit of shock. I believe I did end up asking, "What good is a reservation if I can't get a truck?" Essentially I was told that a reservation did not guarantee a truck. After about 10 minutes of futile arguing, I hung up and faced the challenge of finding a new truck for our move...with only three days left. On a weekend. During peak moving season.

Over the next day or so, I called every single truck rental place I could find within a 100 mile radius of Evanston, which being a suburb of Chicago, is a LOT. Not a single one of them had a truck available. I was starting to panic, as our lease was up on the day we were moving, and had no flexibility on that end. We were fearful that we'd have to move our stuff onto the sidewalk and let it sit overnight. Carma thought that maybe we should do that and call a news crew just to make a point.

The hero of the day was my father-in-law, David, who was planning to drive out from Omaha to help us with our move. The solution? David drove to Iowa City (about half-way between Omaha and Chicago) and rented a truck there, then drove it four hours to Chicago to pick us (and our stuff) up. (I must say here somewhere that Carma's sister Jenny also came and helped too.) When David rented the truck, they asked him if it was a one-way or a local rental. Seeing as he was planning to return the truck to the same place, he opted for local, which thankfully did not charge extra for mileage. Now, to add even more to David's heroism, the truck was probably older than me. It was a stick. It was so old, it didn't even have shoulder seat belts. It was clearly not meant for long travel.

With the situation back in hand, we packed the U-Haul truck (with help of the local Elder's Quorum as well) and set off. For some reason we went to a hotel for awhile first, and then drove in the very early morning towards Iowa, with silent prayers that the truck would not break down.

Well, the prayers must have been heard and interpreted literally, because it was our car that broke down. At about 3:00 a.m., in the middle of nowhere. (Actually, it was Peru, Illinois.) This was very troubling, as we were going to be expected to show up with our stuff to move in by 10 a.m. (by the Elder's Quorum in Iowa City).

So, after many tears of anger at the continued bad luck, Carma, David and Thurman continued the journey to Iowa while Jenny and I hung out at a truck stop waiting for a tow truck. The tow truck took us to the nearest Pontiac dealer with a service garage, which opened at 8. How we amused ourselves I don't know, as there is not much going on in Peru, Illinois at those hours, even on an early Saturday morning.

After a few hours, the car was fixed (alternator replaced, thankfully covered by our extended warranty) and we eventually arrived in Iowa City. I tried to feel bad about not having helped unload the truck, but I don't think I was successful.

After we settled in a bit, we wrote a letter to Ryder. There may have been phone calls as well, I don't recall. We were still very angry and bitter about the whole thing (still are, a bit). In the end, they sent us a $50 coupon towards our next truck rental, which really only made us more angry. We may have burned it in effigy, though I can't remember. It seems that not too long after that, Ryder abandoned the personal truck rental business and focused only on businesses. Not that we ever would have rented from them again.