Godammittohellandback
I crunched my truck but good today. On the highway doing somewhere between 50 and 60 (ring road around Augusta) when my right front tire blew. Hit the guardrail and bounced/skidded along it til the overpass sidewall finally stopped me. I did not go down the embankment or off the overpass, thank gods, but the front end of my truck is Not Good. Right front wheel curled under, sheared off tie rod or axle, god knows what else. I am absolutely fine and no one else involved which is a blessing, but … my poor beloved truck!! 2003 F250, manual (that they don’t make anymore) and in great shape despite 220-odd thousand on it. We are insured, but I don’t know what I’ll do if they total it
Ok, one more round of Tylenol before bed, and then I wait until Mon/Tues to see what the insurance folk have to say
That sounds absolutely frightening and probably felt like forever when you were going through it.
Waiting a couple days in these situations is always brutal.
Maybe it can be repaired if the damage isn’t too extensive.
Sorry, brother, but a 22-yo truck needing serious front-end work and replacement of a wheel, brake assembly, and tie rod? That smells like a total to me (although it would lift my spirits to be informed later that I was wrong).
If the truck is a beloved member of your family, and depending on your carrier’s policies/your state’s regulations, you could be able to collect a certain amount of cash, which you could put toward either DIY repairs or body shop work.
Well, I’m up and pretty spry this morning! I kinda feel like I’ve stacked a loft full of hay, but it’s nothing a few Advil through the day won’t fix.
So, a question: If the insurance co totals it and it’s financially possible for me to fix it anyway, will they re-insure it? How does that work? I’ve never actually had a major accident before, I have no idea how this works.
Also, you better believe I was regretting the Hospital poll I put up! I thought I’d jinxed myself because I’m one who’s never spent a night there - and yes that thought did in fact flash through my mind as I was careening toward the embankment guardrail
That’s less wrecked than I expected. A truck like that had negligible insurable value just before the accident, and has less than zero now. It almost certainly will be totalled. It was probably uneconomic of you to even have had collision or comp on the truck in the first place.
The process after that varies a bit by state and by insurance co. @ParallelLines was in this industry and can provide better advice than I can.
IMO you won’t get much from the insurance co, but you can repair that to driveable, if ratty looking, for a not-crazy amount of money. Certainly not-crazy compared to buying a replacement even 10yo truck. Thank goodness it’s as old as it is; replacing bent metal is far cheaper than destroyed electronics & deployed airbags.
As to insurability, you can get liability, UM, etc., on a salvage title vehicle. You probably can’t get collision or comp, but again you probably don’t actually want that. Paying even a low premium to insure something that has an economic value less than your deductible makes no sense.
Yes, a 20+yo drivable truck has plenty of practical value. But a 20+yo truck has negligible sales value. Which is the “value” that matters to insurance.
I had a tire blow once doing 70mph and I was in the middle lane and I somehow miraculously navigated safely to the side of the road and came to a controlled stop. There wasn’t much left of the tire.
Thanks, this is helpful.
This isn’t my daily driver, it’s what I use to haul my 30 ft gooseneck horse trailer and for farm-type errands (hay etc). I absolutely need something comparable for the trailer and yeah, I sure don’t want to be paying for a new truck.
Well, we’ll see what they say next week I guess, sigh …
I would need a clean set of pants after all that. I’m glad you’re okay - hopefully you can keep the truck as salvage and still use it for farm chores.
My July mini-rant - uBlock Origin was finally disabled on Chrome for me yesterday, with no way to re-enable it. I know there are some work-arounds or alternative ad blocking software I could try, but I feel like those are temporary bandaids. Google has made it clear they want eyeballs on ads, and I do not want my eyeballs on ads.
So I downloaded Firefox (a non-Chromium browser, because I’m sure there will be eventual issues with anything Chrome in the future) and have begun the process of migrating everything over there. Which let me clear, has actually been as easy of a process as it could be - I just find myself getting too easily frustrated with minor things that need to be tweaked to get it the way I want.
This is a resistance to change that I don’t want. This is how some older people find themselves unable to adopt and fully utilize whatever new software gets rolled out at work and they become increasingly obsolete and replaceable. This is how my older relatives panic when they are finally forced to upgrade the operating software on their phone and things have changed and now they can’t figure out how to access something in a new way.
20 years ago I used and migrated between half a dozen browsers (including Firefox!) at the drop of a hat because one had some new sparkly functionality. Now I’m pissed and curmudgeonly because I can’t quickly figure out how to get my bookmarks to display the way I want (ie, the old way I’m used to).
So I am going to go have a snack and come back and just fuck my shit all up and make myself like it and enjoy change and having to learn and adapt.
I have nearly survived four days without my husband. Narrowly evaded a meltdown in the library, but I managed to calm my son down before he totally lost it. He’s cute. Took him to swim class (he’s not progressing at all.) Gave him a bath.
I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted all the time, not just right now. But right now I’m particularly exhausted. Trying to get things cleaned up before my husband gets home.
My son has been in swim class for two years and he’s still not swimming. At which point do you give up?
Also, what is the point of a Kindle Fire? My grandmother gave me her old one. After three hours it was 50% charged. Wouldn’t let me download the play store for the cross stitch app I really wanted to use. So I don’t see the point. It seems to have fewer features than a tablet.
At the point where you know if he fell into water, he’s not likely to panic and drown. One of my closest friends can’t swim: it doesn’t bother her in the slightest. It’s not a skill you need, only one that can be fun for recreation or useful for exercise, and on extremely rare occasions for most people, a safety issue.
First of all, so glad you’re OK – that looks scary as hell!
Regarding an insurance write-off, there are several considerations depending on insurance company and the laws of a particular jurisdiction. To the best of my knowledge, in general, when an insurance company writes off a vehicle and sends you payment for the pre-accident value, they generally expect to take possession of the vehicle for salvage value.
I believe it should usually be possible to arrange to keep it, possibly in return for a lesser payment. But you will not be able to have collision or comprehensive coverage again, only liability insurance. Furthermore, depending on laws in a particular jurisdiction, a vehicle that’s been written off may be automatically declared unfit, and may have to be re-certified as roadworthy, especially if there’s been structural damage. This may not apply in your state but it’s just something else to keep in mind.
Okay, first, glad to see you got through that with no apparent major damage to life and limb. No matter what, count yourself super lucky in that. And before there is a lot of self-blame, remember, it’s called an “accident” not an “on-purpose”. Before this is over, you’ll probably be blaming yourself far more than you deserve.
First the disclaimers: I no longer have a P&C license, and don’t work in the industry anymore, so my experience is old, and should be taken as that of a well-informed individual but NOT a professional!
TIME CRITICAL ISSUE: Where is the vehicle?! If it’s sitting in a salvage lot, or was towed somewhere, you may be getting charged for said storage. And it’s a LOT potentially. If it’s towed to your home, no problem, but when you get to settling, get it to a location where you’re not paying for it to sit ASAP.
So, getting to the details real fast, it’ll probably all be bad news. First, single car accidents are generally considered At-Fault losses. It’s one of those “if no one else is to blame you are” from the carrier’s POV. Now, minor proviso - if the area in question has a high incidence of tire damage from pot holes or other issues, and there’s an action pending against the city, you might check and join in, but that’s very much an edge case. So do expect a rate increase from this incident, though that depends on the carrier, your policy, and the payout in most cases.
Based on the age and milage of your vehicle, as well as the described damages, it’s almost certainly a total loss. Labor costs means even if they were able so secure used parts (thankfully the F250 isn’t exactly unpopular) the cost of labor eats into repairability fast. Rule of thumb is the moment the estimate reaches 80% of the cars ACV (actual cash value, based on regional comps mostly) it’s going to be a candidate for a total loss. Sorry.
What can you do? First, if you’ve done any work of note on the vehicle recently, get those receipts in order. If you can do anything (legitimate) to show that you’ve done work to improve the vehicle that wouldn’t be shown in a comp, show it and increase the value! I’ve added for things like new tires (though if you got a new tire and it blew as described, I’d be talking HARD to the provider), new stereos, etc.
But if they declare it a total loss you’re going to have a few options based on the assumption you’re carrying COLL coverage. First, they take your car, hand you a check based on the value, minus your Deductible, and you’re done with it. Not ideal, but easiest.
Second, as @LSLGuy suggests, you can choose to keep the vehicle, at which point, they’ll offer a check for the same ACV MINUS any value they’d assign the salvage, MINUS the DED. Which may give you very little if anything out of the settlement. You can then see if you can find someone who will kludge the vehicle into driveable shape based on anything you do get from the carrier and out of pocket costs, which may STILL be cheaper than trying to buy a used replacement vehicle. You’ll need to re-title the vehicle with a “salvage” title in most jurisdictions, and are unlikely to be able to get any coverage on it other than liability / UM-UIM/ Med pay. Though some carries will offer COMP/COLL, a good agent will tell you that it’s been salvaged -once- and that any payout will likely be less than the premiums you’ll end up paying on it, so I wouldn’t advise trying, similarly to LSLGuy.
That’s all the short term info I cant think of off the top of my head. Lots depends on your exact coverage, the carrier, the policy, heck even the state. But again, make sure you aren’t getting dinged with costs that are going to come out of your pocket or settlement as soon as possible. As an addition to that, make sure that you take steps to mitigate further damage to the vehicle if/when it’s back in your possession: tarp it, or otherwise protect the vehicle from environmental damages making it worse. Yes, I’ve seen claims get partially denied/dinged because someone had a damaged sun/moonroof or broken window, left uncovered in rain, and then the carrier denied all the resulting interior damage, because you have a responsibility to mitigate.
[ ETA - if you have other, general questions, I will try to answer as a former professional (again with the disclaimer), PM me if you prefer to not have it out in the open. ]
FTR, it’s pretty easy to sideload the Google Play Store to an Amazon Fire tablet, Mine is several years old and I don’t know if Amazon has blocked that feature, but some of my most valued apps like Firefox, Shredder (chess game), and video player are all from Google Play.
I will say from personal experience, that even with the Google Play store (because I had it on both of my Fire tablets) a lot of apps will say they aren’t compatible with the device. At least that was the case for my devices.
Of course, with Android devices that’s a possibility for any tablet since they can vary widely in terms of their hardware, but it seems to happen a lot more with Fire devices.
I use my kindle to read library books and visit a few places on the internet. I rarely use the Google Play Store and if I need something I can get it on my phone.
One of these days I might buy a Samsung tablet but right now the kindle suits my limited needs.
