Heh…I have a Uhaul car hauler story…
It all started a couple of months ago…When I showed my friend ferret that travelall ebay ad that the boys in the international club had posted. A travelall, for you kids out there, is like a surburban, only bigger and heavier. They were mainly used to tow Airstream trailers back in the day.
I was hoping for an adventure; Not this much of an adventure but an adventure non the less. The Travelall was located in Wichita Falls a few hundred miles northwest of us and Ferret promised to pay expenses if we would tow the beast back to Fort Worth.
My travelall had a class 1 hitch, which will pretty much tow air and not much else. I think the limit is about 1000 pounds and the travelall we would be towing home weighs in at over 5000 pounds. The trailer we would be towing it on weighs another 2000 pounds. So the first step was to find a real trailer hitch and just how hard can that be. I seem to remember back when I had my 62 scout that all it took to get a hitch was to find one of the many places that sold hitches and they would weld somethin’ up for you if they didn’t have one pre-made. Of course, back then you could buy an American made TV, Gas pumps couldn’t even be set to charge over .99 cents a gallon and a George W Bush was passed out drunk in Hunter S. Thompsons bathtub. I called the trailer place I was going to try to rent the trailer from :
“I need a hitch for a 1973 travelall” I stated hopefully
“Yeah right….oh…you’re serious?..sorry…um…I’m going to hafta find a book here…hang on…woah….we only go back to 1975 and then only for combines…this isn’t a combine is it?”
He referred me to a trailer hitch specialty shop that confirmed that this did indeed have to be looked up in actual treeware catalogs and that they did not exist in any universe that they were aware of haveaniceday. Nice fellow.
Uhaul was the most fun. Before flat out telling me that they didn’t want my business in any way shape or form because I drove an international that wasn’t in their computer; they kept insisting that International only made scouts because their computer lists many different scouts that they didn’t have anything to fit and if my truck was international then therefore it must be a scout. I tried contacting them in person and talked to a very nice large gentleman with a variety of gang tattoos who at least went out and looked in the pile of Valley receivers before telling me I’m screwed.
I called Northern Parts and Equipment who is listed as a valley retailer. I got some girl on the phone who sounded like she was 12 years old:
“You guys sell Trailer hitches right?”
“Oh….Would you like to talk to a salesperson?”
“Probably not, but we can give it a try”.
“Ok…Hold please”
After an insufferably long wait listening to music intended for inbreeders I was greated by a young lady who sounded like her shoes were entirely to uncomfortable to know anything at all about trailer hitches.
“Do you guys have trailer hitches?”
“Yes, we have those”
“Ok….”I braced myself for disappointment “I need a one for a 1973 International harvester”
“what size does it take?”
“Um…I need the whole hitch…the receiver…You should have a book or something”
“We have a whole isle of trailer stuff, there’s probably something there.”
I’ve decided that I did something horrible in my youth that I just can’t recall and now I paying for all the bad Karma.
The rest of the day went about the same. Place after place, I walked through the yellow page and it was all pointing to one inevitable conclusion and I just had to come to terms with it. My old nemesis O’Reilly.
They were the last place listed that was a Valley dealer that I hadn’t called. And Valley was the one company on the net that listed the Traveall.
“Hi, I need to order a trailer hitch”
“What vehicle is this for?”
“Well, you don’t know that do you. It’s best we just leave it that way. The Valley part number is 73000”
“Well, I really need to look it up in the computer”
“Fine. It’s a 1973 International Traveall.”
“Who makes that?”
“International. But if it were in the computer, which isn’t, it would be under IHC…used to be you could hit I and it would come up”
“I’m not seeing anything listed when I hit I”
“That’s because it’s not there anymore”
“I need the manufacturer…you know….like Chevrolet or Ford”
“Is there anyone there who was born before Saturday Night live stopped being funny?”
Ok, ok, my manager said we can order it by that number, and we’ll have it in the morning at 8:30
I’m really really trying hard to believe that it will be here in the AM, so I started trying to find a trailer. Uhaul said they would gladly reserve one for me, but they would not tell me where it was going to be without me giving them my credit card and last time I did that with Uhaul they charged me three times for the same rental and charged me to fill the utility trailer up with 10 gallons of diesel fuel because I didn’t return it with the same amount of imaginary fossil fuel that they imagined it left the lot with. I started calling the individual stores. Every one of them politely took my name and phone number and then totally failed to call me back. All of them.
Finally I found one that had time to talk to me
“What are you towing with?”
ohgodohgodohgodohgod….don’t say travelall…”A travelall”. It slipped out. “But I can absolutely assure you it’s not in your computer “
“Oh I bet it is…let me look” (it wasn’t)“I show all kinds of scouts…”
“It’s not a scout…it’s like a suburban, only bigger and more able to tow stuff”
Uhaul will not, under any circumstances rent a trailer to be towed with or to carry a vehicle that they don’t list in their computer. If they don’t know what it is, they don’t want your money. Game over. Calls to their corporate headquarters did no good at all.
It was about this point I was sitting in my coffee shop with my head in my hands that a group of Ferrets friends came in and demanded to know what I was thinking talking him into buying this thing. The man already has an MG Midget, a triumph motorcycle and a Farmall cub….Ferret isn’t going to be allowed to play at my house anymore after this.
So, for those of you keeping score at home…we have a date to pick up the ebay travelall at 2 pm the next day, and we MAY have a hitch to pull a trailer that we absolutely don’t have yet and probably cant even get.
Well….Oreilly came through with the trailer hitch first thing in the morning and Ferret sat out on the driveway installing it while I kept up my phone quest for the trailer. Nobody had one, at least not one they were willing to rent. I gave up for a bit and went out to help Ferret with the hitch. We had to grind away the welds on the old hitch to get it off of the frame…Something that I’m sure endeared me to the neighbors at 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning. For anyone else looking for a trailer hitch for a travelall a Valley 73000 from Oreilly auto parts is a perfect fit. It requires drilling four holes and almost getting run over by your neighbor as he turns around his Cadillac in the driveway without looking to see if someone is laying there working on something. Suprisingly this was not detailed in the photocopied installation sheet that was included instead of the washers that were listed on the sheet. We endeavored to persevere.
We were out of time at this point, so we decided to go for broke with Uhaul. Acording to the specs on the Uhaul website the Travelall will fit on their newer trailer and only exceeds the weight limit by a few hundred pounds. But they don’t rent trailers to tow anything they don’t have in the computer, nor do the rent to people using anything they don’t know about to tow it. So, we picked the drunkest employee in the place (a hard judgment call at this particular Uhaul) and told them that my travelall was in fact a 1975 Chevrolet Suburban 3/4 ton and we would be towing a 1994 honda accord. Four door. Green with white stripes. It worked in a rather queasy way that had us feeling like bank robbers trying to get out of the parking lot before someone hits the silent alarm.
Situational ethics…I didn’t like it, but we were desperate.
We made it to Wichita falls without incident then the fun began. It was a travelall alright, and it wasn’t in as bad a shape as I expected it to be. It has a 392 that someone had started to fix up. New plugs, wires, points, cap, rotor…fresh antifreeze in the radiator….looks like someone wanted to get it moving. Someone had also started trying to lift the thing but looks like the only got the front end so far. A hillbilly lift kit for sure.
The next step was get it up on the trailer. We brought a come along but while I was taking pictures Ferret and the guys we got it from hatched some kind of Willey E. Coyote scheme to use the guys dodge to pull it up onto the trailer. Almost worked until the trailer tongue popped off the ball and viciously attacked my tailgate. Too bad I was busy trying to get the guy in the dodge to stop to take pictures cuz it was quite dramatic. I encouraged them to pursue the comealong option after that.
We got the beast loaded onto the trailer and tied down the best we could. The straps that went over the right hand tire had been cut because as we later found out the ratcheting mechanism on the trailer didn’t release anymore. We found this out in the middle of nowhere so we were kinda out of luck. The travelall fit fine side to side but just barely fit lengthwise with the back half hanging out in space. Air shocks would have been a good idea at this point.
This was unbelievably stupid and unsafe. Don’t ever do this for any reason. We got it out on the highway and it started wandering back and forth like a fiddler crab on PCP. At certain speeds it started oscillating side to side and very nearly landed in the ditch more than once. Traffic was backed up for miles and little children stared in horror. I pretty much get that when I walk down the street anyway so I’m kinda used to it. Every muscle in my body tensed, as I felt and tried to counter every shift as best as I could. I was aching as we limped it into a truck stop on the edge of town and started looking for a solution. Necessity is not the mother of invention. Sheer terror is in fact. We fabricated a new strap arrangement for the missing right wheel tie down.
We bought a package of four ratcheting tie downs from the truck stop and took them apart. We took the loose straps and hooked them over the uhaul assembly then fed them through the ratcheting system and cranked it down. We took the remaining tie downs and secured the rear end to the trailer. A large cargo strap was tightened down over the cowl to compress the front suspension. We then balanced out the air in the tires on the trailer and on the Tow vehicle and it finally tracked something akin to safe.
In honor of Jim Bowie the locals in this region had erected a steak house in his honor. We pulled into the gravel driveway and parked it in what is the closest thing is this part of the world you will find in a scenic overlook. We staggered inside and asked the cute blonde waitress what the safest thing on the menu could possibly be. Chicken fried steak and salad bar it was.
To add authenticity to the ambiance an extended family of inbreeders were situated next to us in a greasy black vinyl booth and the elder she wolf of the pack proudly proclaimed to the waitress for no apparent reason “Hell no I ain’t no meskin…I’m white trash honey”. David Burn would have made a movie out of this. Then the young mother picked up her darlin’ baby daughter and using her as a puppet while providing baby talk voices she mimed hitting her mother and said “I’m gonna blacken both yer eyes like yer husband shoulda done already”. And Jesus Wept.
After hours on the road and many many safety check stops along the route we made it back to my place. We unloaded the truck without any major incident and ferret crashed on the couch while I curled up in the fetal position and sobbed uncontrollably.
