As far as I am concerned Derek Beiri of Vice Grip Garage is the last word in “Car Rescuing”.
But, at a younger age, I wasn’t that bad myself.
Now at 45-years-old it scares the crap out of me.
Angus Sutherland
It scares me because I know what can go wrong. It scares me because it is superfluous and in-opposition-to my role as a husband and father. Or at least the role of responsible husband-hood and fatherhood as it’s practiced in my generation. And too often it also upsets the neighbors. But because deep inside me still beats the heart of a car hound, last Friday I checked all my good sense at the door and hit the road to rescue an old truck.
Let’s back up a minute. To clarify – I did not buy this vehicle for myself (this is an important statement that is keeping me married for the time being). I bought it as part of a joint venture with my two brothers for use at the family cabin. As kids we learned how to drive stick out at the cabin in a 1962 Mercury pickup. It was a three-on-the-tree with finicky linkage, so the learning curve was unnecessarily steep–but a lot of fun.
That truck has been gone for a long time but there has been a push by Brother-Number-1 to buy a replacement so we can pass on the knowledge of how to drive a standard to our kids – in the safety of 160 acres of private land. Better they learn there than in my Triumph or his BMW.
For over three years Brother Number 1 has been sending me replacement candidates from online farm auctions and–like a typical brother I have been egging him on like a childhood dare to eat a bug off a windshield. “Let him piss off his wife for a change” – was my thinking. He also likes being married so he hadn’t gone all-in on any auction-action standard transmission pickups to date. Brother Number 2 liked the idea of a replacement truck for the cabin but was rather uninterested to do any footwork (or finger-work for that matter) but otherwise somewhat game…depending on what day you caught him.
And knowing us, this would have stayed as a nice idea forever as even the most bombed-out auction trucks are selling high. I personally believe bad parenting and easy access to Country and Western music have allowed old pickups to hit previously unforeseen heights. It’s a dark time for cheapskate car guys looking for trucks.
It was left somewhat unsaid, but our absolute ceiling was fifteen-hundred dollars all in and done ($500 each). And that amount wasn’t getting it done.
That was until I did some early Saturday morning scrolling on Facebook Marketplace (a hive of stolen property and terrible spelling/grammar). I stumbled across an ad for a 1969 Fargo half-ton pickup with a slant six and a four-speed for $1500. It was orange (or faded red) with a white roof. It looked to all be there and even had factory roof-mounted clearance lights intact (my mother calls them “sex lights” – we haven’t ever asked why).
Admittedly it looked a little rough but all there. It was near a town that was a two-hour drive from me but pretty close to my mother’s where Brother Number 2 happened to be for the weekend. So I quickly posted the ad to our “Bro Chat” WhatsApp group. Unfortunately, Brother Number 1 was on vacation stateside, so his enthusiasm was benched for the moment. Without that support I wasn’t getting any traction with Brother Number 2. It was starting to feel like another non-starter.
As I get older, I am actively trying to get myself to embrace my inner Doris Day as in “What will be, will be”. So when I didn’t get immediate traction on the Bro Chat I let a couple of days pass. I knew at that price, if the truck was any good it would be gone by the end of the weekend.
But I couldn’t help keeping an eye on it. And by Sunday night the ad was still up. And maybe I had a few too many beers watching my favorite football team lose yet another game in a never-ending spiral of embarrassing losses. My depressed and semi-inebriated-self sought distraction. So I poked the brothers on Bro Chat. Brother Number 1 sent a heart emoticon to my post of the ad. That felt like pay-dirt. Unfortunately, Brother Number 2 was no longer near the truck – but he did pipe up – “I’m in for $350”. To me this statement is ironclad evidence he was drinking hard during the football game also.
That’s all the permission I needed. I reached out to the owner of the truck on Messenger with my name and phone number and asked him to call or text me. What I didn’t do was send “will you take $500?” because I’m not an internet troll. But even with not being a troll, days passed, and I still didn’t hear back from the guy.
Cut to Wednesday and the ad was still up but still no response. So I messaged him again, “Hey – is this truck sold?” Finally, he responded, “Can I call you in an hour?”
And guess what – he called in an hour. I took the call out on the deck out of earshot of my wife.
Josh, the truck’s owner told a sad but all too familiar tale of a young man who bought a classic truck with dreams of fixing it up only to have those dreams crushed by life (read: woman and children). The truck was sitting on his parent’s acreage and his dad was getting impatient as it had taken up residency there well over a decade ago and even though his son had long moved on the truck had not.
Josh relayed that although he got a lot of troll-like offers but no one had given him a phone number or offered to come see the truck. I figured that was the case when the ad was still up and worked it to my advantage.
When I am a car buyer, I like to move quickly, I like to have cash-in-hand and be in-person when making an offer–and have a plan to get the vehicle out of there as quick as possible. We made arrangements to meet at his parents’ acreage Friday night at seven pm – his earliest opportunity. He texted me directions – I knew exactly where it was as it was near a country roadhouse that I had partied at in my misspent youth.
Unlike Derek Beiri, I mess with vehicles for my entertainment not for the entertainment of the general public so when arranging to pick up this truck I had no intention of driving it anywhere. It was to be trailered. I lined up a trailer rental (with a winch) from an ad posted by a retiree just outside the city where I live (happily also in the direction of said truck) for $120 for 24 hours.
The 7 pm Friday meeting was less than ideal as I was due somewhere nowhere near where this truck Saturday at 9 am. I figured it would take me 90 minutes to two hours to get to the truck with the trailer. That would put leaving my house at 4 pm. If I bought the truck, the ritual of inspection, posturing, negotiating and loading would be no less than an hour. That would put me on track to leave the property at eight pm. I had to drive the truck west to the family cabin, which was another hour. Then offload (by myself). Then the two-and-a-half-hour ride home – at dusk (read: the deer hour) and in the dark. I had also set up dropping the trailer off back with its owner 6 am Saturday morning. Then an hour-and-a-half hour drive to where I had to be by 9 am Saturday. I was looking down the barrel of a gauntlet – it was all very unappealing. If I ever operated like this at all in my younger days – I certainly don’t anymore.
This is when all the doubt kicks in. And even without my wife in my ear I start thinking of all the things that could do wrong. By Thursday evening I was rather stressed about the whole plan and was seriously thinking of backing away from the whole darn thing.
– Did I want this too much? That is the car guy downfall. The rule is never want it TOO much.
– Was it reckless to take an evening and traipse around more than 300 miles of secondary roads in a fourteen-year-old ¾ ton towing a trailer I’ve got no history with to head to a property I’ve never been to before?
– Was this a stupid idea?
It felt like so many things could go wrong but things started to look up. I got a text from Josh asking if I could meet at 5:30 pm instead of 7 pm. An emphatic “You bet” was my answer. This I took as a sign of approval from the car gods.
I was able move my trailer pick up ahead an hour without issue – things were headed in the right direction.
Angus Sutherland
More to come. Follow this link to Part Two of Once More Unto the Breach
