Category: default || By jt3y

Someone get me the address of the Ford Foundation. I've developed a scientific theory that, based on empirical evidence, speculates a object exists even though it can't be seen. I need a grant to further my research.

It isn't a black hole, or even a healthy food item at Denny's; though those are both mysterious objects that have never been seen.

Basically, my theory is this: I've never seen a new rental truck, and every time I've ever rented a truck, it's been a nearly useless piece of worn-out junk. Yet it seems unlikely that rental companies would set out to buy completely useless pieces of junk, so at some point in the past, all rental trucks were new; therefore, even though we can't see new rental trucks, they do exist. QED. I'm calling it Jason's First Theorem of Rental Trucks.

Jason's Corollary of Rental Truck Visibility dictates, however, that rental trucks remain invisible until they reach a certain number called "X," which is a mathematical function of time, the cost of repairing the various mechanical problems, and the number of safety violations; though the exact relationship between those numbers isn't yet known, X can be expressed in dollars per second.

Admittedly, my sample hasn't been that broad. I've only ever rented trucks from a company that shall remain nameless. Perhaps rental trucks from other companies aren't rattling deathtraps. Further study is needed; once the grant money comes through, I'll rent some of those yellow trucks, and the white trucks with the blue and orange logos.

Anyway, I had to move some things from the Old Place to the New House on Monday, so I called Nameless Truck Rentals.

For $19.95 plus mileage plus tax, I was told, a 14-foot truck with a loading ramp would be waiting for me. The brother of me drove me to the rental truck place bright and early Monday morning. I forked over the credit card and the clerk rang up the sale, then stepped into the back room.

A few minutes later, I hit the dirt, thinking from the noise and smell that there had been an explosion at a diesel-fuel refinery. Nope: It was only the clerk, pulling up to the building in the truck. The front of the truck had tangled with a low wall at some point; with its bumper stove in, the truck looked as if it was grimacing. The tachometer bumped back and forth between 0 and 200 RPM as the motor coughed, caught and ran, coughed, caught and ran; and there was a large chunk of padding torn from the dashboard on the passenger side.

When I drove off of Nameless Truck Rental Co.'s lot and hit the brakes at the first intersection, I learned how the padding had been torn; obviously, a frightened passenger had yanked a piece of the dashboard loose while bracing for impact. After Brother parked his car, I picked him up so that he could help with the move. He quickly learned to assume the crash position whenever a red light loomed, and I noticed his clenched fingers neatly fit the divots on the dash.

Once the truck warmed up, we learned of another charming feature: The built-in smoke screen that came from beneath the truck (in the general vicinity of the exhaust system) that kept other cars up to 50 feet away from us. That was a good thing, too, because turning the steering wheel didn't issue demands to the truck's front tires so much as recommendations: "In the future, you may wish to veer towards port." That made foolish maneuvers (say, going around a bend, or pulling into traffic) exercises in blind faith.

I'm glad I couldn't see anything in the mirrors (which were stuck and couldn't be adjusted), because I don't think I would have liked seeing all of the frightened faces around me.

If I can digress, there is a section of pavement at the very top of Dravosburg Hill that's been a lumpy, bumpy washboard for as long as I can remember. Occasionally the county makes a half-hearted stab at repaving it, but the blacktop buckles the first time a dump truck stops there during a hot day.

I rented the truck in the South Hills, which means I had to traverse that section of pavement twice on my way to and from Our Fair City. Vikings on long boats in heavy gales have braved smoother seas. In fact, on every pavement joint, the truck jounced and bounced like a pogo stick. No doubt we would have gotten nauseous after a while; luckily, we were soon light-headed from the clouds of unburned, vaporized diesel fuel that were spraying out from under the hood.

We soon found out where the diesel vapors were coming from; a cracked fuel line was leaving puddles of fuel on the ground whenever we stopped. Basically, it wasn't a moving van so much as a rolling EPA Superfund site.

If you rent a truck, make sure you return it with the same amount of fuel with which you left. Otherwise, the rental company charges you $2 per gallon to refill the tank. That's one of the thousands of interesting items in a thick booklet that you're given when they present you with the keys. "WARNING: MAKE SURE YOU READ THIS INSTRUCTION MANUAL THOROUGHLY AND UNDERSTAND IT BEFORE USING THIS TRUCK," it says in big, threatening letters on the cover. Nuclear submarines come with less detailed manuals. I decided to save the manual for later, so I'd have something to read at the emergency room.

Speaking of diesel fuel, did you know that there's no place to purchase it in Our Fair City, except at the Buy 'n Fly on Walnut Street? Neither did I.

Between the smoke coming from the back of the truck and the diesel fuel spraying from the front, you might wonder if we worried about a fire. At first I was worried that it might burst into flame while my stuff was loaded inside. Then, after seeing my wretched life in the sunlight, I was worried that the truck wouldn't burst into flame until after it was unloaded.

Perhaps you wonder if the truck was noisy. No more so than a battleship going over Niagara Falls. After a while, your eardrums go numb and you don't notice.

When I coaxed the van back to the rental agency at the end of the day, I pointed out to the rental clerk that the truck was leaking fuel. "Huh, how about that," he said, looking at the puddle on the ground. I suppose I should have considered myself lucky: Another clerk was on the phone with a lady who had broken down on a highway somewhere. Her truck had been towed by the police impound driver --- with her stuff inside.

In conclusion, the upside of renting trucks: The chance to bounce down the street in a smelly, smoky, noisy vehicle, ignoring traffic etiquette and endangering the people around you, without having to go through the trouble of building a street rod in your backyard. Also, they're cheap.

The downside? The combination of noise, vibration and pollution exposure probably takes years off of your life.

However, as some wag once pointed out, those are the years at the end of your life, and they usually stink anyway.