To Rent or Not to Rent (A Box Truck)

After finding out that the $10,000 U-Haul trucks weren't an option for getting our stuff to Canada, we started looking to buy one somewhere else...anywhere else.

It made sense to buy a truck so we wouldn't have to be in a hurry driving and could leave our stuff in the truck while we quarantine for 14 days. Canada's rules for quarantine are that anyone crossing the border has to drive to their place of quarantine without stopping and stay there for 14 days. There are no exceptions - not one for renting a storage locker, not one for loading all of your worldly goods into a storage locker, not even one for returning a rental truck to the U-Haul store. We had talked with a friend up there about finding some people to unload and return the truck for us, but since we are leaving later than expected he will be on vacation when we arrive.

But we couldn't find anything. The kids were with Jeff’s parents last Friday, and we spent our whole date night scrolling through Craigslist and cars.com (we spent our Saturday afternoon having more fun, though). None of our searches for “used box truck,” “cutaway cube van” or “2021 Mustang Mach-E” returned any results in our price range that seemed remotely reliable. The used ones from private sellers were all really far away and didn’t seem to be in good shape. Dealerships were pretty much selling them for $20, 30, 40,000 and up. We tried again on Saturday night, but went to bed with no answers and unsure of what to do.

On Sunday morning we talked to a friend from church who works at a local dealership who said he might be able to get a retired truck from where he works. It would take some work that he could do to get it back on the road, but it sounded like an excellent opportunity. He would ask about it again on Monday. Waiting for an answer was difficult. We had less than two weeks to find a truck and get it ready to drive 1500 miles, and some of us are less patient than others. We found out after work on Tuesday that the truck wouldn't be available until the new one came in, which would be after we are leaving. Another dead end.

Now we were left with no truck and no plan. Back to the drawing board:

1. Buy a sketchy truck from Craigslist:
   In our price range
   The closest one that looked promising was almost two hours away
   High likelihood of stranding us in the middle of Nowhere, MI, with all our worldy goods trapped in a large stationary piece of art
2. Buy a more expensive truck from a dealer
   Ties up at least $20k in a truck we might not be able to sell quickly at a time when our housing situation is fluid
   More local options available
   Chances of the above scenario happening are closer to zero than going with (A)
3. Back to plan 1A: Renting a U-Haul
   Gives us a mostly fixed cost without the uncertainty of selling a truck in the future
   Theoretically we can get a truck locally
   Probably the least likely option to leave us stranded

A difficult position to be in, but at least we have also learned some other interesting things in this process. We are glad that we found out now instead of at the border that Canada only allows used mattresses if they are fumigated, sealed and certified by a reputable company. The mattresses we were planning on taking are of the used/worn out variety. Since we don’t have anything worth the hassle, that saves us some room on the hypothetical truck.

Another thing we’ve learned is that cell phone service in Canada in notoriously expensive. We searched around and got recommendations before picking out the perfect plan for us. The details of the phone call with our prospective new carrier might be worth their own blog post. The short version is: no Canadian address, no Canadian credit, no Canadian cell phone plan. Now we’re back to looking at prepaid plans, which don’t have that same problem.

It feels like we were talking about something…. [glances up at the title of this post] Oh yeah! We are supposed to be finding a truck! Except that we didn't. We went back to the original plan and looked into renting a U-Haul again. The Canadian government helped us out here a little bit by announcing that vaccinated travelers won't have to quarantine after crossing the border. We go get groceries. We can go for a walk around the block. We can unload the U-Haul and return it.

We also learned from U-Haul that even though the website limits rentals to 5 days, we are able to extend the time by calling. So about 10 days before we’re going to get on the road, we reserved a U-Haul rental and paid up front for four extra days. Now we just need to get everything loaded.

Stay tuned for part 3 of Making and Remaking Plans