Last time I rented a U-Haul was about 6 years ago. My brother and I flew in to Indiana to purchase some motors from a drag racer. After inspecting the goods, we went down to U-Haul to pick up the truck. First truck had no lights so we never got it off the lot. 2nd truck seemed to be OK for the few mile we put on it that night. After loading up the motors we stayed the night in Kokomo, IN. and left the next morning.
I had the first shift driving and the semi trucks were passing us like we were standing still. My Brother says how fast are you going and I told him 75mph. Well it did not take us too long to figure out the speedo was wrong. In fact it was a good 15mph fast. When we took it up to 85mph then we were able to keep up with the semi's.
It also had a howl you could not believe. Turns out the seal in the passengers door was missing, so I stuffed paper in the door when I shut it and that helped some. Three days latter when we had dinner in Victorville, the truck would start but not come out of Park. My Brother called their service department only to be put on hold for two hours, so I found an Auto parts store I was able to walk to and purchased a pair of pliers, screwdriver, and flashlight. Crammed myself under the dash and got the brake switch to work which then allowed the Shifter to come out of Park. Next day I go to turn the truck in and the guy wants to charge me 3200 miles for the trip, since that is what the odometer reads from when we picked it up. After a few words the guy decides to drop the excess mileage and just charge us the 2100 that it was.
Renting from U-Haul was a real eye opener, will not rent from them again. I wonder how many people they get on overcharging for mileage, or how many have to wait hours and hours for someone to show up to fix their trucks. Well at least I made it home and can now laugh about it.
Tom G.