June 28th – July 2nd • The Dreaded Breakdown

I’ll start by saying how super proud of myself to be blogging 2 days in a row! We are making our trek down to southern California as we speak. Our plan is to see my sister and her family in Arizona along the way. Lots of miles to put on this week before our 2-week family vacation from our vacation. I know you all are like what dreaded breakdown hurry up and get to the point already. I just wanted to tell you all how much fun being on the road is and how much we rely on our truck since it is our main mode of transportation and how we can do business. No truck means, no travel and no work.

I’m going to begin by saying we bought a 2020 Chevy Silverado Duramax brand new before we left Canada to be sure we have full warranty and bought the extended warranty on the truck. This is a huge blessing since the truck only had 50,000 miles on it when it left Kevin on the side of the road. We knew there was something wrong with the transmission from the day we left the dealer’s lot the day we purchased it. We took it into the Hinton Chevy dealer before we left and they said that when it left the factory it was low on transmission fluid, they then topped it up and said we were good to go. We will fast forward to when we were at Pyramid Lake, California and when we got to the campsite Kevin noticed oil all over the 5th wheel. He checked under the truck and it was leaking transmission fluid. We made an appointment at the Santa Clarita, California Chevy Dealership and brought the truck in. They spent a couple of days on it and couldn’t find a leak on the transmission anywhere after they cleaned it all up. They told us it was because someone overfilled the transmission fluid and it just overflowed. We knew something was still wrong because it was shifting hard and it still didn’t seem right but we have warranty so we figured we would just keep driving it until something really happened to it.

Well, no big surprise but when Kevin was driving back from Southeast Texas in the pouring rain the transission acted like it fell out of gear. When he hit the gas pedal again it started making a loud buzzing noise, he then stopped at a gas station and it was leaking transmission fluid. He found a dealership and decided to take his chances to drive there and then got a hotel for the night. The next morning the dealership said they didn’t work on transmissions so he had to go to San Angelo, Texas to a different dealer which was about 50 miles away. He made the choice to try drive there even with all the issues, he was about 5 miles from the dealership and then he broke down completely. He then coasted onto the service road and had to call GM roadside assistance. The tow truck towed him to the All American Chevrolet of San Angelo after about an hour wait. He then ended up at a dealership that had one of twelve master mechanics in the entire USA working there. The mechanic at this dealership worked long hours to be sure everything was done and the manager was super accommodating to Kevin during all of this.

After the truck arrived at the dealership they said they couldn’t look at it till the afternoon or the next morning. The dealership dropped him off at the airport because it was the only place that would rent him a truck as he had the trailer with him. But, to his dismay, the rental companies there wouldn’t rent a truck that could tow the trailer. After, hours of us calling around I finally found him a Uhaul dealer that would rent a truck he could pull the trailer back with him. The only problem was the truck had to be back in 3 days and at this point, he was an 8-hour drive from where we were staying in Elephant Butte, NM. That meant he had to pull the trailer back to New Mexico and get the Uhaul truck back in less than 3 days.

The next morning which was Tuesday the dealership pulled the transmission for inspection and discovered that there were major parts broken that would be back ordered for at least 2 months. They made the decision as, we were from Canada and this is our only vehicle they would replace the entire transmission with a new one. Although this is not normal for them to do this on warranty they made an exception for us. They ordered a new transmission and had hoped it would be there Wednesday or Thursday and have it back together for late Thursday evening, which seemed hard to believe. Kevin then made a plan to come back Thursday as the Uhaul truck had to be back by then, although we didn’t expect the truck to be done that day as it was a big job. Kevin called the dealership they said it wouldn’t be ready Thursday. As he was walking to find a hotel the dealership called back saying they would have it ready by 6:00 pm. He just hung out around town and headed to the dealership later in the afternoon and sure enough, 6:00 o’clock on the noise they had the truck ready.

I’ll close todays blog by saying how grateful I am for timing on everything. What are the chances the one dealership Kevin went to had only 1 of 12 master machanics that was willing to work overtime to get our truck fixed? It seems this entire trip was all about timing. When we went through BC in Canada his family he hadn’t seen or talked to in years let us stay at there place. When I went through the boarder crossing the agent was more then helpful getting me through with the large 5th wheel. I could go on and on about timing and how it all just lined up perfectly for us and our family.