The Long Long Drive

I have wanted a real heavy duty tow truck for a long time. The $150,000 to $200,000 price tag always kept me from being able to get one.

About a month ago I found this truck and even though it is older, it only has 36,000 miles on it. The only problem was that it was located in Bangor Maine, some 2,200 miles away!

Traci and I flew to Maine last Thursday and drove the truck home in four days. We drove 600 miles a day in an unloaded heavy duty truck. Needless to say it was a bouncy ride. We had many laughs as we ping-ponged between the seat and the roof!

The truck ran great and I think it is going to be an excellent tow truck for "The Long Long Trailer".
Over time, I will spruce up the truck and paint it black to match the trailer. The truck is not perfect  but it is great shape for what we paid for it.

It is a standard shift 10 speed, non-synchronized transmission so I had some on the job training driving it home. I can pretty much drive most things but I had never driven and non-synchronized road truck transmission before. There is definitely an art to driving these things. You may have heard a term called "double clutching" but probably do not know what that really means. Double clutching is a process that must be used to shift the gears of transmission like this. You first must push in the clutch to shift the transmission to neutral. Then, once it is neutral, you must let out the clutch to spin the gears inside the transmission so they will synchronize with the output shaft gear. Then push the clutch in again and push the shift lever into gear. If you do everything exactly right the gear shifts, if you mess up, the grinding begins until you do the process again. Panic and you will never get it into gear! Been there, done that!

Downshifting is even more fun because you have to add throttle to spin up the gears inside the transmission between shifts. After 2200 miles, I became pretty proficient at driving the truck. I am sure pulling "The Long Long Trailer" will add a layer of stress but I am sure I will get it.

If I had not had my trusty and very capable navigator, I would not have made it home. Traci is amazing putting up with my dream chasing and riding in this lumber wagon, ha!

The dream is really coming together! Some day, we are going to start going rounds in a "real" drag race!

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