After a solid year of service, our truck Squeaky gave up the ghost. It had to happenĀ sometime, right?
I’ll count us lucky that it wasn’t catastrophic in any way, shape or form. No one was hurt, or stranded even. After a week without driving it, I got in the truck one day in April and found the brakes had gone. A (careful) trip up the hill to the repair shop confirmed that (a) the brakes really were shot and (b) it would cost way more to repair them than seemed right to put into a truck where so many other things could go at any time.
So we left Squeaky at the garage until we could get a car donation service to tow it away.
I don’t really want to do the math on whether we could have rented trucks for the year and change that we had the Dakota and come out ahead – it would be close, I’d bet, and it was quite convenient in a lot of ways.
After a little thinking and much Craigslist searching, Dina & I decided we wanted another truck, and the one we got is simultaneously an upgrade and a downgrade:
In the plus column, this Mazda B2300 is newer (by more than a decade!), more efficient (by a factor of two or so!), in better shape (no more nasty looks from other drivers on the road as we smoke on by), easier to fit in our cozy little neighborhood, and it came with a bed cover (fancy!). But the carrying capacity is quite a bit less than the Dodge – the bed isn’t nearly as long, and it can’t haul as much weight (though I think we never really pushed that spec on the old truck). We may fashion or buy a lumber rack to make up for the shorter bed.
Now accepting suggestions for names!