Breaking Even Isn’t Bad

When we bought our house back in 2016, it didn’t take us long to find out that just getting furniture delivered was incredibly expensive. Except for the soft items (couch, loveseat, recliners, mattresses), everything else we bought was second-hand, most of it antique. But no matter what we bought or where we bought it from, delivery charges ran from $50 to $75 per piece. That’s right, if we bought three items from a store, besides the cost of them, they wanted $150 to $225 to deliver them all to the same place. That was ridiculous and I wasn’t going to pay it.

Plan B was to rent a U-Haul trailer whenever we needed to bring something home, but we quickly ran into a problem because, as it turns out, U-Haul would not rent a trailer to be pulled by a Ford Explorer. Apparently, there were some lawsuits many years ago involving Explorers towing trailers and none of the local U-Haul dealers would even talk to us. So I started looking for used utility trailers on Craigslist, and in doing so, I found a nice low mileage 1999 Ford F-150 for sale at a good price. When we looked at it, Terry and I were surprised how nice it was. The original owner was an older gentleman who had passed away and his wife did not drive and just wanted it gone. We bought it, figuring that way we would have a truck when we needed it and to heck with delivery charges.

The truck served us well for five years, not only in bringing things home from the stores and hauling building materials,  but also going across the state twice to pick up the huge Glimakra looms that Terry bought and for taking my pontoon boat down to the boat launch and back. But for the most part, our daily driver was still the Ford Explorer, which we recently traded in on the new Laramie.

Earlier this year when I mentioned that I was going to order a new truck, one of our neighbors asked if I was interested in selling the F-150. At that time the prices on used vehicles had not skyrocketed as they have recently, and I told him I would sell it to him for just what I paid for it. He said whenever I was ready to part company with the truck to let him know. That day came yesterday and he paid us in cash.

I know that I could have listed it back on Craigslist and gotten even more money, because around here used pickups are worth their weight in gold. And even though it is a 1999, the truck still only had 91,400 original miles on it. But a deal is a deal and I honored the original price we had agreed upon. I figured what the heck? We used it for five years and got our money back out of it, and breaking even on a vehicle you have owned for that long isn’t bad.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Congratulations Barbara Bowers, winner of our drawing for an audiobook of Buck Fever, the first book in my friend Ben Rehder’s immensely popular Blanco County mystery series. If you’re not a fan of Ben’s books you have no idea what you are missing out on. Wacky characters, great humor, and superb writing. Give them a try. You won’t be disappointed. We had 34 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with U.S. addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – If someone gets mad at you for creating a boundary, consider it a good sign that the boundary was necessary.