U-Haul woes
I was driving a U-Haul truck from Halifax to Toronto for a friend of mine last month while he was away on his honeymoon. When we hit the Quebec/Ontario border, we got pulled over by the MTO for a mandatory inspection.
The truck failed inspection, because a plug in the rear tire was leaking. A plug in the sidewall of the tire, no less. (the inspector, and the independant repair guy, both said "You just don't plug a sidewall... with the constant flex on sidewall of the tire, the plug can't hold properly."
I had to use my cell phone to get the required assistance. I spent $13.00 in airtime. They are refusing to refund this amount. However, there is one detail they seem to have overlooked... this is a result of deliberate choice to cheapen out on a repair. The tire should have been replaced... they tried to patch it instead, in an inherantly unsafe manner. (the inspector said "If this plug had let go while you were on the 401... yikes.")
To quote a line from "the American President" when referring to someone's FBI file, "but this file's got art." I got art. Detailed photo records, showing the shoddy repair, and identifying the truck in question.
Note to any U-Haul staff reading this... I am awaiting a response to my present inquiries before I post them. It's your move.
The truck failed inspection, because a plug in the rear tire was leaking. A plug in the sidewall of the tire, no less. (the inspector, and the independant repair guy, both said "You just don't plug a sidewall... with the constant flex on sidewall of the tire, the plug can't hold properly."
I had to use my cell phone to get the required assistance. I spent $13.00 in airtime. They are refusing to refund this amount. However, there is one detail they seem to have overlooked... this is a result of deliberate choice to cheapen out on a repair. The tire should have been replaced... they tried to patch it instead, in an inherantly unsafe manner. (the inspector said "If this plug had let go while you were on the 401... yikes.")
To quote a line from "the American President" when referring to someone's FBI file, "but this file's got art." I got art. Detailed photo records, showing the shoddy repair, and identifying the truck in question.
Note to any U-Haul staff reading this... I am awaiting a response to my present inquiries before I post them. It's your move.
posted by Christian Conservative @ 3:04 p.m.
6 Comments:
At Tue Aug 01, 05:15:00 p.m. EDT,
Anonymous said…
U-Hauls are death traps!
At Tue Aug 01, 09:24:00 p.m. EDT,
Blake Kennedy said…
I'm surprised anybody would even attempt to plug a sidewall. This also opens a secondary concern, because my understanding is you have to be a licensed tire tech to even work on tires that big. So they should obviously know better, or, U-Haul is not using properly licensed personnel to do its maintenance, which is even worse. Now, maybe this truck's tires aren't big enough to require certified guys to do it, but why not? After all, these guys must do a fortune in tire calls with major distributors every year and I'm thinking they're probably not even paying all that much, based o that volume.
Sad to hear.
At Wed Aug 02, 12:06:00 p.m. EDT,
CraigFunk said…
U-Haul sucks. I was forced to use U-Haul to move from the U.S. to Canada because they where the only ones that made a cross border drop-off easy. At the time I could not use any other moving company because I would have had to return the truck to the U.S. Also, thanks to 9-11 I could not afford the $15K moving fees the professionals charged.
I won't go into the details of my ordeal here because it will take at least 20K of ASCII text; maybe I will write it up someday on my blog.
The short version: Thank God I survived!
I should have given more attention to the warnings on the internet, and just paid the $15K for professionals to do the move. At the time, if one typed UHAUL into google, and hit the *I'M FEELING LUCKY* button you landed on the
dontusuhaul.com web page. That's how bad they are.
There is a reason why their motto is "American's moving adventure". No kidding!
At Wed Aug 02, 12:08:00 p.m. EDT,
CraigFunk said…
Opps, it should be "America's moving adventure".
At Thu Aug 03, 11:24:00 a.m. EDT,
Spitfire said…
yeah I think there was a W*Five episode about UHaul. After I saw that, I wouldn't use them EVER. I'm not surprised you were pulled over, they are targeting those trucks because 80% of them fail inspection. Not because standards are too high, but because they are genuinely are unsafe and shouldn't be on the road. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a class action lawsuit against the company, because they've screwed a lot of people. Good Luck!
At Tue Aug 08, 10:26:00 a.m. EDT,
Luke Coughey said…
If I understand correctly, U-Haul has put their best trucks in Ontario to counter the targetted inspections, yet, they still fail most of the time. Within the past few years, I have know of several U-Haul rentals by my peers and every one of them had problems. Their slogan should be, "U-Haul 'em to the junk yard!"
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