Ah, but that breeze turned out to be a dirt devil. Without boring you to death with numbers and ratios, let's just say that a truck can pull a defined weight that includes both its weight and the weight of the RV. If you have too much weight, you are not safe. The manufacturers choose to bury these numbers in manuals and placquards shrouded in secret code words. After I searched the manual, I finally found the gross weight our truck could handle, 20,500 lb. What!? That can not be correct, our old truck could pull 25,000. 😁 Panic! What do we do now?
In the ensuing confusion, a little voice in my head kept saying where are the diesel numbers. Hey, where are the diesel numbers? Well, these are the only ones in the manual. The weight master suggested we go to the dealer and ask for a print out of the weights for our VIN number as errors can and do occur. So, we dropped our rig in a parking spot and headed, yep, back to Phoenix and the dealer. All along the way, the little voice kept saying, we can't buy another truck, please there must be a mistake. Once there, we were given a printout that had figures for our truck but kept referencing a diesel supplement. Oh no, it can't be, but there it was in the glove box a smaller book called, yep Diesel Supplement with a different set of numbers that were much higher.
Red faced and feeling stupid, we hit the road again back to Congress. As I write, we are relaxing with the girls, having a cool brew and reflecting on the events of the day. If only...seems to be the phrase of the evening. I hope we learned a lesson so that when the next "event" occurs we step back and think carefully before letting panic set in. But no matter, tomorrow will dawn bright and clear and we will hit the road, ready to see what lies beyond the hill.
