 20060410 The Scout's here.
 The running joke amongst my friends is that I don't possibly have big enough muscles to own this truck. My next-door neighbor, Noah Kalina, photographed the parody. Aside, if the truck ever goes kaput, it will make a great prop. Noah brought his light kit out to the street and shot the Scout for an hour or so. It looks very neat in the setting of warehousey Williamsburg. Last Thursday morning, I received a phonecall from Dependable Auto Shippers, the company eBay recommended to transport my truck from Oklahoma to NYC. The guy on the phone told me the Scout would be delivered the next morning, 3 days early. It made me hyper, since this news culminated with the excitement of our book being released that day. A few hours later, I received a call from the shipper again -- but, this time, not such good news. The woman said that she's very sorry, but the truck had been damaged. "The cab blew off the truck, and it's lost somewhere on the highway." I asked her to send me pictures, and she did -- they were confused, the cab hadn't blown off (they didn't realize the Scout was part-pickup), but instead the roll-bar (keeps you safe when you flip over), which was bolted to the bed of the truck, was crushed and torn out, leaving a gaping hole in its place. There is no way it could have been 'blown off', as they suggested. More likely: it was smashed on the truck trailer when they were loading/unloading a car above. The worst part is that when I ordered the service, I declined the optional insurance ($250) after the sales person told me their damage rate is 'almost non-existent'. The process of the roll-bar being crushed also bent the frame of the truck out-of-whack leaving me with a body-repair bill of at least a thousand or two to fix it. DAS will only give me $150 -- and won't even refund me the cost of shipping the vehicle ($750). My contract with them protects them from incidental damage, but I think what happened to my truck falls under the category of gross negligence, which should qualify me for some more conciliatory liability coverage. I am just not sure how to move forward. Their original communications with me were clear that will not offer anything more than $150 -- and their customer service is abominable: several phonecalls have only led me to an voicemail box. I would hate to have to throw around the word "sue" because I think that would just be a massive waste of time and money for everyone involved. I hope they would simply take the high road and accept fault, but more likely I'll probably be left pissing and moaning about it. Still, I'm glad it's finally here. It's a total monster. I spent most of Sunday fixing the easy stuff like the door-lock mechanism and the window regulators. I need to find a mechanic in Brooklyn to help me with brakes, which are lousy. Vimeo: Ricky took a short clip of Pete and me driving up Kent Street. 7
Comments:
said... awesome. 2:35 PM Caitlin said... This photo could be on the cover of Scouts & Studs Magazine. If there were one. Really, it's an awesome photo. 6:07 PM said... that photo rules 8:33 PM Keith said... Dude that truck sounds so badass! 9:59 PM Scott Kidder said... Where are you going to park it? 10:09 PM John said... All you need now is Daisy (as in Duke). 7:40 AM Paul said... zach - you look pretty badass here, i take back the no muscles comment. 2:39 PM Post a Comment |
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 Hi, I'm Zach. I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana and graduated from Wake Forest. After college, I moved to Manhattan to get serious about a company I ran with friends. We sold it to Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp in 2006. I just wrapped up with a project I co-founded called Vimeo and left CV to focus on being a twenty-five year old. I have another blog called Copy and Taste, where I post about learning to cook. I live in Brooklyn now.  Del.icio.us My Flickr Me on Flickr Last.fm Linked in MySpace Netflix History Vimeo  Amir Blumenfeld Chris Bodenner Mareen Fischinger Fort Wayne Observed Nick Gray Hype Machine Jake and Amir Jakob Lodwick Oh My Rockness Jonathan Marcus Youngna Park Megan Scheminske Eliot Shepard Shorpy Signal vs. Noise Alex Soth Stereogum Ricky Van Veen Khoi Vinh Eugene Wyatt   Postal Skype SMS (via AIM) |