Trial by Fire

A year and a half after our trailer was stolen, I was awakened in the wee hours of the morning to the phone ringing. I heard Brock mumble something on the phone. After he hung up, he nonchalantly began putting on his clothes. When I asked him where he was going, he replied, “I’m going out to the parking lot because the truck is on fire.” “What?” I exclaimed. Brock was already on his way out the door.

I was awake then! We had been trying to sell our truck for a few months now. The box truck was always in the shop for one thing or another. I almost didn’t want to sell it to anyone in its current condition. I certainly only expected to break even if we sold it. I had even made the comment that I wish it would just fall in the river so we could be done with it. Now, apparently it just burned up! What about our equipment? Had it burned up as well just after we had replaced everything that was stolen? These thoughts ran through my head as I hurriedly dressed.

I ran out to the parking lot to find the firemen popping open the “burglar proof” padlock we had purchased for the back of the truck with bolt cutters. “I think all your stuff is okay,” he was saying to Brock.

After I realized our equipment was okay, I simply said, “Hmm.” Then, I thought to make sure they didn’t think it was insurance fraud, I needed to seem more upset. The “For Sale” sign on the side of the truck did look a little fishy.

The fire started in the engine. It engulfed the entire cab and began inflaming the wall that separated the cab from the box when the fire department was able to put it out. There was much smoke damage in the box of the truck. Fortunately, our equipment was protected by the road cases we had purchased before.

Brock had been eying these bigger, nicer trucks. The one he really wanted was a Freightliner truck with an RV conversion on it. This would be a more comfortable ride and could handle a lot of miles.

It was going to take some money for a down payment to get into this new truck. We decided $3,000 would do. However, after saving for over 6 months before, we only had $1,200. Within 48 hours of the truck burning, we had a total of $3,000. After 6 weeks of desperately trying to find financing, a company gave us a great deal on financing with NO MONEY DOWN. I thought that maybe we could use the $3,000 we had raised on the taxes, but when we finalized everything for our new truck, we saw that there was an additional closing cost that we did not know existed. The amount was $3,000 which we had, but I did not know how we were going to afford the taxes.

We thought we were going to need to pick up the new truck up north somewhere. The dealership was in Boston and the manufacturer was in Indiana. Someone had been borrowing our truck from the factory, so we were going to pick it up from wherever they were at the time. Of all the places in the country that it could be, our truck was in Pasedena, TX which was 45 miles from our house.

In the meantime, our insurance company settled with us for the fire. From a truck that we would be delighted to break even on, we received an extra $3,742. You don’t have to pay your deductable whenever fire is involved, so we got the full amount.

A few days after we received the insurance check in the mail, we went to pay the taxes on the new truck. The girl at the desk was nervous to tell us how much money it would cost to pay it. She wrote the amount on a piece of paper and slid it across the counter to us. It read “You owe $3,740.” We even had $2 extra!


The burnt truck






Our new truck