Tiny Living WITH Big ThingsPart 3
By Amy Callaghan
The hardest part of minimizing our life was the ‘doing it’ part. I pride myself in the lack of discipline to commit to anything (other than my career and
husband, he’s cute af). It’s a lot easier to be complacent and comfortable than it is to get out of one’s bubble of security. We had paid for our tiny
home (2014 Bighorn 3855FL, google it) with no way of moving it off the lot. And now came the lesson on the pains of procrastination.
FACT: We knew that our home weighed 12,000 pounds dry (meaning it weighed that much with NOTHING in it).
KIND OF FACT: We estimated our worldly possessions, adding up to another 2,000 pounds (we guessed on that number).
The joke of the situation was that we only wanted to spend no more than fifteen thousand dollars for the truck! Anyone who has bought, or thought
about buying a truck for hauling, you should get the funny part. We were bonkers to think that amount would be enough to get the vehicle we
needed for hauling our “tiny” lives around. We agreed on increasing our truck budget to twenty five thousand dollars.
Back to the insane amount of research and YouTube tutorials. Learning from other people’s mistakes had become our pastime at this point (I highly
recommend taking the time if you’re as gung-ho as we were, get your poison of choice and full steam ahead!).
I was oblivious to the concept of GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating). In a nut shell, all vehicles have a maximum weight capacity set by the
automaker. That’s a thing? Reading further, I learned why you don’t want to overload any vehicle. Reason being: the vehicle may be able to go, but
it won’t be able to stop safely. Engine and transmission ratios are also important to know the correct vehicle you need for the job. My husband and I
don’t know that much to pass on anything relevant other than the higher the number for the ratios, the better. However, the GVWR felt like the most
substantial evidence that we knew nothing, other than the aforementioned facts.
With more important information in our brain holes, we proceeded to investigate what older truck had the highest GVWR and lowest price. We would
see a truck for sale and after a search of specifications, another X on the list.
After a few agonizing days scouring the interwebs, we had leads on 3 different trucks. All Dodge Ram 3500s, years ranging from 1998-2006. The
first two trucks, HA another joke in itself. Combined they had almost two hundred MILLION miles and horrible condition. Third was not quite the
charm, but I think the urgency of the situation got the best of us. Visibly it looked in great condition and ran superbly, and the odometer read one
hundred forty thousand miles. The guy finally admitted to Robyn that they believed the odometer had been tampered with, so they reduced the price
from twenty thousand dollars to sixteen thousand.
With room in the budget and a truck ready for hauling, it almost felt like winning the lottery. Until 3 days later. It wouldn’t turn over! It sounded like a
normal start process, but without the vroom to signify victory. We had it towed off to the dealership and it turned out that the fuel pump was bad. We
had financial room for something like this to happen, so we had them fix it.
Two weeks later, we got the truck back. Started right up, everything seemed in order and they even took care of all the recalls. It was really
happening, we were ready to pick up our home that weekend!
Two days before picking up our home (insert Sam Kinison scream), IT WOULDN’T START! Robyn went back to the dealership and spoke to the
mechanic. He believed it was the fuel pump regulator now?! We NEEDED this truck to retrieve our home in Myrtle Beach by the next morning. With
no rental options available, the mechanic gave us a can of spray that’s least likely to cause “runaway” (it was equivalent to starting fluid, but less
likely to cause your engine to blow up, in which you runaway).
We now had the vroom that signified victory, and we were off to get our home…
16 TYBEE BEACHCOMBER | MAY 2018