Entries from July 2009 ↓

Having been a horse owner for about three years now, I am finally starting to realize how valuable it would be to have my own horse trailer — and a truck with which to tow it.  It’s expensive and difficult to find someone trustworthy to trailer your horse for you, and if you need to move your horse often or on short notice, you can save yourself a lot of grief by having a truck and trailer.

One of the most important things though is having a truck that can safely pull a loaded horse trailer.  A full size truck is a requirement — I just can’t imagine a small truck hauling a horse trailer with two full-grown horses in it!  I personally don’t like American cars all that much, so I’d probably go for something like the Tundra, Toyota’s version of a full size truck.

It’s also important to make sure the truck is updated to handle the extra weight, if it didn’t come with a tow package.  This involves more than just mounting a hitch on the back of the truck.  A trailer and two horses add a lot of weight, which will put more pressure on your brakes, too.  For that reason, you’ll need special brakes that are designed for towing — something to keep in mind when shopping for Toyota Tundra parts for your truck.

You’ll also need to be sure that you keep your truck and trailer in good working order.  It’s best to always check everything out before towing a load, particularly if you haven’t used the trailer in a while.  Whether you are towing your horses or something else, it’s probably not something you want to risk losing in a trailer accident!

In about thirty days we will be taking our family overseas to London to visit some relatives.  Well, truth be told, it will be more of a vacation for us than just some family visit as we have never been over there.  All of us are excited and have been doing research on places to visit on our two week trip over there.

When we purchased the travel package, we were told that the trip was all-inclusive and that we didn’t need to do anything before the trip.  But after the phone call that I received from our travel agent tonight, I am not feeling so confident about the whole thing.

As it turns out, she phoned to let us know that their contract with the company that supplied their London rental cars had expired and therefore we didn’t have a car rental booked anywhere.  I guess I should have been happy that she had the courtesy to call, but that meant that now I need to find our own car.

So, I have been searching online for as many London car rentals outfits as possible, contacting them via email and hopefully one of them will have something that we can rent while we are there.  I just hope that this is the only difficulty that we face regarding this trip as we will be far away from home.

Have you ever bought a used car? If so, you know just how harrowing an experience it can be. I recently went shopping for used cars in Weatherford, Tx, my home town. And I have to say, compared to the four other times I’ve purchased a used vehicle, this time it was a sheer pleasure.

photo credit: TheTruthAbout

First, the car lots there were clean, spacious, and held an amazing inventory that would please even the most picky car buyer. Next, when it came to actually getting out of my car and walking the lot, like all the times past, I just knew I was going to be pounced on by the salesman up to bat.

Well, not this time. In fact, I was checking out cars for a good 25 minutes before I even got wind there were any sales people working that day. This was the perfect way to treat some one that came on the lot with their defenses up.

Perhaps I had that look on my face, but when I knew a few of the cars that interested me, from out of nowhere, a very friendly faced sales person was there inviting me into the air conditioned show room to chat about my needs.

It was truly refreshing to be treated like a valued potential customer and not just an easy mark.