I will start by saying I am very impressed with the service that we received from Penske Truck Rental. That is key because with what I am about to tell you is a very rare tale of how well a company can treat a customer. 

On Friday January 30th my father in law and myself went to Penske to rent a 26 foot moving truck to move my wife and my stuff from our Knoxville TN residence to our new Whites Creek residence. We got the truck with no issues, added my father in law as a driver, got the damage insurance (you’ll understand why later), a few moving blankets and a “smart cart” a.k.a. appliance dolly. 

We brought the truck back and started loading it up around 9:00am. We loaded and loaded and loaded some more and finally filled the truck around 6:30pm. We then got on the road and drove about an hour out of knoxville and stopped in Cooksville for a bite to eat, by this point it was around 7:30. We went in, ate and around 8:00 we went out and got back in the truck ready to leave. Turned the key and the truck wouldn’t start. My father in law who is a truck mechanic looked at the engine while I called the Penske repair number. Penske dispatched a road service mechanic to our location and said they would be there within an hour, so we waited in the truck. The guys from J & K Truck Repair showed up and after tinkering with the truck and called in an error code and diagnosed the problem as a faulty CAM sensor. I being a tech have no idea what that is. Regardless the guy then took the sensor and went back to his shop to see if he had a spare. We went into Hardees to wait while he was gone, after all it was very cold outside, snowing cold. While sitting my phone rang and it was penske telling me that the mechanic didn’t have the part. Oh the picture here was of the first repair man. Yes I said FIRST.

Anyways, so I’m on the phone and Penske offers to tow us and the truck fully loaded to our final destination about 150 miles away, back the truck to our door and allow us to unload. I thought “YES!” so we did that. This of course meant waiting about another hour for the wrecker to arrive. It neared 10:00pm at this point, I know because Hardees closed at 10pm and we were kicked out into the cold. The wrecker finally arrived around 10:30pm, hooked the truck up, my father-in-law and I climbed into the cab and off we went.

We arrived in Whites Creek, I have no idea what time it was, probably 1:00am, and the driver of the wrecker was faced with a HUGE challenge. His truck was around 35 feet or so, the Penske truck was around 30 feet which meant this driver had to back the truck up and turn it on a 2 lane road, into a driveway the width of a car and a half wide, without driving off the side of the road into a large ditch. I didn’t think he could have done it, but he did after a number of attempts…. Then the problem hit. He backed the truck up about 15 feet into the driveway and then had to stop because his wrecker was huge and would have hit the overhead power lines. At this point the driver said he would leave the truck where it was on the bottom of the driveway, leave the drive train (or whatever) disconnected and we put blocks under the wheels to prevent it from rolling. The wrecker then called for a smaller wrecker to come and push the truck up the hill.

At this point we were waiting for the smaller wrecker, it was probably around 3:00 before he arrived and was in a nice shiney truck, didn’t look like he had ever used it for any work.  He pulled up and asked what we needed and I said “we need the truck pushed up the hill and he responded by saying “that’s all?” To which I thought “Great!”. Well he got out of the truck, looked around and said I can do it…… Then he got back in the truck, backed in and stopped… Oh this isn’t good. He then said “I can’t do it, if I scratch the paint I’ll get in trouble.” He was talking about the many trees that lined the driveway. At this point I was a bit angry, after all I waited a long time for this guy to show up and then tell me “sorry.” He left, wouldn’t hook up the drive train (or whatever) so that we could activate the emergency brake and go ahead and unload the truck because remember at this point it was secured with wood blocks and the slightest movement could have sent it rolling down the hill. But he just left, no help at all.  

At this point I called Penske back and explained the problem and up until this point was very happy with the service Penske offerd. I mean I paid about $300 for the truck, they paid to have it towed over 120 miles which I know cost them over that, not to mention the other wreckers fees, etc. So I was happy with all they did without even being asked. So now I call and talk to the people and ask them “what am I supposed to do? I can’t move the truck, it doesn’t work. I can’t unload the truck, it isn’t secured and has no brakes. I can’t leave the house and go to a hotel, the truck is blocking the driveway, I can’t get clothes or an air mattress from the truck cause I’m afraid it will start rolling.” The lady on the phone put me on hold, sounded concerned so I waited. A few minutes later she got back on the phone and said a guy wanted to talk to me, so I said ok.

Then the foot went into the mouth and Penske screwed up. The guy said “we said we would tow the truck to your destination and we did that.” With attitude he said that. I had to explain to him that yeah maybe it was near the destination but I agreed to it being put into my driveway so I could unload it, at the current state it was not secure, it was blocking the entrance and exit and was still broken. He then smarted off saying “Penske isn’t responsible for trees, so we had no control over that last wrecker, and furthermore we won’t push a truck that heavy, loaded up a hill, we don’t do that.” To which I asked “why then did your company have me wait out in the cold over an hour for a wrecker to arrive for a service you don’t offer?” His response was “I don’t know.” I then explained the situation again and he offered to have the wrecker come back, and pull the truck out of the driveway and go park it on a side street a few miles away so we could get in and out of the driveway. Sure this doesn’t solve the issue of unloading it. And then I asked him if Penske would insure everything that was in the truck because it was a rural area and I wasn’t about to allow them to go park everything I own a few miles away in a back country area where anything could happen to it. They of course refused to insure everything.

Finally the guy took his foot out of his mouth and said he could call a local guy that normally has the part to come out and fix the truck, I thought “well theres a dandy idea.” So I agreed and about an hour later another mechanic arrived, took the engine cam sensor out said he didn’t have the part, (oh great) but started tinkering with the truck and found that a fuse was loose. He put it back in and said “I’ve seen this before on this model truck.” He then got into the truck, turned the key and it started. The guy then re-attached the drive train (or whatever) and asked if I wanted him to back the truck up the driveway to which I jumped with joy and said “Yes!!!” 

Now, I am impressed with Penske overall. I know they paid a lot of money to have the 2 wreckers and 2 mechanics come out. I do hope that the first mechanic who mis-diagnosed the problem first off didn’t get paid, and second off is no longer a penske mechnic. I mean if he noticed the fuse he would have saved Penske a ton of money. But he misdiagnosed it, and that caused Penske to take a lot of radical actions to make the situation right with the customer. Next, I want this ass of a manager who was the last guy I talked to who jumped into the problem that I started having the night before, and he decided around 3:00am when he just arrived at work to become involved and been an ass without considering what I’ve been through, I think that guy needs to be out a job. If it wasn’t for that one guy at Penske I would have zero complaints. Because Penske was a top notch company up until that point. They couldn’t control the truck breaking down, they couldn’t control the misdiagnostic from the first mechanic, but they could control their employee.  He dropped the ball and that will make me hesitant to rent from Penske again, if it wasn’t for him I would say 100% without a doubt choose Penske over Uhaul or the other truck rental companies. 

In the end, we finally got moved in. It was an adventure and I do think next time I will gladly pay a company to move us rather then load, drive and unload and face these issues. But I was glad Penske overall stepped up and handled the situation, yeah we hit a donkey in part of it, but even the donkey came to his senses and got the issue resolved. It is a relief to see companies still have customer service like this, It sure has been a long time since I was just amazed with service, especially when you consider how much of a loss they took on this whole thing.

Oh hey, fun fact! When we dropped the truck off we had to fill it with gas, mind you it was generally a 3 hour drive, around 220 miles total trip. We actually only drove around 60 miles (most of which was in our driveway!) and used 5 gallons of diesel! Guess that is one way to save gas, just have the dang thing towed everywhere!!!