This is how they fuck you

Joe Pesci plays the annoying little guy in the Lethal Weapon series of movies. In the third one his most memorable rant is about "how they fuck you". It's always something, he insists. If it's not the cell phones then it's the soda machies, but it's usually the cell phones. They cost too much to begin with and then they cut off your call and force you to call back, costing you more minutes - that's how they fuck you. Pesci is beyond convincing that it's just a matter of a bad signal area. It's nothing short of a weasely little way to get one over on you and drain your wallet.

I feel the same way about rental trucks.

You see, I'm not a stingy person who can't stand to part with her money under any circumstance. I'm a full believer in "you get what you pay for", but when it comes to moving, you don't get what you pay for, you pay for whatever you can get and still keep your shirt - not even a good shirt, the crappy one with the hole in the armpit that hasn't fit you since you shrunk it 2 summers ago and now only sees the light of day when you're involved in some sort of activity that involves getting dirty and the possibility of ruining any article of good clothing.

I don't have a lot of stuff, in fact I have so little stuff that I don't need even the smallest of small moving vans. I only need a cargo van. Problem: cargo vans are practically never rented one way so if you're moving anywhere outside your current home's reasonable driving radius you're screw-topped worse than a bottle of Big House Red. Since I don't have enough stuff to fill a 10' moving truck (and that's the smallest they have) it would be a big waste to rent one, but for shits & giggles I checked it out. You know what I found? The range of prices quoted to me went from $1,400 - outrageous - to $2,600 - preposterous. No joke. That's how they fuck you.

Plan B (courtesy of the man, who is much smarter than me in times of immediate stress [and probably most of the time, now that I think about it]) consists of renting a mini van and packing it all in. It makes sense, and it's much less expensive - $600. We're going to have one hell of a road trip as we make our way to FL. It should be fun. Well, it should be fun and it will either be fun or brutal. I'm putting my money on the fun. Loves me that smarty man.