The Scooter Saga Continues...

My scooter is now in Maryland. Dang it. Let me explain...

Using a cool internet site called uship.com, I hired the lowest bidder to ship my scooter from Indiana to Texas. It was a small "Mom and Pop" type shipper with a girl handling the front desk and the guy driving the truck. There were many positive feedback comments for this guy, and just a few negative or neutral, but the overall impression I got was OK. For the price, I figured it was worth a shot. I paid him half of the shipping fee via Paypal.

"Howie" came on the day he said he would, and Mom surreptitiously wrote down all the identifying numbers on his truck "just in case." He carefully loaded the scooter, and I figured he'd be showing up last weekend sometime. Mom had noticed that, rather than using a truck with the name of his business, he was using a Penske rental truck. Hmmmm. Not a good sign.

I called a week later and left a message, saying that I needed to know when he'd be here so that I could be waiting, cash in hand. Amazingly, he called me right back and told me that there was a problem. He'd had a heart attack, and was getting ready to go into the hospital. "Wow, that's terrible!! I hope you'll be OK...um...where's my scooter?" He said that, due to his heart attack, he had kept the rental truck out longer than expected, and they had come and gotten it. With the scooter inside. And here's the rental company's name and phone number.

So I called the number, and spoke with Jim at Cumberland Towing/Penske Rental in Maryland. He asked what I'd been told, and when I related Howie's story, he simply replied, "That guy is full of dog doo doo. He owes us a ton of money for this rental truck, more for trucks rented from Uhaul and more from Hertz."

Oh. Crap. The guy was making money shipping things for folks, but not paying for the rental trucks. He's now got federal warrants out for his arrest, and my scooter is still in Maryland. The good news is that Jim carefully cataloged the stuff in the truck, and has been working with me on getting my scooter released from the state police, and is now keeping it safe for me on his premises. Now, I just need to get a decent shipper who will actually get the thing here...but not one who's headed for jail.

So there you have it. It's unfortunate that I picked the wrong guy to bring the scooter, but I'm glad that it's safe and sound. It will eventually make its way here. I'll keep you posted.