Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

I’ve had and or driven two different brands of truck and I absolutely hate taking a truck to the repair shop, any repair shop. I take my truck to the dealer for anything bigger than an oil change and every time I get the truck back I feel taken advantage of and sorry I had it worked on and not sure if the problem was really fixed. It doesn’t matter what brand, you can hear repair horror stories about any brand.

You would think a dealership would be a dependable place to have your truck worked on. They would service their brand and stand behind any work any other dealership does, because they all belong to the same corporation. Not so much. The concept of franchises and dealers that are “independently owned and operated” make everyone blame the “other guy”.

I’ve tried building a relationship with the shop in near my house. All that does is save me money on motel rooms. I’ve tried to take my truck to the same dealer I bought it from, that doesn’t work as well as you think it should. Thanks to different departments that have become their own profit centers, the Sales department is different from Service and Parts. Sales has no influence over the Service department, because if the salesman even remembers you, it’s a different department and not his job.

If you have to get major work done on the road, away from home in a strange city, good luck. I’ve had really good experiences and really, really bad experiences on the road at dealers and even worse at truck stops.

It’s so bad that Freightliner’s new Cascadia is advertised as being low maintenance because of a technician shortage. That would be great, but when you really need some major work done you usually need it right away. Most shops I’ve gone to, it’s days before they can even look at your truck, that doesn’t include working on it or ordering parts.

I would switch to the absolutely ugliest and most uncomfortable truck in the world if I knew I could depend on a service department that was honest and considered one owner operator as important as their big fleet contracts. At the very least didn’t put my problem on hold while they took care of “more important customers”. A truck that still had a decent warranty, (didn’t warranties used to be 300k and 3 years or is my alzheimers kicking in early?) decent drivers waiting room, and talked to you like your older than 3. I may not be a mechanic, but I’m not an idiot either. And someone that stood behind their work instead of blaming the same problem on something else and not the fact that they screwed up. I don’t mind mistakes as long as people admit it and make an effort to correct it instead of lying.

A corporation where ONE person was responsible. If I had shoddy work (Okay, a simple honest mistake) done at one shop, I could go to the same dealer across the country and have it fixed again and someone stood behind that instead of a bunch of people pointing their fingers at someone else.

Is that asking too much? Am I being too cynical? Is it the new age of Customer Service? Or after spending over 100 thousand dollars on ONE purchase every three or four years, I shouldn’t expect to be treated at least like a human being instead of an unlimited cash register? Or is it just me?