The night of the break down, Ryan emailed his friend Trevor who manages the local repo lot. Trevor arranged to have the Jeep towed back to Saginaw by 10am the following morning. He charged me $20 for freezing his driver’s nuts off. Fair deal.
Ryan called, waking me up from amnesia dreams in which I drove all over the country care free. He said to get ready so we could go to the lot and get the full report. It was a safe bet though that I would need a new car. I got dressed and then made a preliminary call to my credit union. They told me they could take the car loan application over the phone, but I would still need to come in the next day with a check stub showing proof of employment. I told them “Thanks, that’s all I need for now.” and quickly hung up.
This credit union had processed loans on my last three cars. I thought they would be thrilled to have me back. “Mr. Gast, it’s an honor to give you our money. In fact if you apply today we’ll throw in free gas for a year and a Pepperidge Farm gift box.” Which would be awesome because I love cheese and crackers. But no, they want me to have a job. How unreasonable is that?
Ryan showed up and took me over to the lot. We went to see the resident mechanic Lowell who was running an engine on a vehicle with most of the garage doors shut. We made our way through a cloud of carbon monoxide to Lowell. Ryan then suggested opening another door before we all died. Lowell agreed it was probably a good idea.
I asked Lowell for the verdict on my Jeep. He confirmed Ryan’s first assessment. A piston ring blew and wiped out the whole engine. Game over. Ryan asked if he could put in a cheap motor so we could resell it for something. Lowell looked up the engine and placed a call to a dealer. He was told they only had one and it would be close to two grand. Lowell said he would call elsewhere and the dealer said “Good luck.” Not too encouraging.
We went over to see Trevor and I paid him the $20. He said he could sell me a SUV off the lot for about $10,000. I told him about my financing woes and asked if I could just put a new engine in the Jeep. His exact reply was “You’d be putting money in a dead horse.” At 200,000 miles it was only a matter of time before the transmission and back end dropped out, sinking me another $7000 into it. At this point the walls of the office began to close in on me.
The rest of that day is fuzzy. Once I told Ryan he still needed to get gas. He asked if I remembered when we stopped at the gas station in Carrolton twenty minutes earlier. It became clear at that point that I wasn’t accomplishing anything and raised the white flag. Take me home.
The next day I awoke with a new sense of determination. I went through my credit folders and found a letter from a bank to my LLC. They were offering $100,000 in equipment lease credit, but I never followed up for lack of need. I called them and spoke to a man named Roman. He asked me a few questions about my business and I responded with my well practiced generic answers. He looked up my LLC on Dunn and Bradstreet, saw the 80 Paydex score and said I was approved for the $100K. The clouds parted and the sun began to shine.
That is until the next day, when Roman emailed to inform me that the credit department was declining my application. An explanation would be in the mail. Haven’t received the letter yet, but I imagine it will be something along the lines of a company policy against financing deadbeats.
And now I face a world without money for wheels.