Next came the Truck Camper

[JohnHarrelson]

The brand new 1977 Chevy van was nice but it had monthly payments and did not leave us enough money to actually enjoy life so we got rid of it and bought a 2cd hand Chevy PU.

and we bought, paid cash, for a new but cheap cab-over slide-in truck camper that had nothing inside but a hand pump sink and a table with bench seats ..
no bathroom/toilet … no kitchen ... no furnace ... etc.. and we had to supply our own buckets for fresh/grey water under the sink.

Our first trip was a nightmare, the truck felt like it was running on three cylinders (might have been?) and we were constantly stressed out worrying it was going to breakdown any second.. but we finally made it to Spokane, 2500 miles away.

About a week after arriving we woke up one morning to find the truck with camper gone from the driveway. When we called the police to report it stolen, we were told it was not stolen but repossessed.. ?!

How could that be ?? ... we had automatic payments directly from our checking account to make payments..  

Come to find out that because we had left the state of NC without asking permission from Wachovia Bank first, the bank decided to repo our truck.

We had never heard of such a thing, but Wachovia bank just laughed at us when we called and asked why.. said it was in our loan contract that we were not allowed to leave the state where the vehicle was financed without the bank's permission. 

Several years later we heard Wachovia bank went out of business .. I don't know who absorbed them, some other bank I guess.

We managed to get the camper back from the repo company and then sold it..  to have enough money for our next "camper" to travel around America in. 
I'll show it to you next post.. 

 

So anyway... here is the PU truck and camper we had for a short time.. a very short time.
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[Co33]

wow! so you made payments and they still repo it!? you would think they would at least have worked with you? how was the second truck and camper you got?

 

[Mandolyn]

I hate banks. Finally stopped using them. And it was Wells Fargo Bank that bought them out. Better luck with your next vehicle!

 

[tx2sturgis]

I assume they knew you were traveling outside North Carolina because of credit card statements?

Watch-over-ya Bank.

Jeeze....banks and all other agencies are supposed to recognize the other states. 

If their headquarters were in a different state, did you tell them not to move your money to any other location?

I would have!

When I was in high school, one of my part time weekend jobs was working for a vehicle recovery outfit, with a small tow-truck attachment on a dually pickup. We snatched a LOT of vehicles between 2 and 5 AM. Most were local, some were from out of state....but these were people who defaulted on the loan for months...and deliberately were avoiding repossession by taking the vehicles out of state...hundreds of miles away. 

Often the tip-off to the lien-holder was the money trail...credit card transactions for gas and motels along the route of the target vehicle. 

We just grabbed the easy ones...sometimes the owners, once they knew repossession was imminent, would jack the car up, take off the wheels, and place it on cinderblocks....seen that many times.

I personally never got shot at, but the truck actually had a few bullet holes and dents from shotgun lead in it. 

I should have been getting 'hazard pay'!!!

 

[QinReno]

I hate banks. Finally stopped using them. And it was Wells Fargo Bank that bought them out. Better luck with your next vehicle!

Better luck with your next bank too.

What a "gotcha". When you travel, I guess it's best to not use the credit card from the same bank as you have the auto loan with. But an interesting story. I should check my loan docos and see if they say anything about traveling out of state in my van. Ya never know.

 

[tx2sturgis]

Texas is a big state, as is Alaska, and several western states.

Suppose you got a car loan in Texarkana Texas, and had such a stipulation. You could technically drive 5 miles east into Texarkana Arkansas, and be in violation of the terms, but you could drive 800 miles west to El Paso and be fine under the terms of that loan.

Very weird.

 

[QinReno]

bank peon: "Well Mr CEO, we gave him a loan for $25,000, and then he left the state and moved 5,000 miles away to Alaska, and as it's an RV we have no idea where he might be camping either. Alaska is a big state".

bank CEO: "You're fired".

Is it more difficult to repossess a vehicle when it's been moved out of state? Probably involves a lot more paperwork.