A Trip to the Auction

My buddy Isaac recently sold his 2004 Ford F-350 Super Duty King Ranch Dualie, he needed to replace it and was looking for a Dodge Ram 2500 4x4 Cummings. He asked me if I'd like to come along and check out Okoee, otherwise known as Manheim's Florida Auto Auction.

We head out Tuesday evening and get a room at the Best Western about 8 miles from the auction site. Everything was pretty nice, the room was recently remodeled and pretty nice considering the $39.95 room rate for a double. In the morning we head out for the Auction, get registered and start printing out reports of what trucks were available for that date. The list was pretty disapointing, only 5-6 trucks that fit the description of what he wanted. 2 or 3 Fords and 2 Dodge trucks and some GMC that he really wasn't even interested in.

We head out to the giant parking lot and try to locate the cars and trucks we marked down from the printed reports. Over 6000+ cars and trucks were listed on the sheets, ranging from your daily drivers like Ford Contour and Focus to upper end Luxury Lexus and BMW to super high end Ferrari's and Aston Martins. To bad I couldn't take any pictures.

We found a 2004 Dodge Ram 2500 4x4 Diesel that was lifted and on 35in Pro Comp tires. Isaac fell in love. We booked the car out at around $28,500 and managed to buy it for $25,600. Isaac was esctatic.

Until, we drive home. Around 30 miles into the trip home during a transition on I4 construction the front wheels violently started hopping. Luckily, I was following and put my hazards on and Isaac was able to save the truck and get it stopped on the side of I4 without hitting anything or anyone. We look over the truck and can't see anything wrong with it. We continue on driving a bit more conservatively at 60 and again it happens during more construction this time on a bridge.

So a typical drive from Orlando home would be around 2 and a half hours, this one turned into a 7 hour ordeal. That's a long time to be stuck in a car.