Let me throw out something that may seem obvious when I say it. I know everybody probably thinks it, but I’m not sure how many of us actually do it.
I joke about the shed of miracles. 71 now (actually on Wednesday), starting out in a hardware store & following my father around working on the commercial real estate we owned, working at a home center in college, as a plumber, graduating as an engineer, managing engineering in big manufacturing, etc., etc. etc. - I have every tool you can imagine, some of them I probably have a half a dozen. And extra parts? I’ve got more hose clamps, nuts, bolts, etc. probably than that hardware store had, and I probably have enough extra Ranger at Lincoln parts in the SOM to build a couple extra vehicles.
But none of that does you much good when you leave it all at home, huh? Yep, call me a dummy! As a matter of fact, not a BS in dummying, I must at least have a masters in dummying!
When I went to Carlisle Truck Nationals in 2024, 12hr drive, I got stuck twice (combined eight or nine hours lost plus a $$ hotel room) over wheel bearings, one on the truck and one on the trailer axles. I probably only had 20 or 30 extras sitting on the shelf at home. In 2025, Carlisle Ford Nationals, I popped a heater hose and didn’t have any extra hose clamps nor anything I could use as a coupling. Sat in a truckstop for three hours while they got me the part, fixed it in 10 minutes. That was four hours into the trip. Well, about nine hours into the trip plus that three or four hours sitting around, at about 1030 at night in the middle of nowhere, I cut the hose again. When I had coupled it together, it moved a little bit and it was rubbing one of the pulleys which burned a hole in it. Guess what? No extra hose, nothing to couple it with, and no extra hose clamps. And yes, I know you could bypass the heater, I did that temporarily to get to the truck stop, but it didn’t work the second time. So it only took me 20 hours to get to Carlisle. And let me add and emphasize, a truck full of Mexican construction workers had a flat tire on their trailer and pulled up next to me on the entrance ramp to fix their tire. I was an exhausted old fart, and they found something in the trailer to use as a coupling, they had a couple hose clamps, and they put it together for me and didn’t charge me a nickel. I kind of pray for everybody, some more than others, but I’m pretty sure I prayed enough to get these guys a year off purgatory when they go. Great people.
So my long-winded point is, don’t forget the basics. I don’t care if you just changed your belts and your hoses and whatever, a box about the size of a 12 pack will hold the old parts, extra bearings, hose clamps, a few feet of hose, a few feet of wire, etc., you get the idea. Don’t think of what will break. Look under the hood, look underneath, think of the wheels, and just bring a little bit of this in that that you’ll probably never use it 1 million years, remembering that we don’t have any control over when that million years starts and ends, but it will probably be while you’re on the road far from home. And do the same thing on tools. Not just ratchets and needle, nose and pliers, bring the snap ring pliers, bring the torx drivers. Again, just pick out what might make sense and put it in a box the size of a 12 pack and it might save the day.
As always, just my two cents. And don’t forget the prayer part before during and after, I know it helps because He looks over us always.
