This time we hired movers to load in FL and unload in MA. Although we did unload some stuff in PA for my wife as she is still working in northern DE at this time. Our FL packers were great and setup the whole front of the truck to be stuff going through to MA and the back being accessible for what was being unloaded in PA.
Unfortunately I did not take any pictures of the loaded truck or with the trailer attached. But we towed Cagalli Yula for the whole trip on a car carrier (no leaving wheel on the ground with a rear wheel drive vehicle).
Actually talking about the truck... (sometimes I take pictures of labels on a vehicle so I can look it up for future reference...)
Unlike our prior rental from Budget (when we moved from DE to FL) the Penske has really well working AC, USB audio input, cruise control, and a CD player. These features made for a much better long trip. It also helped that we were only bringing one vehicle with us this time, and it was being towed, so we could swap drivers on just the truck.
The cab sits pretty low for a 22 foot truck and I think it helped put us in a more comfortable driving position visibility wise than if it had been mounted significantly higher.
There was ample space for our belongings during the move. A 22 foot truck may have been overkill.
The gauge cluster from a normal seating position for my wife and I was terrible and you could not see a lot of things.
But if you leaned forward, a lot, you could see everything you might want or need to.
Steering was ridiculously over boosted and there was no feedback of any sort. But that is probably both to be expected and a good thing with something this big and heavy.
We rented a diesel because of wanting both the size and the fuel economy while towing / hauling. Unfortunately I have not spent the time to figure out our fuel economy for the trip.
I did not notice this until after we unloaded my Subaru BRZ but apparently this had at times been spewing a lot of exhaust soot, so much so that I wish I had covered the towed car. But the C-Quartz treatment held up well and with a thorough wash it was good as new.
Visibility out of the cab, looking forward, to the sides, and using the mirrors was not bad.
The vehicle is very wide though and I did not have a good sense of where the right side of the vehicle was while driving at all times.
Turning is what should be expected, especially with a trailer. We needed a good amount of room.
The suspension was very truck like. I think on some bridges we hit some sort of resonance in terms of the joints because it got extremely bouncy.
One thing we did not like was the utter lack of upper body support our bench seat had. Captain's chairs are much more comfortable for long trips like this.
But one advantage of this bench is that it had a good amount of clearance between it and the cab floor. We were able to put both cats, in their carriers, under the bench. And with the engine / road noise we did not hear their unhappy mewling (if they were) most of the trip. Only on really big bumps.
All said and done we were significantly happier with this rental than the prior mentioned one from Budget but probably would have preferred captains chairs and perhaps a few more usable cup holders.
I cannot say that either of us are keen on driving our own moving truck again. We both felt pretty beat up after this trip. The cab ride was so bouncy we both hit absolutely ridiculous step counts on our FitBits, whereas when we normally drive a car (or the BRZ which has a relatively stiff suspension) we get nothing. It would have been nice if there was less soot left on the BRZ, but they may have been just our truck rather than the fleet as a whole.
When we were in PA we used a U-Haul Ford Transit to make a trip to our storage unit. It worked just as well as before.
I apologize for the photo quality but I just used my cell phone for these.
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