Texas man takes video of U-Haul before driving the rental truck off the lot. They stick him with a $900 charge anyway

A Texas man filmed every ding and scratch on a rented U-Haul box truck before using it to move his family. He says he then was told at the return counter that he owed about $980 because the company's records said he'd driven 600 miles in less than a day. He says he put about 70 miles on it without leaving San Angelo. But the photo he took of the odometer as proof came out blank.

West Texas Grass Nerd (@westtexasgrassnerd) recently posted about his experience.

“How Uhaul almost shafted me out of $900!” reads the text on screen.

‘I Rent The Biggest Box Truck That They Have'

About four months ago, with bad weather forecast for closing day, he decided against using his own trailers and rented “the biggest box truck that they have, which I think is like a 26-foot or a 30-footer.” (U-Haul's largest is its 26-foot truck).

“Everything that life has taught me is to CYA,” he says. He walked around the truck filming “all the paint dings, dents, scratches,” and checked the cargo box. His paperwork said the tank was full, though the gauge showed a quarter, so he added about $20 of gas next door. “While I was sitting there, I took a picture of the odometer, but I didn't double-check or triple-check my picture,” he says.

‘You Put 600 Miles On The Truck'

The family made four trips between the two houses, “about 68 miles that we put on the vehicle total,” he says. When he brought the truck back around 9 a.m. the next day, the clerk told him to swipe his card. “I said, ‘Well, what's the total?' He's like, ‘Oh, 980-something dollars,'” he says. The creator added, “I said, ‘What the [expletive] are you smoking?' He goes, ‘Well, you put 600 miles on the truck.'”

“I didn't even leave San Angelo,” he says. He went to show the clerk his odometer photo, and “it was blank because the damn thing hyper-flashed.” The photo, shown at the end of the video, shows the gauge cluster with no mileage reading on the display. “My stomach dropped. I was sick, because I had no way of proving it,” he says. He says the clerk “kept smirking at me going, ‘Well, sorry, man.'” He walked out without paying, and the clerk then tried to charge the card he'd used for the deposit, he says.

‘Their Mileage Tracker Was All Jacked Up'

He called the district manager several times before getting an answer, and the manager agreed to sort it out, he says. “Come to find out, what had happened was the guy that rented that vehicle before me had actually had it for like three days and had driven those 600-plus miles, and the person that checked the vehicle in didn't document that,” he says.

In comments, he said the rental “was all electronic.” He further claimed the app “wasn't working right.” He also said the mileage hadn't been recorded and two others had rented it since the last time it had been.

But he said in the end everything was resolved.

“It all got resolved, it all got worked out,” he says.

What U-Haul Tells Renters

U-Haul's guide to its rental contract says the contract lists the “Miles (MI) Out” figure and the per-mile rate, with “the final charge” processed at return on in-town moves. A U-Haul blog post on contract errors says “making sure the contract is correct prior to leaving the lot can be helpful to prevent any issues.” It names the pickup location as the first call “whether it is an error of the mileage, the fuel gauge or either the incorrect drop off city,” including after the rental is over.

Customers who use U-Haul's self-service Truck Share 24/7 system already document the numbers: at pickup and return, they “upload photos of yourself, your driver's license, the truck's fuel gauge, odometer, and the vehicle's condition.”

In 2013, U-Haul refunded $46 to a renter after ABC's Good Morning America asked about a mileage charge. According to the program, U-Haul said the truck's odometer was working, but “the entry of mileage on the contract is done manually.”

‘They Tried That With Me Too'

Some viewers had their own U-Haul stories. “As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I checked the odometer against the paperwork, and on the paper it had exactly 100 less miles than the odometer,” wrote loxnkeez. “They could not argue that I put 100 miles on the truck in less than 5 minutes, so they updated my paperwork to actual mileage.” West Texas Grass Nerd replied: “I was in a hurry and excited to move. I didn't even think to cross-check with paperwork! We had 2 days to move out, so time was of the essence!”

“I can't imagine how many people just accept things like this and would have just paid that!” wrote desert.sage2. Schmickpain pointed to U-Haul's own photo-upload link and advised: “STILL GET YOUR OWN PICTURES AND VIDEO!! Because they can't be the ones with all of the evidence AND hold the power to [expletive] you over.”

His advice goes for any rental, he says, whether it's a tiller or tools from Home Depot: “Documentation, triple-check, double-check, put multiple eyes on it, video everything.” He adds: “This is as simple as mileage, but the mileage added up to $900.” When you're moving house, he says, “you don't have an extra $900 that you didn't budget for.”

When Subplot News reached out to West Texas Grass Nerd for comment, he wrote that he “merely wanted to educate people to CYA and double check everything so they don't have it happen to them. Again issue was resolved by a manager.”

Subplot News also reached out to U-Haul via email for comment. We'll be sure to update this if they respond.

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