How Far can you get with 8 Cookies and a Dozen Donuts?
It’s Saturday, August 10th, two days before our departure on our 6,800 mile, 31-day trip across the country for our daughter’s big 40th birthday party. We’re getting all our necessities prepped to load the Vienna for this extended adventure. I typically pull the rig into the driveway where it’s easier for loading. But first I need to pull the slide in, which spans the entire driver side of the rig behind the cab. We’ve never had a slide failure, until now. The slide motors appeared to be out of sync with one side moving in slower than the other. We know from other Renegade owner’s stories that this is really bad.
A little panic sets in, and then we start the hard research by first searching the Vienna/Villagio Facebook Group for assistance. This comes in handy as there are many posts about slide issues. These posts teach us about slide motor sync issues, slide motor controller, and other troubleshooting ideas. Initially our 36-year-old son helps us push the slide in using brute strength. But now we must rely on what we’ve learned via Facebook and the Google to determine the problem and make a decision about the trip and our departure on Monday the 12th.
After our troubleshooting revealed a “motor short circuit” on “motor 2”, we proceeded to contact Renegade support through email and online forms on their website. Renegade support has a new Service Center in Elkhart, Indiana, and a new service order procedure. We put our faith in the procedure and the service team and made the decision to head out as planned Monday the 12th. After all, our planned route would take us right through Elkhart on Wednesday morning. With any luck Renegade would take us in and fix the problem.
So what about the cookies and donuts. Our first night of the trip was spent at a familiar Harvest Host, Boxcar Brewery, in DuBois, Pennsylvania, just off I-80. We attempted to sleep with the slide in. Needless to say, that didn’t work well and the night was restless. The next morning we headed off for Ohio. We have a new tire pressure monitoring system installed, along with six new Michelin tires. This was the first trip with the TPMS. We weren’t 10 minutes down I-80 westbound, when I noticed the driver, rear, inner tire was losing pressure. Again, a little panic set in and we pulled over to add some air with the compressor I had brought along specifically for this anomaly. We were back on the road quickly but noticed again that the tire was losing air. Obviously this is a more serious issue that we’re not going to fix with an air compressor. I asked my co-pilot to find a tire repair shop.
She got right to the task and quickly found Bob Sumerel Tire Company, just off the interstate roughly two miles over the PA / OH border in the town of Hubbard Ohio. Exit 234 drops you into Truck World… I’m not kidding. Trucks everywhere. Truck World has everything for trucks. A restaurant, a tool store, convenience store, showers, game rooms, WiFi, and on and on. And just down the road from TW is Bob Sumerel Tire. We pulled in and went inside to talk to Brian, who appeared to be the manager and was busy on the phone. When he hung up I gave him the details of our issue and he directed me to pull into Bay 2. We unhooked the jeep and pulled into Bay 2 to speak with Mike the mechanic. He told us he would check out the tire and would need about 30 minutes. We headed back to TW for some breakfast in the restaurant.
Bob Sumerel Tire, Hubbard Ohio
When we returned to the tire shop, the rig was still sitting in Bay 2 where we left it. For a second I was a little concerned, but Mike told me he found the problem to be a loose valve extension which he tightened and added a counter nut to ensure it wouldn’t come loose again. I thanked him and said I was going to talk to Brian and settle the bill. Brian was again on the phone and when he hung up I asked him bluntly, “what do I owe you”. His reply… “nothing”. He said he wouldn’t charge me for a loose valve stem. Wow, my faith in humanity was immediately restored. I went back outside and Terri had started to hook up the Jeep to the tow bar. I told her we weren’t charged but said I felt like we owed them something. “Do we have any of those sourdough chocolate chip cookies you made”, I asked. She replied, “yes I do”. She handed them over and I took them back into Bay 2 and handed them over to Mike saying, “it’s not much, but please share them with your crew”. The smile on his face was genuine. We finished hooking up the jeep and headed out westbound on the Ohio turnpike.
With the tire issue behind us, we still had to deal with the slide malfunction. We had been in touch with Renegade Service since early Monday morning and throughout our drive across Ohio on Tuesday, we continued to communicate. They agreed that they would take a look at our slide Wednesday morning, if we could guarantee our arrival by 9:00am. Theoretically that should be easy to meet as it’s just 100 miles from our Tuesday night stay in Sauder Village, Archbold, OH.
The nice thing about Sauder Village is that they have a great RV Park and an even better Resort Hotel. After our sleepless night with the slide in, we opted for a hotel room this second night. Sauder Village also has a locally famous bakery. Our plan was to buy a dozen donuts for the Renegade Service crew as a small bribe to get our problem looked at quickly on Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, the bakery opens at 7:00am, leaving us a tight window to drive the 100 miles with an added fuel stop, and still meet the 9:00am deadline.
Renegade Customer Experience Center, Elkhart Indiana
But we managed it and pulled into the Renegade Customer Experience parking lot at straight up 9:00am. The donuts were a huge hit and we had the service lead and tech looking at our rig in minutes. It also help that we had met the new Customer Service Director at our 2024 Vienna / Villagio Rally in Tennessee in June. Dropping his name couldn’t hurt, and sure enough he came out to the parking lot to say hello. GR84RED was pulled into a service bay and troubleshooting began by 9:30am. We hopped into the jeep and headed for Elkhart County Fairgrounds to hookup with some friends who were attending their own Forest River Rally.
Fast forward a couple hours and I received a phone call from the service lead with a diagnosis and cost for repairs. Two hours later I received another phone call saying repairs and testing were completed. The cost… well, I won’t divulge it here, but if you are an RV’er you understand that these things are never cheap. But, cost seemed minimal to us as it saved our vacation and put us back on the road by 3:00pm. We pulled into the KOA, Milton Wisconsin at 7:30pm for our third night of the 31-day trip to Darcie’s big Four-Oh party in San Diego (stay tuned for more on that).
Huge Kudos to Jeremy Slinker and the entire Renegade service crew, and also to Brian Krepps and Mike at Bob Sumerel Tire. We had zero issues for the remainder of the 6,800 mile trip, and we owe a good deal of that to 8 chocolate chip cookies and a dozen donuts.
