Rain is something that most car owners never really have to worry about. Vehicles are pretty well shielded from the weather, and modern tires can provide shockingly good grip in the wet. Yet, I found a way to make rain terrifying. I lost the key fob to a brand-new $111,000 Ford F-350 Super Duty diesel pickup truck while on a road trip; this rendered the truck bricked on the side of a highway with its windows and sunroof open. What proceeded was a mix of stupid decisions and dumb fails, including walking an Interstate’s median at midnight and getting a U-Haul stuck only 100 feet away from the stuck Ford. After an intense nightmare had seemingly passed, things were looking great. Then, the rain came. In a desperate effort to protect the interior of this expensive truck, I basically had to sacrifice all of my clothes.
What you’re reading is the third and final part of my saga about the disaster that occurred after losing the key to a press truck. All I was trying to do was drive 773 miles from my home in Illinois to the Port of Baltimore to pick up a sweet 1997 Honda Life. Truth be told, the 2025 Ford F-350 Super Duty Platinum Plus that Ford loaned me for this trip is an epic truck and a fantastic road trip companion. Had I been sitting on $111,000 of spare cash, I would have just asked Ford if I could buy the whole truck that weekend.
I used that truck to retrieve one of the smallest cars, but I loved that giant beast even if it’s over-the-top. It has a fuel tank so huge, and its 6.7-liter High Output Power Stroke diesel gets fuel economy so good for a big pickup truck that you can go over 800 miles on a tank if you’re unloaded. It’s also a big truck so luxurious that I wouldn’t even pick a BMW over it. You bet I’m going to tell you all about it.
For now, I have one more cautionary tale of woe.
(Full Disclosure: Ford loaned me a 2025 F-350 Super Duty Platinum Plus for a little over a week to haul home my new-to-me 1997 Honda Life. Ford took such great care of me during this whole ordeal, and I cannot find the proper words to thank those lovely people enough.)
In Case You Missed It
In Part 1, I explained how I got myself into this situation in the first place. I managed to drive about 697 miles of my trip entirely without issue. The Platinum Plus made the trip fun, with little fatigue. I even wore the Stetson that my wife bought me, fully embracing how she would enjoy the big truck experience.
I stopped in Hagerstown, Maryland, barely over an hour from the port, for dinner at a pizza place I had never heard of. While eating on the tailgate, I had the perhaps irrational fear that the truck might accidentally lock itself with the fob inside, so I put the fob on the cowling in front of the windshield, expecting to remember it was there before taking off. But I didn’t, and the key flew off of the truck almost immediately after I entered I-70 E. I made it maybe about a mile before I pulled over and put the truck in park. Only then did I get a missing fob warning and it was followed by the truck shutting itself down and effectively bricking itself.
What proceeded was a bit of a nightmare, as I wrote in my recap:
I was so stuck on the side of I-70 that I ended up walking a mile down a highway median at night, nearly getting clobbered by hundreds of speeding and distracted motorists. I was initially saved by Maryland state troopers, only to be told to use an Uber to go back to the truck to retrieve my valuables. That Uber driver abandoned me at the truck. Desperate, I called Ford Roadside Assistance, which was powerless to help me. They couldn’t even get me a tow truck because the Super Duty was too big for the tow trucks operating that night. Then, it started raining, so I had to fashion a makeshift sunroof out of a blanket and floor mats. Then, I had to walk down the median one more time, and that time it was extra terrible because it was raining.
Finally, another Maryland state trooper picked me up, and we went on a short ride-along before he finally dropped me off at my hotel. I got into my room just after 2 a.m., or a little over four hours since the disaster began. It was hard to believe that only four hours had passed. It felt like I was fighting all night. If you want to read the full story, click here to read part one.
In Part 2, I noted that on the morning after, Friday, I was given three choices. I could have towed the truck to a dealer and paid the dealership for two new keys, I could have waited for Ford to overnight the original spare key to my hotel, or I could have waited roughly seven hours for Ford to send out a driver from Detroit with the truck’s second fob. The first option would have likely cost me $1,000 and had no guarantee of getting me back on the road in time to get to the port before it closed for the weekend. Option two would have also delayed me getting to the port until Monday. I didn’t like option three because I didn’t want to have someone drive a 14-hour round trip just because I screwed up.
Our secret designer, the Bishop, and I hatched a wild plan. What if I asked to have the key driven out, and then instead of just sitting around and waiting for seven hours, I just use a U-Haul to pick up my Honda? That way, I’d be ready to drive home the moment Ford’s courier brought me the key. I thought the idea was brilliant. I canceled the tow because I thought it wasn’t needed anymore. I’m still not sure why I thought that.
This didn’t go to plan. U-Haul didn’t have any pickup trucks available that morning and no car hauler trailers, either. So I rented a cube van and then attempted to transfer the trailer I had on the back of the F-350 to the U-Haul truck. I then got the U-Haul stuck in mud next to the Interstate while trying to position myself to do the trailer transfer.
Technically, I made another mistake here, as well. As a reader pointed out, I should have still gotten the truck towed. The tow would have been free, anyway. Following through on the tow would have removed the truck and trailer from being on the side of the highway. It would have also made facilitating the trailer transfer much safer as it would have happened in a Ford dealer parking lot rather on the side of a highway. Likewise, maybe the dealer could have put the truck under cover or something. So, add “canceling the tow” to my long list of dumb failures during this whole event.
Things finally began turning in the correct direction once a kind AAA tow truck driver winched the U-Haul out of the mud and helped me safely attach the trailer. I then drove to the port, picked the car up, and began driving back to Hagerstown. I figured the key would be there around the time I got there. So, I’d just have to hitch up, return the U-Haul, and head home. My purse would be a little lighter, but I would have gotten out of this ordeal with nothing truly bad happening.
Not Out Of The Storm Yet
I departed the Port of Baltimore with high spirits and, for the first time in 17 hours, a smile on my face. But it wasn’t meant to be.
As I drove into heavy Baltimore traffic, I noticed that there were dark clouds in the distance. I had checked the weather early that morning. The forecast called for heavy rain in the evening, but the timing placed the rain as arriving after I was scheduled to be on the road for home already. It was because of this reason that I didn’t buy a tarp to cover the F-350.
However, my weather app now suggested that the situation was rapidly changing. Now, the rain was scheduled to arrive in Hagerstown in maybe two hours. The trip to the port from where I got stuck took only an hour and 10 minutes. Based on time estimates, Ford’s driver should have been arriving at the truck at about the moment I was stuck in traffic. But I did not receive a text or call.
Thus, I moved to another backup plan. I would race to a Walmart in Hagerstown, get a tarp or something, cover the F-350, and then wait it out. In theory, I had just enough time to make this work.
In practice, traffic in Baltimore was brutal. I watched as my estimated travel time crept up minute by minute. A crash and construction slowed traffic down even more. When I finally got free of the Baltimore blockage, I was due to arrive at the truck at around the instant the rain was scheduled to arrive. I no longer had time to go to Walmart. Now, it was a race against time to do what I could to salvage the situation.
Driving the U-Haul fast was a scary thing. This “in-town” rental truck didn’t seem to be maintained that well. It had an illuminated check engine light when I picked it up and I had driven boats with more accurate steering. But that’s no surprise. If you’ve ever done a local U-Haul rental you know that those trucks tend to be more worn than the one-way rentals. So, I did the safe thing and drove the truck exactly at the speed limit, and even that required some sawing at the wheel to keep things going straight.
My heart pounded with every mile. I couldn’t help but notice that with every mile, the clouds were getting bigger and darker. My weather app suggested that Hagerstown was under a severe thunderstorm watch or warning and the area where the Ford was parked was soon about to get walloped by a nice big red area indicated by the radar. In fact, much of Maryland was under some kind of severe thunderstorm warning or even tornado watch. This was a serious weather event.
Thankfully, the weather gods had given me a break. I arrived in Hagerstown, and as I passed by the truck in the I-70 westbound lanes, it looked great and untouched. I rounded the cloverleaf at Highway 40, got into the I-70 eastbound lanes, and began approaching the F-350. That’s when the sky opened up the taps. A full-on downpour had arrived.
When It Rains
As I noted in part one, Ford Roadside Assistance had me form a makeshift sunroof cover out of the truck’s floor mats. I added my own blanket for a little extra protection. This had worked for the extremely light rain that Hagerstown got on Thursday night, but was doing little to stop this deluge. It wasn’t long before the water fully soaked the blanket and the floor mats, and it then started dripping through and into the truck.
It was in that moment when I realized that U-Haul trucks often come with huge, thick furniture pads. I figured I’d just eat the cost of soaking one of those and rolled open the U-Haul’s gate. As if my luck wasn’t bad enough, there was absolutely nothing in the U-Haul or the Honda Life that could help me.
Adding insult to injury was one of those stickers that cops put on your vehicle if you remain broken down on a highway for too long. I knew I was going to be gone before the time was up, but it was just one more twist of the knife, you know?
Next, I tried removing the tonneau cover from the truck’s bed. This would have been a great way to stop water from getting in. Only there was one small problem, as the key to unlock the tonneau cover was attached to the missing fob. Crap.
I sat there in the rain, getting absolutely soaked and defeated. As I looked around the truck bed, I saw my only path forward. I could not stop water from getting into the truck. But what if I could spare the interior by using something to absorb the water? I packed a lot of clothes for this trip and grabbed all of them.
I also noticed that while the blanket and floormats could not stop the water from getting in, I was able to largely steer where the water built up before leaking out of the blanket. I positioned the blanket to dump the majority of the water into all of my clothes. I laid my clothes out onto anything I thought was vulnerable to water. I mean I laid out all of my clothes, too. Within 10 minutes, everything I had brought on this trip had been sacrificed to save the truck.
Holding Out For A Hero
[Ed Note: Yikes! Obviously, we pride ourselves in taking care of press vehicles, though this kinda thing does happen! You lose your fob, and your sunroof is stuck wide open in the rain. The interesting thing is learning how well a modern truck holds up to this kind of situation… -DT].
Once I did all that I could, I called up Diane, my emergency contact at Ford. She had notified me that due to construction delays and traffic, the driver had been running about two or so hours behind. I told her that rain had begun falling in Hagerstown, so that the interior was getting wet. She noted that and asked me to be safe, as that was the most important thing.
Luckily, it wasn’t long after that call when the rain slowed down from pelting on me, to light and steady, to a drizzle, and then gone. The storm wasn’t gone, but a gap had formed in the storm that would give Hagerstown about an hour or so of a break. Diane said that the driver was about an hour away, so now the race was on again.
I drove to the hotel, parked the U-Haul, and then stood at the entrance. Back in 2012, I took about a year or two of Meteorology classes and I tried to use what I learned so long ago to predict when the next hit was going to happen. By my estimate, the rain that I just got soaked in was only an appetizer. The main course was coming and it was going to hit even harder.
The hour of waiting for the driver to show up had to have been one of the longest single hours I’ve lived in my entire life. I stood there, soaking wet, watching even darker clouds surround the area, and I was powerless to stop it. I could do nothing but see the big ball of red get closer and closer to Hagerstown, and hope that the storm might turn away or dissipate.
Thankfully, my knight in shining armor appeared at around the one-hour mark in a Ford Mustang GT California Special. To me in that moment, that Mustang was the coolest one I had seen in my life. The extremely kind gentleman tossed me the key, then we grabbed some towels before racing out to the truck.
The first thing we did was take down my makeshift sunroof cover and tossed it into the bed. Then, I fired up the truck, closed all open portals, then got out of there. We both reconvened at the hotel, where we used spare pool towels to do a hotel-side detailing.
The Platinum Plus Emerges Triumphant
We were surprised that my last-second decision to sacrifice my clothes had seemingly helped. The interior was decently dry. Two cupholders had a bit of water in them, the center console got wet, two seats were pretty wet, and the headliner was wet, but my clothes seem to have helped soak up the moisture, and the truck’s floors didn’t even get wet.
We did the best we could with an army of towels. Then, I pulled the truck over to the U-Haul, and swapped on the trailer. Finally, after nearly a day of being stuck, the F-350 was towing the Honda Life. I locked up the truck, and then drove the U-Haul back to where it came from.
As a side note, I totally want one of these U-Haul fuel economy gauges in one of my cars. This one was broken, but I still liked how cool it looked.
The heaviest part of the storm hit pretty much the moment when I hopped out of the U-Haul. First came the hail, then came rain so intense that I saw flash-flooding in some areas around me. Lightning and thunder cracked nearby, and I saw the lights go out in houses and businesses not far from where I stood at U-Haul. The rain was sideways, too. So, even as I waited under cover at U-Haul for an Uber, I was getting soaked from head to toe.
Had Ford’s guy been only an hour more behind schedule, the truck would have been done for. Even my clothes wouldn’t have been able to stop this.
Thankfully, that hadn’t been the case. My Uber dropped me off, I hopped in the truck and exactly 23 hours after the nightmare began, I was finally on the road for home. Somehow, the rain spared a single dress from getting drenched, so I put that one on.
At first, my method for drying the rest of the truck out involved using all four seat heaters on high and the HVAC system on hot, with the air-conditioner on. It was still raining heavily, so I couldn’t open a window to let in fresh air to help out.
I was shocked by how much the truck didn’t seem to care about being stuck in the rain. [Ed Note: I, too, am impressed given this is a modern truck full of electronics. -DT]. At first, the only real sign of what happened was that the driver seat was a little wet. About an hour into the drive, however, I started getting warnings on the instrument cluster that the truck’s trailer brake and trailer lighting modules were no longer functioning correctly.
I later found out that this had nothing to do with what I did, but that the trailer connections under the truck (which led to the plugs on the rear bumper) were getting blasted with water. Once I got out of the rain, I got the water out of the connectors, and the error went away. As it turns out, I’m not the only person to have run into these errors in a newer F-Series after driving in the rain. If you own one of these trucks, you may benefit from using some dielectric grease in the trailer lighting connectors under your truck.
Once I got free of the rain, I left all sources of heat on full blast, but then I also opened up the windows, too. I then drove the rest of the 700 miles home like that, just letting wind, heat, and air-conditioner pull moisture out of the truck.
I had one final issue with the truck, and it was that the driver-side motorized running board began failing to deploy. I would hear the motor turn on, but no actual movement. I began fearing that the truck had a casualty from my stupidity.
I was able to get the running board working again by cleaning out its joints. These running boards have a safety feature where they will not deploy or close if too much resistance is detected. Normally, that’s to protect the board from chomping on your foot, but it also means that your boards may not open if the joints are too dirty. Some Ford owners have told me that the F-350’s board probably needed some lube, too.
In the end, I drove nearly 800 miles back home, and the truck was flawless. It still got 14 mpg with the car on its back, and by the time I got it home, it was completely dry. I dried out the truck some more before Ford picked it up, and I’m happy to report that everything worked out. The headliner didn’t get a single stain, the truck still smelled brand-new, and there wasn’t a single error. I was even able to dry out my clothes when I got home.
Now, soon, you’ll get to read about my awesome little import and just how cool the 2025 Ford F-350 Platinum Plus really is. Stick around for that.
You Only Have One Life
Ultimately, the cost of my stupidity ended up being around $700. I know that I could have made about a million different better choices. Had I not put the key on the cowling, this wouldn’t have happened. Had I stopped as soon as I lost the key, maybe I might have found the key. Had I closed the windows before putting the truck in park, I wouldn’t have had to worry about water intrusion. Had I pulled off the highway and gone to a hotel or something, I wouldn’t have been stuck on a highway. Had I not canceled the tow, I wouldn’t have gotten a U-Haul stuck. Had I not tried to pull a U-turn on a highway, I wouldn’t have gotten the U-Haul stuck. Had I bought a tarp, the truck’s interior wouldn’t have gotten wet.
I can’t help but go through every stupid decision and beat myself up over how I could have possibly been so dumb to have strung together so many bad choices in just a few hours. I was genuinely sad and probably a bit hurtful to myself in the days immediately after this went down. I didn’t even fully enjoy the road trip back home because the events of the prior day weighed on my mind. Maybe I deserved it, or maybe I deserve worse. I’m not really sure.
Now, a couple of weeks later, I am being a bit nicer to myself. I’m also reminding myself that, sometimes, you’re the bug on the windshield. All of my pain was self-inflicted, but destroying myself won’t solve anything. The best I can do is do better and be better for next time.
Perhaps this was evident when I at least tried to make myself feel better by using the F-350’s built-in generator to run a flat iron to do my hair at a rest stop. My hair had been ruined by the rain the day before, but did I need to punish myself by letting it stay ruined? No.
I’ve been trying to have lessons to teach when telling this story in three parts, and I think I’ve found the lesson for this one. First, obviously, guard your fob like it were your pet or your kid. Put a tracking device on it if you have to. Likewise, basically every decision I made on that highway, from walking the median to trying to pull a U-turn in a box truck, was a terrible idea. Don’t do any of that, either.
However, at least for this third and final part of this, I think I want to say that you shouldn’t destroy yourself over mistakes. Humans are bound to make some real boneheaded choices. After all, our imperfections are part of what makes us human. Life would be boring if everyone were “perfect,” whatever that would even mean. At the end of the day, nobody got hurt, and the only real damage was to my bank account. It’s not worth spiraling oneself out of control over money. You can make more money, but there’s only one you. So, the next time you screw up, don’t do what I did and bully yourself into crying. Be kind to yourself.
Top Photo: Author
Don’t beat yourself up too much about it. You were in a high anxiety situation that didn’t always go in your favor but that’s life! You endeavored which is the most important part! You have a warrior’s heart!
I will also add that I put most of the blame here on Ford. No car should operate with the key fob on the windshield when other cars won’t turn on if the fob is in the passenger’s seat. Secondly, as other’s have pointed out, when the car detects no fob, the windows should be operable for a few minutes and the dash message should definitely include a warning to check windows, sunroof and any unsecured valuables. This might seem like a lot, but this is a $100k vehicle, there’s no excuse.
Great to read the conclusion to the story (spoiler: since you were telling it in the past tense, we knew things couldn’t go TOO sideways). Before you beat yourself up anymore just remember, rarely are good stories the result of good choices. Without your string of “highly questionable” decisions, this would have likely been a fairly forgettable review on an overpriced truck. You’d have undoubtably put some Mercedes spin on it, but it wouldn’t have had nearly the impact.
I have extremely mixed feelings about this whole ordeal. I’m glad you’re safe and no accidents occurred. But you basically did every single wrong decision in 24 hours and I’m even more surprised that the autopian team members also didn’t help you think through this plan competently. What gets me the most is that you keep mentioning you didn’t want to make someone drive 14 hours to fix your mistake (which I agree, that’s an insane thing to make someone do)…and then you still made a plan that forced someone to do just that! I dunno, it’s an L for sure and all that jazz but it was such poor judgement it goes beyond my ability to continue feeling sympathy for you and the people involved. Surely, someone between your wife, the team, the police, the ford reps could have steered you in a better direction!
$110,000. For a damned pickup truck. And its diesel too, meaning there is about a 95% chance of it getting clogged with carbon deposits or having a lot of other problems. No wonder so many people are going bankrupt or have ZERO in savings and retirement
Except the poorly sealed wiring. And the sticky, expensive running boards. While I get that you feel bad about what happened and are trying to be nice, the truck sounds like a bit of a shit show. True, the initial error may have been yours, but the stupid design of the truck made things so much worse. Stranding someone in this circumstance is borderline recall-worthy, if you ask me.
Good for Diane. This is exactly the correct take.
Yeah, if a vehicle does a “No Key Detected” shutdown you should still be able to close the windows.
As for the running board and trailer wiring, unacceptable in a SIX FIGURE truck! There really isn’t a whole lot more to say on that…
It’s funny to me that some car companies can figure out how to make the car not start with the fob on the windshield and other’s can’t.
I’m still ultimately blaming Ford for this whole thing, no car should start without the fob in the car.
As others have expressed, you are not alone. I too tend to make snowballing choices in situations like this. Panic sets in and induces tunnel vision that totally screws with proper perceptions of priorities. As much as I might like to believe I might do better in a similar situation, the fact is I would have been totally overwhelmed and probably made terrible choices.
This entire ordeal also happens to exemplify why I like the folks who work here. You didn’t once turn into an asshole once during the entire situation, which would have been the easiest thing to do. You could have easily latched onto some element of the situation for which you had no control, blamed everything on it, and then perseverated on that to insulate your psyche. Instead you took responsibility and busted your ass to fix things as best you could. Give yourself MASSIVE credit for that. The people here seem to have some ethics and scruples which is not all that common. Props to you all.
Two things stand out for me.
I guess that’s 3 things.
1: I think it has the keypad but the author didn’t have the code, which is required even to do the windows up/down function.
2: Different antenna arrangements? The key could be in the vehicle – might have even fallen into the engine bay area – but it’s plausible that it could be within range of the dashboard antenna by being on the cowl. I would have considered putting the key on top of the driver’s side wiper blade instead of the cowl so it’d be visible to the driver, but that’s still closing the barn door after the livestock have escaped.
3: My 2017 Volvo also has a dash slot. It’s not needed for operation on my model, so it’s a bit vestigal from when they were needed. It uses the same key setup as the Aston Martin ones that go into the dash (thanks for the PAG, Ford!), so it’s tempting to explore how much an Aston Martin key is and have that programmed to my car for the times I might use the slot, just so it’s prettier.
From what I have read, Ford discontinued the keypad systems on the HD trucks, but the wiring is still there for it. Who knows?
As for the code, one would assume it is still the default code that they should be able to look up via VIN. When I bought my ’10 Flex the dealership ‘lost’ the card with the PIN. A quick call to Ford Canada from the service department and we had it quicker than the techs could get it with ForScan. And, back then at least, holding down the 7-8 and 9-0 keys at the same time for 3s would roll up all windows and close the sunroof, even without the code being entered first. Though I believe this also locked the doors when you let go, so perhaps that was the ‘deal-breaker’ as Mercedes would then be locked out of the truck completely.
Dash slot? Whats the point of push button start then?
For 110k plus, I’d hope there’d be an app to control the basic functions to open doors and start the thing. This should mean you could close the roof and windows etc.
My $50k Kia does that. I think it even has guest access.
Actually the guest access might be on the $55k Lexus RZ that my wife has, although we swap cars a lot so I might be mixing features & functions.
There is, but that’s not something you set-up for a press loaner on what was supposed to be a quick weekend trip.
Possibly not the press person loaning vehicle – but Ford could have it for their press fleet, it would be a great way to help them keep track of their vehicles as well.
If Ford or any manufacturer had remote access to their vehicle, they’d be able to ‘instantly’ help, rather than send a guy in a car with a key.
But how would you verify the person calling is the person who is supposed to have the car?
Have them check you against a list of who has the vehicle and call them back on the number Ford has on file for the person that has or should have the vehicle
Actually, it’s weirder than that. Ford Roadside Assistance tried to walk me through starting the truck through the app, then we discovered that someone had already paired the truck to their phone. Ford didn’t expect this, and it was likely that a previous journalist/influencer paired the truck to their phone to test out the Fordpass app, then never deleted the pairing.
Normally, this isn’t a big deal to fix. You just go into the infotainment system (which works even when the rest of the truck is bricked) and delete the last Fordpass pairing. However, the twist is that such function is locked out unless you have the fob on you.
(No worries! I noted this in part one, which is why you missed it this time.)
Well yes, I was paraphrasing. If it was your truck (or maybe even a week long loaner), you’d have it set up already.
I’m the one who does those set-ups at my dealer, and every now and then I get a call like that, where people who ignored the set-up when they got the car and suddenly desperately want to set it up over the phone when they lost their keys. Uhm no, if you could do it without the keys anyone could do it.
I’m not about to check dimensions & ruin this theory, but the Honda Life:F-350SD ratio looks mighty similar to that of the Changli:J10.
Did you really need the trailer?
The problem, to me, anyway, is that even if the Honda is narrow enough to park in the bed, it is a couple of feet longer than the bed’s length. That would mean the car would be sitting on the tailgate, and I’m not sure I want to be the one to find out if the tailgate can carry one end of a car for 800 miles. Likewise, I don’t really have a way to load a car into the bed of a truck, nor am I sure how I would exit the car after loading. 🙂
A trailer is the boring way to do it, but a method I know works!
Clearly the Autopian needs a central warehouse facility with a loading dock & a forklift!
I have learned from bitter experience that you never put your car key anywhere but in your pocket. It never turned out quite this bad for me, but for a while the key fob battery on my remote-entry, push-to-start Prius was dying, so I would have to take the physical key out to get into the car, and then push the fob into the button to start it. Then, being in a hurry, I would just drop the keys in a cup holder instead of awkwardly cramming them back in my pocket while seated. Then when getting out of the car, I would forget that the keys were not in my pocket and lock them in the car. The Prius normally yells at you if you try to do this, but with the fob battery depleted, it was unable to detect that the key was in the car. This happened to me at least twice.
Man, what an ordeal. Glad everyone and everything made it essentially unscathed.
I’ve long admired and appreciated Ford’s efforts into making their trucks – even the fancy ones – functional and friendly to adverse conditions. They even have preproduction prototypes out in the field at work on actual job sites. Places like nasty oil fields, massive quarries, deep winter work, jobs in the swamps of the deep south, and so on. It’s genuinely impressive, and I think a large part of why they generally offer the trucks that may not be the overall “best” (though commonly are) but at least can do jack-of-all-trades work and then some.
As a result the controls are meant to be used with dirty thick work gloves. The interior fabrics and plastics – derided by some as “cheap” or underehelming – are fairly easily cleaned and hold up pretty well to hundreds of thousands of miles of abuse. The ergonomics and much of the UI make sense especially in the vein of being used for work.
They’re not flawless, but goodness do they show how much effort and care the development team puts in.
<Golf Clap> Well done and Well written.
Usually when I am in the middle of a total cluster F I hit a point when I realize it’s actually hilarious. I’m very grateful for that feeling when it comes.
Thanks for sharing this Mercedes. Glad none of this resulted in you getting injured, it could have been so much worse with all that time outside a vehicle on the side of the highway. After a girl I worked with in high school was killed on the side of a highway changing a tire it’s something I try to avoid at all costs.
If it makes you feel any better I (and I suspect many who read these articles) will remember this ordeal and learn from it. I’ll certainly be taking 2 keys with me when we drive from CT to VA next week!
We need pics of you in the Stetson driving the big ‘ol truck! 🙂
I guess I’m confused by this. I’ve left my car windows down during some unexpected storms and never though twice about it damaging the car – it’s just annoying when everything gets wet. Heck, I remember seeing recalls to basically add dielectric grease because some car had problems with the window switches when you left the windows down and got everything wet. Why would the truck have been done for? I’d fully expect it to be fine once it dried out.
The problem was the huge panoramic sunroof, which was in the fully open position. The infotainment screen got a little bit wet in the rain that the truck got caught in. The storm that came a little over an hour later was substantially worse, and I have no doubt that screen would have gotten soaked. Admittedly, I am not in a rush to find out if screens are as durable against water as window switches are.
I was also concerned about water getting deep into the seats and floor, and potentially causing mold issues down the road. I wouldn’t care that much if it were my own car (I own a machine that’s darn good at getting mold out) but this truck wasn’t mine. 🙂
Being intentionally vague to avoid doxxing myself: I can assure you that some of those screens are well sealed and very water resistant. They probably won’t survive being submerged under pressure at the bottom of a lake, but they will almost certainly survive being exposed to a severe thunderstorm. But a quick google search indicates that many of them are not water resistant at all, so I better understand where you’re coming from. I kinda thought most infotainment screens were built like the units I’m familiar with.
Great story, and great lessons. Mercedes is wise beyond her years.
Oh man, that part about catching the torrent of water coming through the sunroof…
That brought back memories of when I got hit by a derecho (think tornado winds, but they travel in a straight line).
It ripped about 1/3 of my roof shingles off. This is where I got to discover that not only was the “brand new roof” the previous owner installed, installed poorly, he also put zero underlay and my 60s bungalow isn’t sheeted with plywood either.
Everything was manageable until water started coming out of the lighting fixtures.
So there was me, home alone with a 2.5 year old, trying not to panic as I run around the house pulling down lighting fixtures and catching water in salad bowls.
Thankfully, I was able to save the house from any additional damage, and all the attic insulation dried out.
All this to say, I’m glad you’re ok and everything worked out. One comforting thing I learned to tell myself after especially harrowing days:
“You never have to do today again. Tomorrow may not be any better, but you never have to live through today again.”
I think the real culprit is that women’s clothes have insufficient pockets to easily and comfortably keep keys in.
The yells of delight when my one of my daughters finds that a dress they love has “real” pockets is like a warrior’s victory cry.
I sometimes jump with joy when I buy a dress and find out it has real pockets. 🙂
Too err is human. To forgive is divine. Be forgiven Mercedes. Love your writing. Keep it up
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My ’69 Roadrunner had crank up windows. I enjoyed the simplicity of it. I read an article the other day on an older Porsche. It had leather straps to lift the windows and holes in the leather to secure the strap at various window heights to a little pin on the door panel.
This may be The Autopian’s story of the year. Overcoming the truck being bricked, the sunroof cover, the uHaul, the AAA guy showing up out of nowhere, the weather, calling Ford Dealers in Hawaii, it blows past the Copart Taxi articles by miles!
Shame about the sunroof being stuck open, I remember my friends VW having a panel you could pull off where you could hand crank the sunroof closed via a hex wrench.
This seems like a good time to remind everyone that in MY day this wouldn’t happen, because cars had a KEY that you stuck in the steering column or dash to start the car, and it wouldn’t run if you took it out, and WE LIKED IT THAT WAY! Parrumph!!
I am now reminded of the key in my 1990 Mercury Tracer Wagon somehow getting stuck in the lock cylinder. This was the same car that I recall once having it’s auto shifter jam until I could get something to activate the shift interlock override. And yet I still miss that little wagon – so much space for its size. I know The Bishop was hoping I would have gone for the used Subi SVX he was pushing, but I needed the wagon.
Those were great cars! Handsome too!
It also doesn’t happen if you keep your keys on your person, which is the entire point of keyless ignition.
Get off my lawn
You call that a lawn!?
Among the many factors leading to this, a couple of things that if this was your actual personal vehicle may not have been done. If this was your personal vehicle, you probably wouldn’t have worried about the fob locking you out and/or cracked a window and left it in a bin. Also if this was your truck, your wife would have the spare key and I’m sure 1 call to her and within a few hours driving time she’d have been there, probably with some more consolation pizza, dry clothes, whatever you’d have needed.
Also, as you mentioned the Ford rep was more concerned about your safety, and think about it, this is a press loaner, it’s probably already a write off as soon as they decide that’s what it’s for, so in her mind she’s like, just a truck, we make hundreds of these every day, we give these to IIHS to crash into barriers, no big deal. If something had happened to you, then that would very much be a big deal, so yeah, be kinder to yourself.
I’m happy the truck wasn’t damaged.
I had a customer who had a friend leave the moonroof open on her SQ5 and the leather on the front seats and the armrest was soaked and puckered up.
I thought it would need a new interior, and maybe some floor related electrical work. But my General Manager suggested that we stick it in the body shop’s paint booth overnight on a bake and it was a brilliant idea because the next day the leather was fine and there were no electrical issues.
It was such a good idea that I repeated it on an S4 cabriolet that had a water damaged electrical system with a flooded comfort control module, so it did need a new harness and module, but we still put it in on a bake to make sure the electrical system was extra dry once we were done and it never came back.
… because there’s no bowl of rice that big to stick it in like you would a cell phone!
Sticking a bowl of rice in the car would do about as much as it does for a cellphone.