Thanks for giving us a couple of weeks off over the holidays so we could move to Florida! We appreciate it.
This week, we’re sharing the story of our journey across the country from Utah to Florida. It was not event-free! There is one story we’ll only share in the podcast or video, so be sure to tune in. We’ll also share the bad news we received from Rivian and what we think of the latest from Chevrolet.
Our Move
We packed the U-Haul (after panicking and shipping six big boxes via UPS) on December 21. With help from professional movers, we got everything else in the truck and hit the road.
On Thursday, as we reached Texas, the truck began to act up. With warning lights flashing while in motion, we called U-Haul for guidance. They encouraged us to stop in Childress, Texas (home of the 1974 classic film “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”). Darrell, who responded for U-Haul to our location, determined we should not continue the trip in the vehicle. U-Haul agreed to replace the truck.
That meant events replaced our plans to spend Christmas in New Orleans with quality time in Wichita Falls, Texas. We had a delightful, if unusual, Christmas visiting a nature preserve in Oklahoma.
After a four-day delay, with help from U-Haul, we got a bigger replacement truck and got it loaded on Monday, the 27th, and hit the road, passing the Dallas area on our first day back on the road. Tuesday, we passed through five states: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
On Wednesday, we arrived. We entered our home for the first time. We bought it after seeing photos and video. No regrets!
We used the truck to load up on fresh boxes we hope to turn into Ikea furniture and then returned the U-Haul. To save money, we chose to return it to St. Augustine, which allowed us to see the spectacular Christmas light show there.
Bad News From Rivian
As we packed for our move, we got an email from Rivian alerting us that the company would not deliver our truck until the second half of 2023. Considering that when they sent the email, the company had produced only about 1000 trucks and still had a lot to learn, the bad news was some version of optimism. In other words, we think Christmas of 2023 is the earliest we’ll see our new truck.
This disappointment has us thinking about using the next two years to practice with a tiny pop-up trailer we tow with our Chevy Bolt. Of course, it won’t be the same, but we can learn a lot and have some fun. We’ll be better prepared for a big trailer when the truck finally comes! We’ll share this adventure with you, too.
Good News From Chevrolet
The same day that the bad news email arrived from Rivian, we saw an alert from Chevrolet that they would announce their new Silverado EV on January 5. We marked that date and watched their live CES (Consumer Electronics Show). While we were disappointed with the presentation, the truck looks adequate for the job. We think it could work with 400 miles of range and a towing capacity of 8,000 pounds. Pricing details were vague. Chevy priced a loaded RST model at $105,000 in the second half of 2023. Chevy promises to sell the stripped-down work truck starting at $39,900 in the spring of 2023.
We jumped to get at the front of the line. We placed our reservation three minutes after the window opened. We hope we’re among the first few hundred regular consumers to get a truck. If that happens on (or near) schedule next year, we could get it before the Rivian comes.
We don’t want or need three trucks (we have reserved a Tesla Cybertruck, too), but we desperately want one—whichever one will show up first. Well, we prefer the Rivian enough to be willing to wait a bit longer, but if our Rivian date feels soft or distant when the Chevy shows up, we’ll go with the Chevy.
Tesla has removed production predictions about the Cybertruck from its website this week. We’re beginning to think getting one of those is a pipe dream.
An Eventful Move, Bad News From Rivian and Good News From Chevrolet