Introducing Igor

My loaner truck for the duration is a 9400 International.........oh thrill.  These are totally driver unfriendly trucks and then some, especially if you're small like me.  To top it off, the driver who had it before left out of it in a hurry and left it in a complete and utter mess.  I'm not even going to post any pics because it simply doesn't reflect well on any of us drivers :-(.  I will say that he's lucky that it was me who cleaned the thing out because I sent a message to dispatch letting them know that I'd boxed up his stuff and was leaving it in the shop for him to pick up when he came back through.  That is if he's still employed here......Among the items I found was a birth certificate, med card, debit card, and credit card. These of course were handed over to the appropriate people to be sent to his last known address.

But I digress.......back to Igor the Horrible the behemoth beast.......Mechanically it's a sound truck--should be since it just came out of the shop with a new drive shaft and various other items repaired.....but trying to reach anything is nigh impossible for me.  The steering wheel is also this giant monstrosity that takes forever to spin around and due to the limited tilt/telescoping capabilities, I literally found myself looking through the thing while going down the road.

This same steering wheel took several times of scrubbing with glass cleaner and 8 clorox wipes before my hands kept coming away grimy black, yuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Next issue......to buckle the seat belt I have to scoot the seat all the way back, latch the belt, pulling lots of slack then sliding the seat all the way forward.......very poor design and it's malfunctioning with the inability to pull any slack in the belt while in my needed driving position.  Also if there's an emergency exit required, it is not gonna happen. Can't unbuckle the seat belt unless seat is in the furthest back position.....

The stereo, cruise, light controls are all on the dash to the right of the steering wheel and requires me to lean forward and stretch my arm waaaaay out to access any of them.  Yeah, there's a bit of swerving involved.  Sorry fellow motorists, I'm not texting just trying to reach stuff  :(.

Absolutely the worst part of this truck though is the pedals.......the gas and brake are same size and approximately an inch apart so it's hard to differentiate.......also the gas pedal is extremely stiff and I just can't rest my foot on the floor and lightly press on it to get on down the road.  Nope, my foot is positioned at the top of the thing with my heel lifted up off the floor and most of the time my left foot is wedged under my right foot to give it some support.  This means I either use the cruise control way more than I feel comfortable with or I'm twisted around in the seat........Can we say back spasms?  I ended up sending a message saying I could only do one round in this truck because I didn't think my back could hold up to several days in a row.  That by the way was met with absolutely no complaints, at least where I could hear them because it's a workplace injury waiting to happen.

However just in case you think I have nothing good to say about Igor, he does have a proper air horn!!! The line for it is just in an unfortunate spot for when I have to stretch as those parked around me found out one morning.  OOPS!!!!!!