U-Haul's defective truck almost killed my pregnant...

U-Haul's defective truck almost killed my pregnant wife and I.

I rented a 15' truck with a tow dolly from this U-Haul location. I was moving myself and my wife to California.

Before leaving, the engine light came on. I told the U-Haul employees, and one of them ran a diagnostic test on it. He told me it was a "sensor error", manually cleared the engine light, and sent us on our way.

Over the 8-hour drive, the truck became dangerously undriveable while we were on the freeway. The transmission was making loud grinding noises, and struggling to change gears. It was also consuming gas at an alarming rate, causing me to stop and purchase gas many times.

After entering the freeway one time, the truck's engine completey quit and turned off, indicating low oil. Cars and huge tractor trailers honked and swerved to avoid us, as we came to a near stop in the middle of the freeway. My wife was panicking and crying. Vehicles were flying past us at 80mph. Traffic was heavy at this time, and moving to the right lane took much caution, and prayer.

I managed to restart the engine, and crawl the truck at less than 30mph to our exit. Once off the freeway, the engine died again. We came to a complete stop on the off-ramp. I restarted the engine again, and barely--within mere feet--drove the truck at 10mph to a gas station across the street. I looked around, and noticed we were in a bad neighborhood. Rap music was playing loudly, and a vagrant was licking his lips as he looked at my truck and vehicle on the tow dolly.

The truck was completely dead at this point. I called roadside assistance, and was told a vendor would come help us within an hour. At this point, it's 1am and my wife is crying, and she is feeling sharp pains in her stomach from the stress, and lack of sleep. I walked her down the street with some shopping bags full of clothes and toiletries, and checked her into a hotel. I went back to the disabled truck, where all of my household goods were sitting in an unlocked truck.

By the time the vendor came and moved the truck to an empty lot to spend the night, I retired to the hotel and fell asleep at 2:30am.

We had completely missed our move-in scheduled for that day. I lost my deposit for the movers when I had to re-schedule.

I spoke to Tyler, the manager of the U-Haul location in Tucson (Golf Links & Wilmot) where I rented the truck from.
As of now, he is offering to pay me what is equivalent, in his words, to a 25% discount on the rental. And a $25 gift card.

I asked for a full refund, which Tyler has refused. I am preparing a formal dispute to go to U-Haul's arbitration department over this.

As it stands now, U-Haul has forever lost me as a customer. I would warn anyone from renting a truck from U-Haul, ESPECIALLY from this location.