Wreck on assignment

Mine costs an extra $400 a year. However, our collective agreement has written into that the company pays $200 toward any difference in "personal" and "business" policies.

The last place I worked at picked up the whole difference.

 

Same here ... years ago coming back from a prep game ... cut off and hit, spun across three lanes, car totaled. My insurance (paid a $500 deductible because the fool didn't have insurance) but got a little extra cash for 'pain and suffering' and bought the gap insurance from the dealer when we bought the car, so didn't have to pay for a car that we didn't have any longer. (ALWAYS buy that gap insurance, folks).

There was an obligatory, 'Are you OK?' followed by, 'You'll need to take a drug screen by tomorrow.'

 

What the hell is gap insurance?

 

Aflak!!! (insert picture of duck here)

 

Here's some 'official' wording, but it essentially covers what balance remains after the insurance company issues its payout for a total loss, meaning you're back at zero and not in the hole paying for a car that's been totaled.

GAP insurance can provide valuable protection during the early years of your car's life if you have a loan or a lease.

If a loss occurs, GAP insurance will pay the difference between the actual cash value of the vehicle and the current outstanding balance on your loan or lease. Gap Insurance protects your vehicle lease or loan. Sometimes it will also pay your regular insurance deductible.

If your vehicle has been totaled by accident, theft, fire, flood, tornado, vandalism, or hurricanes your insurance company typically pays the actual cash value. That may be less than its actual retail value. It is often considerably less than the actual amount you still owe on your loan or the amount due for a lease payoff.

The amount between your insurance deductible and the loss from this financial shortfall is the “gap” you can be left owing.

 

It's also sometimes called "total loss insurance" or "replacement vehicle insurance."

 

This was one of those, "You have to use our rental car company" deals and I was covered, but I had to report it.

 

Well worth it. When we bought the car, it was one of those things they probably snuck in as an addition that they wanted to get us on ... honestly, only vaguely remembered having it, so it probably wasn't all that costly. And it's gotta be a good deal for the dealership, because how often is your car totaled before you pay it off? But I will always, always, always ask for it when buying off a lot from now on. I'd have been out thousands probably without it.

 

Never had a wreck on assignment, but did have a dog bite through my car tire once. Yes, you read right, a dog bit through my tire.
Here's the story.
I was working at weekly in Iowa in the early '90s and returning to the office from an assignment when I saw a calf standing by an open gate along the county road (this sooo sounds like a letter to the editor to Penthouse). I slowed the car down and honked the horn, hoping the sound would send the calf running up the lane back to the farm. It went running all right -- right down the road, hooves and tail flying in the wind.
I drove down the farm lane to tell the farmer his calf was gone, but no one was home put a few dogs and three huge turkeys (yes, it kept getting better and better).
Despite seeing stranger wondering around their yard, the dogs were quite friendly. The turkeys, however, weren't and began chasing me as I headed back to the car.
Once I was back in the car, the dogs suddenly got angry and rushed the car, snarling around the front driver's side wheel.
A quick horn honk and some flying gravel later, I'm off.
Luckily the house was only a couple miles outside of town because the tire was nearly flat by the time I rolled into the service station (not a service station, the service station; it was a small town). I thought I'd run over a nail or something until the mechanic showed me the hole the one of the dogs' teeth had made in the sidewall of my tire.
Fifty bucks later, I roll back to the office to relate my saga.
The publisher didn't even bat an eye, just refunded my money.

 

I hope they let you write a column on this.

 

Never wrote a column on it, but it certainly ranks right up there with the time I topped a hill on the highway headed back to the office and found a hog on the side of the road which had had fallen out of livestock truck.
The hog, weighing several hundred pounds, was not only still alive, but walking around trying to find a cool spot to rest on a typical August afternoon in Iowa (think uber sultry with lots of sun).
Again, I drive up to a nearby farmhouse and the homeowner calls the sheriff's office, which dispatched a deputy to the scene.
Here's where it got interesting.
The deputy arrives and decides we'll herd the hog to the next farmhouse a few hundred yards away because that guy had hogs and agreed to take it.
The deputy and two teens from the first farmhouse herd the hog down the road while I follow along in the squad car. Yes, I drove the squad car with lights flashing (no siren -- didn't want to get the overheated porker too excited) and people driving by, watching a spectacle that made the O.J. Bronco chase look like the Indy 500.
And people say the country's boring.

 

Wonderful. I get riding horses through my front driveway that's right along a U.S. Highway. That's where this city gal learned what a "Tennessee Stepper" was.