A few weeks ago, we said goodbye to our trusty 2015 Toyota 4Runner. We’d purchased the red truck as a second vehicle four years earlier – almost to the day – during summer 2020. It had been the height of the COVID pandemic and mere days before we were due to head out to my third tour in Ciudad Juárez. We’d barely had enough time to complete Virginia’s mandatory safety inspection sticker before we’d loaded up both of our vehicles and started our PCS road trip to the border.
We’d called our new-to-us 4Runner Brandy. She was a welcome addition to our motor fleet of two. My Volkswagen Hilde, 10 years old at the time, had been reliable. But after receiving the VW back from government storage in 2019 (in which it was nearly totaled by negligence), it felt like a lesser-known quantity than it had before we took it overseas. The VW also felt too old to be our primary car, particularly in the context of the difficult security situation in Juárez.
So I got my heart set on a 4Runner. But as it turned out I was still very attached to the VW and wanted to drive that every day. So the 4Runner had become my husband’s primary vehicle. It was also excellent for El Paso grocery runs and fun road trips around the American southwest.
The truck did the heavy lifting on moving our immediate-need household effects from Virginia to Mexico. It also gave us a feeling of safety while driving around in one of the most dangerous cities in the western hemisphere. And having such a big SUV was a boon when we packed out at the end of the tour and needed to drive back to Virginia – preferably with as many of our things accompanying as possible.
Brandy had ticked the boxes we’d needed her to. But after a couple of years back in Virginia, we had to accept that she was no longer a cost-effective occasional commuting and weekend car. Her odometer was nearing 100K miles. She was expensive to maintain. And the lifecycle of several of her parts was coming to an end. She’d been rear-ended as my husband drove to work… twice. She’d held her value, but it was time. Our motivations were both financial and practical.
Selling the truck was a little bit sad, and also, unfortunately, delayed by my sudden realization that – although we’d paid cash and never had a lien – I’d neglected to file the DMV paperwork to obtain the title back in 2020. I’d always thought the title was locked in the safe. However, when I actually checked, only the Volkswagen title was actually in our possession.
I was shocked and yet not surprised this had escaped my attention.
A PCS move can be very chaotic. As I’d settled into my work in Juárez back then, my considerations about the truck had evidently been focused on making sure it was registered and properly insured on both sides of the border.
After some consternation and back-and-forth with the used car dealership where we’d bought the car (and two frustrating trips to the Virginia DMV), I managed to resolve the issue in May of this year. The title was finally in-hand, giving me the legal right to sell my own truck, that had been registered to and insured by me for four years.
Just as the original purchase of the 4Runner occurred in the context of an international move, we are again a year out from a PCS and all its related considerations. We have been starting to think about lightening the load of our household, as it were, and what we can do in advance of moving to Burma to make our inevitable decisions about what to sell, store, and ship easier.
With the sale of the 4Runner, one era ended and another began…
Collecting Postcards 
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