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“I’ll be taking a trip with the truck & trailer week after next & I don’t need a dead battery.”

Beau has the coolest gizmo for starting car/truck/anything batteries - I’ll get the name of it and let you know. It’s compact - comes in a little case and while you DO have to keep it charged (plug in, in the house) it’s powerful enough to start his F-350 truck!

I want one, too! My VW Golf has some sort of ‘trickle leak’ that will drain the battery if she’s not driven every week. I’ve had to beg jumps off of strangers in parking lots in the past - not always a safe practice. I can do it myself; I have good cables, but there are a LOT of weirdos running around loose these days, even way out here in Whoville!

I already have one of those little ‘jumpers’ & carry it with me when traveling. It fits in a plastic shoebox to give you an idea of the size. I don’t keep it plugged in, but have a schedule to make sure it’s charged up & ready to go. It also comes in handy when the power is out because I can use it to charge my phone :-) Maybe Santa could bring you one for Christmas?

We have had a terrible time with the truck batteries. Dad kept the truck (his ‘baby’) in the garage & it rarely was driven. One battery went dead with less than 200 miles after it was installed. What happens (as explained to me by my favorite mechanic at the old house) is that with cameras on the truck, electric seats & other stuff, settings that need memory, etc., there is a small, steady pull on the battery even when the truck sits & eventually, the battery is drained. Why dad (or I) never thought to put a battery minder on it is beyond me. We had AAA, but they would not install a battery on our truck because it’s not as easy as pulling the old one out & plopping in a new one. My brother installed the current one - took him a while & he really had to get into his tool boxe(s) to find what would work. I was keeping the truck on a battery minder after that with no issues. Then I put 13,000 miles on the truck last year moving & used it frequently this summer hauling mulch, made a couple of trips, got a running board installed, etc. so it was getting run enough to keep the battery up. The last 2 months, I haven’t been driving it much & with freezing weather being hard on batteries, I figured it was time to start taking care of the battery again. So that’s the ‘story’!