Hi Friends, family, and kind people reading this,

My name is Benjamin, I'm a part-time volleyball coach and full-time high school English teacher (LTISD) from South Austin, and a recent graduate of Texas A&M and UT Austin. I am a long-time horse lover who adopted five of them from a neighbor in Waller County during the pandemic, because he was severely neglecting them without water for days at a time in our hot Texas summers. When I returned to Austin in 2022, I got him to sell them to a property with land and space for them to be better cared for, but that experience will stay with me forever, because if I had had a truck, I could have refilled their water trough at any moment without waiting for him. I left that with an determination to buy land and horses in the future, and in the excitement of completing grad school last Spring at UT Austin, I bought this beautiful, used 2018 GMC Sierra, without Googling "what problems are GMC trucks known for"- it turns out the answer is (in one of the attached pictures) disintegrating transmissions, and with only 69,000 miles on mine, the transmission just died. A lemon lawyer told me that used vehicles don't qualify for the class action lawsuit GM is facing now, for producing over 800,000 vehicles with these bad transmissions, and somehow my truck wasn't recalled either. I'm currently facing a horrifying $7,000 replacement cost for the labor and used/rebuilt/new transmission (every mechanic I talk to or visit, the moment they hear “GMC” and “won’t shift out of second gear” immediately quote this signature GM transmission failure and say, unanimously, “$7,000 pal, no way around it”), and as a public school teacher fresh out of college with outstanding student loans, I don't have anything to put towards that :(

I'm desperately hoping that those of you who are able to can contribute something to help me with this crisis. Without the ability to get out of the loan, or sell it for anything close to the payoff balance, I am stuck paying my monthly payment and full coverage insurance without any working transportation. This is not at all where I considered being, after finally going to college at 35 and emerging at 42 with a master's going into a career in education, but here I am and it's beyond belief :(

Thank you so much for reading and considering donating! I will be sure to keep in touch, update, and close this out when the goal has been reached!