This weekend, my wife and I drove up to Erwin to hike from Devil's Fork Gap back to Nolichucky River. I arranged the shuttle to Devil's Fork Gap with Uncle Johnny's for 7:00 AM Friday morning.
Friday morning, on the way to Uncle Johnny's, I hit a rock in the road and blew out the side of my tire. Long story short, I put on the temporary spare and we drove in to Uncle Johnny's about 20 minutes late for our shuttle.
The shuttle driver, and another family who had also had a 7:00 AM shuttle were still there, waiting for us. I explained our situation and basically said we were going to have to delay our hike until I could get a new tire because we were over 400 miles from home and if we started our hike as scheduled we wouldn't finish until Sunday and there's no place to get a tire on Sunday .... I didn't want to risk driving 400 miles on a temporary spare. We couldn't extend our trip an extra day because our youngest son was staying with a friend and we needed to get home on Sunday...
The shuttle driver told me I could leave my truck key with him and that he would get me a tire and have it put on before we finished our hike so that we could go ahead and start our hike on time. I agreed, left him my keys and off we went.
We finished a day early, and when we came out of the woods Saturday evening there was my truck, with a brand new tire ready to go. They gave me the receipt from the tire place and charged me a $5 fee for handling it.
I've used Uncle Johnny's for shuttles at least a half dozen times and have never had a bad experience but the way they handled my tire and basically saved our hike, was really stellar service in my opinion. 2 thumbs up for UJ's!
footnote: after we had left on our shuttle, my wife remembered that she left her engagement ring (a rather large diamond) and gold necklace in the console and her purse behind the passenger seat. Everything was still there when we got back....