Two thoughts:
First, these photos seem to me to be perfect candidates for light painting. You could have brightened the barn and even the truck.
Second, IMHO, a global reduction in brightness, if that's what you did, is not what I would do. I would try to select the bright area on the truck's windshield and darken that while leaving the rest as is, or perhaps even brightening it a tad. Here's a quick and dirty in which I darkened the windshield:
You can do this in a number of ways, but unfortunately, the easiest in this case--because the affected areas are so much brighter than everything else--is with a luminosity mask, which isn't in everyone's toolkit.