Learn to run a wrecker?

Good money in recovery. You earn every bit of it with the risk you accept and the knowledge you need to do it safely.

 

CJ, when you are talking about "recovery," are you talking about repossession? If you are, that is a nasty, dangerous business. I've known several repo guys over the years. Their rate of being shot, stabbed and having the crap kicked out of them, is much higher than that for a LEO.

If on the other hand, you are talking about normal tow service, where you are dealing with crashes and break downs, it is a whole different story. If you are doing a break down recovery, and you screw up and damage the vehicle you are picking up, either you or your company, (depending on what your status is,) will eat the damages. Or at least their insurance will.

When you are talking recovery at accident scenes, it can get to be quite messy, and at times pretty dangerous. Often times you will be working very close to traffic where driver's are too stupid and self centered to slow down. Some of it can be pretty demanding physically, particularly if you are working a mountainous area with a lot of shelf roads. Or rivers. Or canals.

There are some other factors to look at. Most areas that I have lived in, there is a "rotation tow list," that law uses to call a hook to a crash. But there are areas where there are a bunch of independent tow trucks. No rotation list. They listen to police scanners and then race to accident scenes, as the first one or two there, will get tows, and everybody else will have made the trip for nothing. Places like this, you can actually see tow truck drivers arguing and sometimes getting physical with each other over who gets the tow. It just depends on what the laws are in your particular area.

I can't remember now, (if I ever knew,) where you are. But if you are in a rural area, you may not be busy enough to make a living off of doing nothing but running a hook. That's why most tow truck services are attached to repair shops.

As far as special licensing, check with your state. If you happen to be in Denver, I'm sure they require a city license, (they never met a tax they didn't like.) Anywhere else, check with the local government.

Learning to run the truck itself is a piece of cake, and under MOST circumstances, so is securement. Your biggest headache will be getting that new Mercedes from Boulder out of the snow drift, without damaging it further.

 

I ran a small wrecker years ago. Alot of it was on the job training.
Plus helping with the bigger stuff. You look at each recovery and study the task at hand.
Some of the bigger people send you to classes after you show that you can and want to do this work.
You work in the cold / rain / snow etc.
You will earn your pay.
Plus you need to watch out for the idiots that will try and run you over, as they are not paying attention to what's going on.

 

Sometimes you get a sweet rig with an 18 speed and a Cummins Signature 600 engine like the wrecker that towed me from Eloy to Chandler, AZ.

 

What the new ride already on the hook?
What happened, hope nothing major

 

Lol, no, not this truck. The old freight shaker I used to drive for another company.

New ride has 16k and I'm getting 7.5 mpg

 

Could not hurt to learn something new. I learned to run a wrecker at a OPG in Burbank, started doing club calls and worked up to HD Tow. Mostly OJT. Here in Cal you need a PC Card.

 

Hi CJ, once again, listen to BigDon. Wrecker is a nasty job, and entry level doesn't pay a lot. I have a friend in the heavy tow business, and I did a couple of "ride alongs" to see if I'd like it. By the 3rd time, I said, this isn't for me. I knew a guy that did a 2 car rollback thing, and all he did was take 2 cars from an impound lot to a junkyard. I guess that would be ok, but like BD sez, you get called at all hours, go to accident scenes, where they are mopping up the guts, or you may get called to pickup a car that's like 4 cars in, and none of them start, and the less said about the repo thing, the better, all for $8.50/ hr. There's better jobs out there.