Towing/ Wrecker Bill

Unless we're not getting the full story, that seems a little excessive.

Honestly if it was just a matter of chaining up an axle, pulling 4 tires and driving 5 minutes to a yard, I could have done that roadside by myself in maybe an hour to 90 minutes tops.

 

I’m not familiar with this particular company. But I was in the towing business around here for a long time and there is a lot of competition. When “police calls” come in some companies see it as hitting on a high paying slot and assume the insurance is going to pay big. Therefore they pad the bill.

 

Padding the bill is one thing like the admin fees and maybe pushing the hours from 3 to 3.5. Claiming they towed 3 automobiles and put them in storage for 3 days is a bit more than that though.

Of course the snippet of the description doesn't mention anything about 3 cars and the description does match the op, so yea It looks to be a huge case of fraud. Would be nice to se the full description though to see if the cars are mentioned anywhere....

Oh wait, it does say it's a car hauler and they pulled the cars off.... That's where the three cars came from.

 

That is excessive for the explanation. On the wrecker service side, you do respond to law enforcement calls with requested equipment. Alot of time a LEO calls for a wrecker when and service truck will do. I would expect one full page of explanation of work on a 19k bill.

So dispatch a LG wrecker per request, on scene dispatch service truck. Maybe have a extra guy come out to help, maybe. But thats labor only if his truck did no service but his transportation.

If they drove it in, why couldn't the actual driver? Now did it burn hydraulics and the had tons of labor and equipment unloading in the yard? Don't know, could have. Didnt do a solid and note it on invoice.

We could do this for hours. But sounds like someone is getting bent over.

 

Yeah I didn't see the part about it being a car hauler so that makes sense. But really, if their yard was a mile away like OP claims then why send 3 rolloffs when 1 could have done the job? I mean it looks like they were there for over 3 hours.

 

I have heard of this before with tow companies. I have heard sometimes they'll send multiple trucks out and even if they're not used each will get billed at $800 an hour or some insane number.

Then if the bill is not paid they just impound your equipment and charge you for every day it's in storage.

There are a lot of tow companies that have a lot of trucks and vehicles that they sell off and they sell parts and they have 30 Acres of ground and giant 10 Bay garages and I don't wonder why.

 

All of what is quoted above. This was not a truck that was hanging off the edge of a mountain like some tv show. The tow equipment used was overkill as the tow company will say it was law enforcement making an emergency call, so the entire fleet dispatched onsite is their protocol.

The tow company could have driven their co pick up truck a couple miles round trip to assess what was going on before dispatching that much tow equipment. But you cannot take advantage of a driver/company when you do the right thing.

I am no longer an o/o. But situations like mentioned in this thread were the most terrifying thoughts one could face alone. You have no control over a situation like this, onsite leo does. It is not up to the leo to price shop, their job is to clear the road. Therefore tow co's can get away with this all day, every day & have for years.

 

The tow companies on the police call lost agree to certain things. I’d get that agreement and read it.
And contact the police dept and the state agency that regulates towing companies.
And ask them to look into it.

$20k seems excessive , but apparently the trucking company didn’t think so because evidently they handed over the cash pretty fast with zero negotiation.


Id bet the cars were also damaged .
Likely There’s gonna be some more money handed out.

 

Description on invoice- “Driveable-NO, Keys-NO”.......I’m confused......