Have you ever been ripped off by a towing company?

I would imagine that the majority of repos take place over title loans with exorbitant interest rates. Often times they're circling the drain before they even get that loan. It's a ####ty situation and rates are high due to the risk, but it doesn't make it not predatory.

 

I do not disagree. But remember this was from a credit union. Is it even possible for a credit unit to be predatory? I've never seen it....
Around here the most I ever see advertised is the generic "Use us for your auto loan, as we are awesome" type ads.And as for the rates, a credit union tends to have the lowest rates anywhere.

 

First, these large invoices are not for run of the mill tow jobs, or even basic impounds. Please stop referring to them as tow jobs. They involve hours of labor, specialized recovery equipment, trained and experienced operators. There are usually also environmental clean up charges, disposal and other charges involved. in many states the tower is legally obligated to provide these services if they are requested by law enforcement WITHOUT guarantee of payment. My home state of Pennsylvania has a section in our vehicle code requiring a tower to clean up all debris, fluids and restore the site to pre-accident condition. This is not cheap. About 40% of the accident recovery jobs, both light and heavy duty, are abandoned at the tower without payment. In many states it takes 90-120 days and costs more than $150 to obtain permission to sell the abandoned vehicle as scrap. So a tower can spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars to only be paid a few hundred in the end.

It is the practice of insurance companies and owners abandoning vehicles at tow yards that leads to the inflated tow bills. Yes, like all industries the towing industry has a few bad apples. Most towers are hard working family businesses and are just spreading the costs of doing business over all their jobs, like any other business does. Same concept as headhaul/backhaul freight rates, together both segments of your run are profitable.

Add in the cost of manpower 24/7, the burden of electronic logging devices and other regulatory compliance issues that our counterparts in the fire and ems sector don't face and you can easily have thousands of dollars tied up into doing a truck recovery, all without any idea if you will be paid. Most insurance companies fight every detail on a towing invoice and refuse to pay -even when the policy has money available to pay. They simply abandon the cargo and equipment with us, costing us more time and money to get title so that we can sell or scrap what is left. Further complicating the issue is when you have multiple insurance companies fighting over who is responsible for what, cargo, truck or trailer. Then we have OOIDA, who is really just an insurance company masquerading as a driver advocacy group. They upsell their members on towing insurance, at an increased premium when in most states their liability is sufficient to pay for accident recovery. Then OOIDA fights with towers and state lawmakers to stick their nose into our business, to regulate our rates and service. How would they like it if their members had to return to the ICC days where the government tells you how much you can charge for a particular service?

 

Yes, sometimes it is overkill. We can tha k the state agencies for some of the unnecessary off-loading, they get worried about spilling a product from the damaged trailer. If they would just let the tower do their job it would be simpler.

I also agree that the cost of towing equipment has gotten out of hand. Now that I no longer own or operate my towing or car haul business I do some freelancing selling towing equipment. We just delivered a 5 axle rotator, load capacity of 60 ton on a Pete chassis. Sale price was $715,000 before adding the rigging equipment and FET. The tower will have about $825,000 into this truck. Average regular heavy wrecker cost upwards of $300k today.

 

Hi Zvar;
I think he was referencing my not taking advantage, rather that the credit union.
Agreed, Credit unions are the lesser of two evils in lending.
Still people do bail on them for a variety of reasons.

Great, Great explanations - Brian991219!!!
It's hard for people to comprehend how much can go into a simple "tow job."

 

Don't get me wrong, also; the motivation was strictly money, (and something to do,)
but I'm not gonna leave them standing along the road wearing only a barrel.

I got into this in 1983 when My "Regular Job" (yes, I have a regular job,) was three 12 hour days.
Sounds fine; for about 6 weeks - until 4 days off every week starts to drive you nuts.
I can't sit on my hands for 4 days!!
So I bought a Rollback; the first of seven, rest is history.
Then pulling in junk cars I found many are just this or that, tranny, whatever, and started fixing them.
That turned into a full time gig also. Again, it's amazing what people just throw away.

 

Having lifting equipment, we get called out on some truck wrecks. The biggest one we have been involved in was a truck that had turned over onto a live sewer line. The big wrecker couldn't do anything with it because it had to be lifted straight up to keep from breaking the sewer line. We had a crew of men on the job and a 265 ton crane, our bill was right at $20,000. A towing company also had to do some cleanup and tow the truck away after we fished it out of the hole, but that whole job was still less than $40K total. I don't see how in the world you could get a $300K bill, unless maybe there was some major environmental cleanup, or you ran over something really expensive.

The most complaints we get is the bill for re-working a shifted load. There is a local towing company that the owner doesn't want to fool with re-working loads. He calls us every time he has one of these jobs. Sometimes it's just a mess and you end up damaging product in the process, and can run up a $1,000 bill or more.

Last re-work we had was a guy hauling bundles of square tubing. It wasn't loaded or secured right and the bundles shifted, almost falling off the truck. We looked at it and the only way to get the straps off was to cut them, the load was leaning to the winch side and it was far to dangerous for somebody to release the winches. In the end, we ended up with square tubing scattered on both sides of the trailer like toothpicks in a tangled mess. Ended up having to re-bundle the tubing by hand, and quite a few pieces were damaged. We did finally get it all back on the trailer and loaded it where it could be secured. I quoted $800 for that one but it should have been $2,000.

Another re-work was a shipping container that had laid on it's side. it was a load of transmissions going to Nissan. They had uprighted the container and the trailer was undamaged, but the load was a mess. Only way to get the load out of the container was to move the first stack, often causing the stack behind it to just fall. There was oil running out of a lot of the containers the transmissions were shipped in. I can't imagine that Nissan accepted that load.

 

This is a friend of a fried story, tho my friend was involved. He was east bound and got a call from his friend, they were both brokers for a flat deck company. His buddie had stopped on the shoulder to answer a Qualcomm message and it was winter. His right side was little too far off on the shoulder into the snow and he was stuck. (He was NOT off the shoulder, just too far in the snow) How far behind was he? and did he have a chain to give him a little tug? No problem. He was there shortly and had the chain hooked up off his trailer rear bumper to the tractor tow hook.....when the po-po showed up. They made them stop. Wait 2 hrs for the "approved" tow company to come, who sent 2- 50 ton wreckers. One wrecker did nothing. The first guy hooked up the cable and winches him 20 feet. Took a few minutes. He says a good 3/4 Ton 4x4 pick up could have done it, easily.

$10k bill.

Wreckers are robbers.