overcharged for tow job

I am drive a company truck and the company paid for this. It does not change the fact that wrong is wrong and if it happened to me, it can definitely happen to anyone else... company driver or owner operator.


I was forced off the side of the road on British Columbia Highway 5A about 15 minutes south of the City of Kamloops. My right side tires were all off the road and I could not crawl back over the edge of the asphalt so I needed a tow. I was located about 400 - 500 meters from a very rural farm house that had a few lights on and there was someone home luckily enough. There have been several accidents in that area so a local tow company called Brenda Lee's Heavy Towing Ltd. of Kamloops, BC had left some flyers and business cards with the resident. I called them and the guy who answered my call told me it would be 30 minutes to get there... 15 to get ready and 15 travel.... that was about 5 minutes before 6pm....

At 7:15 (1 hour and 15 minutes or so after the initial call) I called to ask where they were but got no answer... I was concerned that since the roads were in such bad shape that they might have had a mishap or the road had been closed. They finally showed up on scene at 7:30 pm (1 hour and 30 minutes after the initial call) with a driver and one other person. The tow unit went way past and put out signs on one side of the scene then 25 - 30 minutes later came back having reversed the whole way, stopped briefly then went out for another 30 minutes the other way to put out more signs. As they were putting out the other set of signs (2 hours and 30 minutes after the initial call) their traffic control person showed up in a pickup. Would have saved a lot of time if that person had showed up on time to put out the signs.

Recovery operations started and a hook was run to my front right tow hook and to the king plate of my trailer. I was towed up flat and my unit stalled... turns out all the fuel had run out of my primary tank into the secondary tank and the computer said there was no fuel. Computer shut it down. The tow unit pumped about 20 or so liters of fuel into my left tank then primed the filter and it started. Recovery continued an I was on the road, and under way after exchanging all the info. (3 hours and five minutes after the initial call)

Boss told me yesterday he got the bill..... $1,500 --- I said holy crap!

They are billing us about $700 for the tow... that's for 3 hours of tow truck use...
- Why are we paying for the 1 hour extra they used to just get there? It is litterally less than 15 minutes to the City of Kamloops where they are based... I know... I drove to the complete opposite side of the city in 25 minutes after the recovery from the scene of the incident.
- They were on scene for 1 hour doing the actual tow... if the flagging person had been on time then the tow unit would not have had to waste so much time putting out signs.
... but where I have the real problem is that they are billing us for 4 hours of flagging service with 3 people flagging.
- There was 1 operator, 1 assistant who did flagging and one person who showed up 2 hours after the call.
- The whole call didn't last 4 hours and there were not 3 flaggers. There were 2 if you count the assistant on the tow unit.
- The driver is supposed to be paid for with the truck.
They also charged us for 100 liters of fuel when they only gave us about 20 liters.

All-in-all... the I believe that the people at Brenda Lee's Heavy Towing Ltd of Kamloops, BC are, in my opinion, not a good deal for any trucker... call their competition if you are ever in need.

If you know anyone who travels this part of the country, you might want to pass this along to them as a heads up.

 

Remember People... these are the facts as I experienced them and my opinions alone. You make up your own minds about hiring anyone. They may have an impeccable record of service and have many happy customers. I am not the one paying the bills, my boss is.

I also want everyone to know why my wheels were off the road. An oncoming car with 3 occupants crossed the center line of the highway and came 3/4 of the way into my lane, there was a pull-out at that area and I had hoped to be able to dodge the car and return to the roadway. Had I hit the car it would have ended in certain death for the the car's occupants so I took the chance to avoid the car using the pull-out and avoided the car but my right tires caught deep snow and I was sucked off the road along the edge of the asphalt. It was technically my fault for not having hit the car like so many people tell me I should have.

My problem is when billed for truck time that I never used and flagger time that also wasn't used. If an employer wants to pay his employees for an extended period of time over and above the time of the job that should be his expense, not the expense of the person that hired him to do the job. If one part of the recovery team is late then they should also bear the costs incurred as a result. What about that extra hour I spent at the side of the road while waiting for a truck that was promised to arrive in 30 minutes but got there 90 minutes later? My boss was still paying me for that time and while that is nice for the tax-man, I do care about my boss' bottom line and how that can affect my paycheck in the future.

All this experience has done is reinforce the notion that "If it has a hook, it's a crook" that I have heard so many times.