Jalopnik 
Enter your username and password.
Detroit, 2:29 PM
Thu Dec 3
36 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
Editor-in-Chief:
Ray Wert | | AIM
Road Test Editor:
Wes Siler |
Weekend Editor:
Murilee Martin |
Associate Editor - Houston:
Associate Editor - Detroit:
Editor-at-Large:
Contributors:
John Krewson |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/29/09
If we don't tow it, someone else will. We treat all people with the same respect that they give to us.
We are accommodating and understanding and will do anything within reason to help someone else. After all our business is helping others in a time of need.
Many times people deal with us in a fit of rage even though we didn't park their car and didn't order it towed. Those people need to have their paperwork in perfect order and do everything by policy (such as a wife picking up a husbands car etc)
We can be very nice. I often knock off mileage charges, days of storage, etc. We can be very not nice too. Keep that in mind next time you deal with a tow company.
11/29/09
Parking is illegal at some point of the day for every single space in the city, and instruction signs are often so incomprehensible that even well-intentioned drivers will screw up and be hit with a $200+ ticket. This is nothing more than a general tax levied on the population. If you are very very unlucky, the city will just up and take your car to the impound lot for nothing more than being parked illegally for a few minutes. Then on top of your $200 ticket, you also have tow and impound charges of another $300 or so. And heaven forbid this happens on a weekend, because then your car will be dragged out to the middle of nowhere and you'll spend the remainder of your day (or two) trying to get it out.
Then there is the marshal 'service' (a public service concession awarded to a private individual), who works with private tow companies to find those 'scofflaws' who have more than two unpaid tickets and ruin their lives. First off, most tow companies are mobbed up, more often than not. And even if they're not mobbed up, they're run by corrupt assholes who live on kickbacks and the misery of others. So anyway, you have the marshal who on the surface exists to collect money owed on parking tickets... to do this he roams around the city in a minivan with private wreckers in tow and when they find a car that returns as having unpaid tickets, they surround this car, force the driver out and make them either pay the full balance in cash on the spot or they take the car. Now most people don't just carry a few hundred in cash on them, so more often than not they just put big stickers that say 'SEIZED' on it and take the car... even if you offer to run to a cash machine down the block they have the right to just take the car, which they always do. See, its not in their interest to just collect cash, because once its towed then the owner of the car is on the hook for not only the balance of their tickets, but also an overinflated towing and storage charge, which the marshal is entitled to a cut of... and the tow companies get a cut of their total tickets owed as well. So its win/win for them.
So now your car has been confiscated by thugs in the middle of a public street and you're basically left standing there with nothing. Now begins the odyssey to try and get your private property returned to you (and hope you have a day to kill). See, they don't tell you where its towed to... it could be anywhere. First you have to go to the marshal's office in person to pay your balance of tickets --cash only-- then they give you a paper with the location of the yard that is holding your car... likely many many miles away, in a bad neighborhood, where you go and once again pay in cash your tow and storage fees, and hope that your car is in one piece (it often isn't because they just don't give a shit).
During this experience, you will encounter the most nasty, mean-spirited people on the face of the planet, who not only don't care about you or your property, but also seem to take joy in the fact that they have this tiny amount of power to hurt people with. The entire process is awful and should not exist in a free society. I would not be exaggerating if I said that I wish physical harm on them and their families.
So while its wonderful that wherever it is that your happy friendly tow company operates gets the benefit of your benevolence, you should probably know that when you take someone's private property away from them, they're going to be upset. And quite frankly, I seem to recall something in the constitution about not being able to deprive an individual of their 'life, liberty or property without due process of law'... so unless some asshole with a ticket book or a deliberately unintelligible parking sign now constitutes 'due process', I would expect more people to not be happy with your work.
11/30/09
11/29/09
11/29/09
The other 10% of the time was spent towing cars the townies would abandon in the dorm overnight parking lots. I got very good at noticing the dirt around the tires as an indicator of a car that hadn't moved in months.
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/29/09
It usually costs us around $500/yr for a parking pass (cheapest variety) so no wonder they get to afford all the fancy devices. That's why most people take the big blue bus.
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/29/09
If a mediocre car got impounded, it would cost some huge amount to get it out of impound, once the towing and storage fees were paid. So, rather than pay something like $800 to get a car back, the owner would just wait until the car went to auction, then have a friend buy it for more like $300-400 and sign it back over to them.
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/28/09
I have some pretty good friends in the towing business, and when they get anything odd, old and European that nobody will claim, I get first dibs. I got my Saab Sonett III, my Lotus Europa S2, my Lloyd Alexander TS, my Renault R10 and one of my Saab 95 parts cars that way.
And I saw a wrecker decorated much like the one Novaload saw today, too.
11/28/09
11/28/09
And I saw one just this evening that from the front was tricked out like a fire truck with the whirlygig on the nose and everything--it was one of those huge wrecker--but it did have Xmas lights lining the business end--mixed signals.
We still call junker old cars rolling around Tow Bait.
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/28/09
We got a Porsche 944 n/a one time and I taught myself how to drive a stick on that car. How many people can say they learned how to drive a stick in a Porsche?(albeit a very clapped out one at that).
At one point we had an agreement with a local ghetto tow company to allow them to store cars he towed in the back of our yard. Long story short he towed all these nice cars in. 600 SEC merc a built chevelle etc. Well he stopped paying his bills and basically and disapeard. So we couldn't leave the cars in our yard because it was taking up space. We had to take all these cars and throw them on the street. So that the city tow company could go get them. Usually it takes the city about a week to get the cars. On this occasion the cars were put out there at 5 a.m. and were picked up by 7 a.m.!
All i have to say is that tow companies are vicious...
11/29/09
Um, that sounds illegal for some reason. Chop shop?
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/29/09
07/31/09
07/31/09
07/31/09
A couple of weeks ago I was riding my motorcycle home from work and came to a fairly busy 4-way stop. Upon determining that it was my turn, I began to to proceed when I heard tires screeching, and saw a woman with her phone up to her head, sliding through the stop sign on my right. After my heart went back into my chest from my throat, I proceeded straight and noticed a LEO car about three deep in the oncoming lane, as I passed his car I realized that he missed the entire ordeal because he was looking down at his( Blackberry type) phone, texting. I am seriously considering carrying a pocketful of spark plugs to introduce to the idiots windshields that do this shit.
07/31/09
07/31/09
07/31/09
07/31/09
Going to be looking over my should on the ride home, FP is lurking...
07/31/09
08/01/09
07/31/09
07/31/09
07/31/09