Free enterprise

robert 14617 said:

it is private property

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canndo said:

Last weekend I agreed to attend a permaculture seminar with a friend. I was running a little late and we decided I should park my car at a half way point so we could go together in his car.

It was a Saturday.

I rounded a Mcdonalds, looked for a place where my car would not take up a valuable parking space and found a row of businesse that were closed on the weekends. I studied parking limitation sign.

No vehicles over 2 tons
No over night parking
No posting for sale signs on cars
No commuters.


I was none of those, so I parked.

When I got back, my car was nowhere to be seen, nor was any car in the two rows in front of those closed busnesses.

I called the police thinking it might have been stolen and they recommended I call the number of the towing company. Sure enough, they had my car.

Now a tow in this part of the country isn't but a few dollars a mile and half a hundred for the service. They make an honest living that way.

But, over the phone I found out that my car was going to cost $430 to get out of impound. When I got there I saw the schedule, $186 dollars an hour.

When I asked the tow guy when he had picked it up, he pointed to my release slip, my car had been parked an hour. He said that they had been called from his home. Hence the extra charges, pluss the extra charge for his coming down to let me have my car. I asked if there was some sort of fine he relayed to the county or city and he said no. I asked how I could have done anything wrong, parking in an empty parking lot on a Saturday morning and he shrugged. "we are under contract and we tow when we are called". Because I was not angry with him, simply accepting that he had nothing to do with my misfortune, I asked "so.... how much do the owners of the property get out of this... contract". He then gave this half apologetic smile, a shrug, and said "well, kickbacks are illegal".

I don't know how much of this inordinant cost they gave back to the owner but I do know that towing a vehicle 7 miles and storing it for 7 hours doesn't cost $430. I also know that I had no choice, I could not shop for a cheaper deal, every day I spent looking for a legal method of fighting this extortion would cost me 52 more dollars and after three days a lein would be placed on my vehicle.

How, in a country where free enterprise magicaly reigns itself in, and everything in this system winds up being equitable, might this bit of extortion be preempted? Or.... might it take some government regulation to protect us from such theft?

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abandonconflict said:

So is the car.

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Bombur said:

So anyone can put their property on others' property? I think it's unfair that the car was towed with no posted notice of no public parking, and I would fight it if I was the OP, but it should be legal to prohibit parking on private property.

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it is private property

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Bombur said:

So anyone can put their property on others' property? I think it's unfair that the car was towed with no posted notice of no public parking, and I would fight it if I was the OP, but it should be legal to prohibit parking on private property.

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beenthere said:

Sorry to hear about your misfortune but this kind of thing happens on city, county, state and federal property.

What time did you seminar end?

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canndo said:

Last weekend I agreed to attend a permaculture seminar with a friend. I was running a little late and we decided I should park my car at a half way point so we could go together in his car.

It was a Saturday.

I rounded a Mcdonalds, looked for a place where my car would not take up a valuable parking space and found a row of businesse that were closed on the weekends. I studied parking limitation sign.

No vehicles over 2 tons
No over night parking
No posting for sale signs on cars
No commuters.


I was none of those, so I parked.

When I got back, my car was nowhere to be seen, nor was any car in the two rows in front of those closed busnesses.

I called the police thinking it might have been stolen and they recommended I call the number of the towing company. Sure enough, they had my car.

Now a tow in this part of the country isn't but a few dollars a mile and half a hundred for the service. They make an honest living that way.

But, over the phone I found out that my car was going to cost $430 to get out of impound. When I got there I saw the schedule, $186 dollars an hour.

When I asked the tow guy when he had picked it up, he pointed to my release slip, my car had been parked an hour. He said that they had been called from his home. Hence the extra charges, pluss the extra charge for his coming down to let me have my car. I asked if there was some sort of fine he relayed to the county or city and he said no. I asked how I could have done anything wrong, parking in an empty parking lot on a Saturday morning and he shrugged. "we are under contract and we tow when we are called". Because I was not angry with him, simply accepting that he had nothing to do with my misfortune, I asked "so.... how much do the owners of the property get out of this... contract". He then gave this half apologetic smile, a shrug, and said "well, kickbacks are illegal".

I don't know how much of this inordinant cost they gave back to the owner but I do know that towing a vehicle 7 miles and storing it for 7 hours doesn't cost $430. I also know that I had no choice, I could not shop for a cheaper deal, every day I spent looking for a legal method of fighting this extortion would cost me 52 more dollars and after three days a lein would be placed on my vehicle.

How, in a country where free enterprise magicaly reigns itself in, and everything in this system winds up being equitable, might this bit of extortion be preempted? Or.... might it take some government regulation to protect us from such theft?

Click to expand...

Many of us probably don't think about the tow truck business that often. We're grateful when one randomly stops on the road when we're broken down (if they ever stop at all). We may think about them when we buy a new car or change our car insurance in determining whether or not we want roadside assistance, but for the most part our paths don't cross too often.
People examine the tow trucks and wreckers at the International Towing and Recovery Museum and Hall of Fame in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

AOL Autos wanted to find out a little more about the extreme ins and outs of the tow truck business, so we caught up with a former tow truck driver in Virginia.
He asked us to keep his name anonymous, so we will call him Dan, and in return he introduced us to the world of repossession and impound towing -- one that you hopefully won't have to visit too often.
Repossession and impound business
Dan worked as a part-time driver for five years and gave us some insight into how the repossession business works. The first step is simply getting the address of the car. It doesn't matter how they find out where the person lives, they just need to have that address.
Dan said that some finance companies give them an address, but if it's the wrong one, "They might have someone call the guy and tell him something stupid like he's won tickets to something and they want to know where to send them -- anything sneaky so they get the guy's address," he said. "Some people are so dumb that that they give their address and their car is just sitting there."
He said some people know it's a possibility their car will be repossessed so they park the car a few houses down thinking that the tow truck drivers won't be able to find it ... that doesn't work. We asked Dan what the best time to take a car was and he said, "Take them whenever! Whenever they least expect it."
Dan not only worked in repossessions, but also impounded vehicles for private companies. Sometimes he'd patrol apartment complexes and businesses that had hired Dan's company to tow away illegally parked vehicles.
He told us many people ignore the "No Parking" and "24 Hour Towing" signs, and they pay the price. "It might be parked there all night, it might be parked there for 30 seconds; it's just parked there at the wrong time if the tow truck gets it."
[h=4]Don't Miss

When it comes to patrolling for illegally parked cars, Dan told us that this is where competition between the tow truck drivers kicks in. He said most tow truck drivers try to work it out, but he had a few issues. "I know I always had problems with other drivers because I only worked part time." Other drivers would claim certain properties belonged solely to them, but Dan still patrolled them. [/h]
"It's not my fault they haven't been going and checking for cars," he told us. "They thought no one else would be at that property and little did they know I just rolled up and took all their cars."
Taking all the cars from a specific lot is referred to in this business as "burning up the property."
Early one morning Dan and a co-worker found another driver from their company sleeping in his truck, waiting to pick up a few cars. "We caught him sleeping in the shopping center right around the corner from one of the communities, so we figured there had to be cars and we went over and towed four cars. He woke up at 6 a.m. thinking he could get cars and he rolled in and there weren't any."
Normally, these drivers won't grab all the cars from a lot because they don't want people to think there's a strict policy. "It's kind of like fishing, you want to keep some bait out there," Dan said. "But when the money's tight, people take every car they can."
Selling the cars
Dan told us that most people would come and pay for their cars at the impound lot, unless the cars were in really bad condition. "Sometimes you'd have a fairly new car and under weird circumstances the people didn't come to claim the actual nice cars," he added. "But it's pretty rare that the cars were nice."
He told us that when the smart tow truck companies impound a car, they write down the VIN and the license plate number, then call the DMV and put a lien on that owner for the amount of money it costs to store the car. "Other tow truck companies might just sell the car off or just apply for the title and sell it off and get what money they can for it," he said.
We asked him what the company he worked for did in these cases. "If someone offered them cash for the car they just kind of unloaded it off to them." He said they didn't get in trouble for that because, "They had a connection up at the DMV, a lady was making titles for them."
By law, the towing companies are supposed to wait 45 days before they apply for the title at the DMV. "But you know, it varies," Dan said.
Dangers of the job
No one likes having their car towed, especially when you're actually there to see it happen. Some of Dan's co-workers have been shot at, one of his friends had his face slashed with a J-hook and Dan himself had an instance where a group of guys got a little more than angry at him for towing a car.
He and his co-worker were patrolling an apartment community and got out to determine what cars needed to be towed. "We kind of walked into a group of people who saw that we had our company tow truck shirts on and a friend got into a little bit of an altercation with them." Dan tried to stop the situation from escalating, but it didn't work out the way he wanted it to. "I was trying to tell everyone to not worry about it and go home, but when I wasn't looking I got a baseball bat to my face."
The guys who attacked Dan knocked out several of his teeth and then ran into an apartment building. "At first I was a in a little bit of a shock because my teeth were busted out," he said. "But then I think the adrenaline kind of kicked in and they obviously realized they had made a mistake and ran into an apartment." Dan then pinned their car in with his tow truck so they couldn't leave and waited for the police to show up. We asked Dan if he quit after a day like that, but he said he worked there for another two years.
Just part of the job
Even with all the angry people and potentially dangerous encounters, Dan said that there can be good money in towing cars. Drivers are paid by the number of cars they bring in. Some nights drivers can bring home $700, he said for some people, the risk is just part of the job and it doesn't deter them at all. Dan's friend who was slashed in the face six years ago is still towing to this day. It's not that they want people to be mad at them or that they particularly enjoy the dangerous encounters, Dan said matter-of-factly, "Some people just tow cars."

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canndo said:

There is a bit more to this story. I just looked up the regulations regarding towing. The regulation simply states that no one can charge more than what is charged for police to comission a tow, including fines. This is where the figure originates. Firstly, minimum time is one hour and that includes transit. There is a provision for off hours. However, the argument is that these charges go through the city. In otherwords, the city is taking it's costs off the top, the cost of a policeman and a clerk, and then the towing company is paid - at least that is how I gather is from the stories posted about DUI tows. If this is the case, it is likely that the owner gets an amount that aproximates what the police, or the city would get.

I would have gotten away cheaper had I parked in a no parking place on the street.

interestingly, had I waited for monday it would have cost me six dollars less, even with the storage fee. It is no wonder they ignored their Saturday morning and evening plans to make this pickup. Of course there is even more to the story, but it has nothing to do with the issue at hand and is simply personal inconvenience. For business reasons, my car is in my wife's name. No one but the registered owner can have access to the vehicle (I would have it no other way). The company agreed to open the place up immediately for me, frankly a compassionate gesture. However, when I found that I could not sign for my car, I had to beg them to be there, not immediately, but in about an hour and a half to give my wife time to drive to the place. Had I done the calculations, and had I anticipated my poor wife's reactions I might have simply stayed the rest of the weekend with my friend.

My friend, who felt very badly for suggesting where I park in the first place, offered to take us both out for a fine meal but when she arrived she was in no mood - AT ALL, having come from a long day at work only to drive 120 miles in order to forfeit our 430 bucks because she claimed I must not have read the sign right. It will only cost me 30 dollars to dispute this in small claims and I may well do it. It may be my responsiblilty to call them out. Then again, my wife, lovely and reasonable as she is, warned that my continuing would tend to remind her of the incident - wow, she was really really mad.

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canndo said:

The company agreed to open the place up immediately for me, frankly a compassionate gesture.

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