ESC

Last night at 5:45 pm, just as everyone was about to leave for the holiday weekend we got a call for an overturned, loaded 3 car hauler. I was nearby in my personal car as I had left early to pickup my daughter from school. We went direct to the scene. From the look of things, the fifth wheel hitch may have broken causing the overturn but police are working to find the actual cause. I am a little curious to hear feedback on billing for this recovery. Do you out everything on one bill? Or each vin a different bill? We had two mpl40 wreckers, two flatbeds, our 896 and myself on scene. Time of call until we cleaned up the trucks and headed home was just shy of 4 hours total. After the police finished and gave us permission to get to work, the first thing we did was disconnect the dodge from the trailer. It was still held together by one safety chain. The front of the trailer was winched tight to the truck so we could take tension off the chain so it could be cut. Then the truck was winched onto our flatbed while a wrecker winched the back away from the trailer. Next we stabilized the trailer with two wreckers so our crew could disconnect the straps from the vehicles. Some of which had been compromised during the rollover. The trailer was uprighted using two wreckers. Our fifth wheel plate was used on an mpl40 and the trailer was moved out of the area. A wrecker uprighted the pickup and another hauled it away on dollies. The wrecker uprighted the suv which was hauled away on a flatbed. We swept the roadway and used spill tackle to cleanup and fluids. Each unit was transported to our storage facility. All broken windows were covered. We did find out the hauler has coverage from Progressive, so now we wait to find out about coverage limits and all. We are very familiar with recovery billing and have attended the Big Whee class. But it’s a first for me having multiple vehicles all on the same trailer so I’d love to get some feedback from others. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Haha... that always seems to be the case lately. At least its not just me! I swear the State Police in our area plot it out against us..... nice 5 car crash right up the road during daylight hours and they call someone from 10 miles away. A single 1989 caravan overturned, off the road, in the middle of the night 10 miles away during a rain storm with no insurance and they call us. We keep taking them all, one day our luck will turn around. Glad to see you have been busy up there!

I am curious to see the end result of this. It seems that the towing/environmental co is on the right path for properly cleaning up a scene. These fixed rate police contracts are crazy. Seeing their rates of $285 on a heavy duty police tow and $125 on a light duty blows my mind. We have local police departments that have a similar fixed rate contract and we just cant make the numbers work. The higher ups don't seem to understand the costs. After checking out the environmental companies rates and all, things look reasonable and honestly on the cheap side.

Very nice.... i couldn't be bothered to waste the time attempting to get that car on a flatbed. Using the auto loader and dollies is for sure the way to go. It always drives me nuts having a vehicle owner that says it MUST go on a flatbed.

We have mostly stopped working with clubs all together. When we do it is credit card only, and we charge them a very high rate. Typically starting at $375 and up according to the situation. If they are calling me they are desperate... and if they want our good service, they will pay up. The last club job i took was for Quest a week ago. It was a secondary to tow an all wheel drive that was stuck in park from a tow yard 15 miles away. The payout was in the $1100 range, cash only. And it was being towed 4 miles. I charged $575 credit card, plus got the payout amount plus 5% to cover the fees. We had the job done within an hour. I charge such a high rate to make up for all of the headaches, hassles and issues that the clubs have caused us over the years. At those rates, yes I am very happy to tow for a club. Allstate and Agero are both blocked from my cell phone so they dont bother me after hours when the phones are forwarded to me. NSD is the only club that we still work with by PO, and they pay our standard retail rates....they rarely call us for anything nearby though.

We have been working with Excel for years. Always great service. They did a fabulous job designing our shirts and all. The quality of the shirts is great too, they hold up well.

We have been purchasing our JerrDan parts from Ernie at ECTTS. He has been great to work with, always fast and accurate getting my parts to me.

I do things in a similar manner to you. I run an MPL40 wrecker typically and send a bed and we send a bed and a wrecker to most every crash. But if I had two beds working the crash pictured and nothing else available, I would back up toward the drivers side of the durango and winch the front of the durango away from the GMC. The GMC looks like it would slowly slide off the durango as it was winched away. Id load the Durango and move it out of the way and back the next bed up for the GMC. Typically though, Id lift the GMC with my wrecker and winch the durango onto a bed, set the gmc down, winch it from the pole to the road and then load it on a bed. Bill the Durango for a bed, and the GMC for a wrecker and a bed. Cleanup and go.

This is fantastic!! The more companies that get on board with this sort of thing, the easier it becomes. We have been working at it the last few years and have had great luck. So many customers are amazed at how far we go to clean things up that most would just leave for the insurance company to deal weeks or months later. We struggle with manpower and time to do some of the cleanups being a small company. I sure wish our workload and volume with bigger clean up jobs was higher.

The worst part is we don’t use the truck much. We are a light duty company and I do a lot of our wrecker work with our two Dodge 5500 MPL40s. We got this truck about 6-7 years ago for a fair price. We use it here and there as needed. It’s an animal but it’s old and slow. She’s paid for herself over and over so we keep it around for those cases where we need a little more muscle. Time to reinvest a bit into it in hopes that we get some work with it soon. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Here is a new “gold plated” tilt cylinder from miller. With two new pins and shipping it was $2100. Took about a week to get. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ha, I thought exactly the same thing! It is crazy overvalued, but the truck is a paperweight without it, so you know the deal. We had to pull the trigger and get it coming. Typically we have them rebuilt, but this one had some damage on the inside that our builder recommended not rebuilding this one. I sort of figured 800-1000, but was really shocked when i found out it was over double that. Our local dealer helped us out as much as they could on it, which I am grateful for. I had hoped that someone here might have a new old stock one laying around or something, but what can you do. Thanks for your effort!

Much appreciated. I ended up ordering one through a local dealer. $2100 with new pins shipped to me. It should be here this week. For such a little cylinder it sure carries a salty price tag. I appreciate the effort though. And yes, the 896 is the 12 ton and uses the same piston as the 897. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is the cylinder that I am looking for. Supposed to be part # 896670000

I am in need of a Vulcan 896/897 wheel lift tilt cylinder and pins. Our cylinder is damaged and not able to be rebuilt. I am in the market for new, or remanufactured. Possibly open to used that I can have rebuilt locally. My local Miller dealer is getting me prices now, but I know retail price. Just hoping someone might have some old stock out there for a more affordable price.

In our area in Southeastern PA we have seen a huge decline in the last few years with police impounds. Most officers around us leave the vehicle parked in a parking lot, or driveway where the vehicle is pulled over. Typically the next day, the property owner is calling us to remove an abandon car, etc. I wish the police would just tow them in the first place, it would be alot easier. Even in many cases we see them park a DUI car in a parking lot. It blows my mind. In my opinion, one of these days one of those parked cars will be damaged, or stolen and the police will have to pay for it and they will go back to the old way of impounding them.

Typically, I go to control arms, and i like to use endless loops in a lot of cases. If there is sharp edges, or anything weird or heavy, I would use chain. I have gone to a wheel here and there if it made sense. The resistance is so little on a light duty job, that I would not be as concerned. I wouldn't go to a wheel that had obvious damage either.

We regularly supply cars for local fire companies at no charge. I do constantly ask them to give us notice, but as you said, they tend to call a day or two ahead and expect we can magically appear with 3 cars for them. Sometimes it just doesn't work out in time. When we deliver cars to them, I have my guys take a good picture and I make a good facebook post on our shop page. I tag the fire co in it as well. I always include a line about if people want to donate a car, that we will pick it up for free, etc. I just ask for the title. Then once the fire company is done with it, we take it to the scrap yard, or sell it to a scrap buyer that we work with. I would think there is a way to get a donation letter from the fire company as well that we could use toward our taxes, but I have never bothered with it. We do it as a courtesy for the fire companies that we work with regularly. Not to mention that I want them well trained. You never know when they could be cutting me out of a crashed car if i were to ever be in an accident.

I also took the time to listen. I thought it was good and worth the time. Its nice to see a club be active and get information out there. I like the idea of Honk and where they are going with things. I am just annoyed with them overall using "set your own rates" in the beginning to get us all working hard for them. It gave them enough good results to land some better deals and now they pulled the prices that we had set and now give us a take it or leave it set rate that is much lower than we had set. The way they went about it just bothered me, and now in my mind, they are just like the rest of the clubs. We turned the app off after they pulled that one.

Lucky for us, our area is not regulated. However we do bill very consistently across the board. We follow our recovery/emergency rates for accidents and all. Our secondary tows get billed out at our standard non emergency tow rates. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks one that I have seen before too. Wrecks at our yard get looked at by a geico appraiser. The. They cut us a check for recovery and storage and the tow out to a body shop. The adjusters know that going through their inside guys is too much hassle. Years ago we applied for Geico and were told “they have sufficient coverage in our area”. Since then they have added on a few bottom feeders. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I had talked with Copart a few years ago and found their rates were ridiculously low. They are 32 miles from me, and the rate to haul one from my shop to them was $55 per car. Pretty scary that their are people running for those rates.

Gerber used to be known as Netcost. They were pretty scummy to work with in my opinion. Had a box truck tow for them in the snow an hour away going an hour north. They paid us credit card up front, and we got there within our eta. Found out they double dispatched and another company was on scene hooking. We called in to change things up and they refused to cover our time at all. They wanted a full refund. I wanted paid for our two hours. In the end they did a charge back to the card and we never got a dime. I cut them off completely and will never work for them again. Tesla is great. They contacted us based on local recommendations. We only do a handful of jobs for them, but they agreed to my rates... they expect top notch white glove sort of service. Going as far as taking a cold drink to a stranded customer during the summer. They pay accordingly, so if Tesla calls, we jump and get it done.

I spend way too much time on social media and all. I have apps that report direct to my cell phone for our Facebook Page, Google Business, Nextdoor, and Yelp. New reviews show up as a notification on my phone and I try to reply as fast as possible to both good and bad reviews. I work to turn any negative review into a positive. As you guys know, in the towing business youll never make everyone happy. I figure that most any customer that is being towed by us is having a bad day in one form or another. Sometimes they take it out on us. I currently have plenty of great reviews and a few negative ones. In a few of those cases, we made mistakes and deserved the bad mark, even though I hate to admit it. But I did everything that I could to make them right. Some of the bad reviews that I have I personally think are false reviews. But I always post a public apology and try to make it known that I want to get more info and attempt to correct the situation. I find that my replys go a long way with the next customer to read that bad review and our response to an issue tells more about our company and how we do things. And since we are talking about it.... I get alot of customers from Yelp and Google both, as well as our Facebook page.

Very good point! We work with others regularly. A couple years ago we had a panicked call from a mother about her daughter being stranded on I80 near the northeast extension in PA. They wanted us to rush right up to tow the kid home (over 3 hours away). Instead we called EdsTowing through this board and they had someone out to the car within 30 minutes, towed it to their shop and got the car fixed. Im sure the repair bill was less than I would have charged to tow that customer home. In the end I was happy as I didnt have to take a 6 hour drive, and the kid was off the road and safe within 30 minutes, the mom could stop worrying and Eds took care of the customer. It was a win for everyone. @EdsTowing