someotherplace

Wow.. well, none of us are perfect.. !! (just wow) Richard

Each time we shop for a new truck in the past few years it's just been "buy whatever we can find." Most recently, that landed us an F450 with an MPL-NGS with a transmission mounted pump (most of our fleet are Vulcan 812's on the same chassis utilizing the traditional belt-driven pump), and now a pair of F450 4x4's, one with an 810 and one with an 812. The 4x4's are absolutely not needed here and are actually a hindrance thanks to the large number of low-clearance parking garage accounts we have, so any driver that jumps into one of those trucks can't work many of our garage accounts. Somewhere along the lines we got lucky and got one example of what we were looking for which was the regular F450 / Vulcan 812 unit we're used to getting. We entertained RAM chassis for a moment as the local builder said they could get us one, but it would be stepping outside of the box as all of our other trucks are F450's. Not saying I have a preference one way or another as they all seem to have their issues, but I feel if you can keep your fleet somewhat homogeneous, it's smart as your spare parts stash is easier, and your shop knows what to expect when one comes in the door for repairs. Here in December 2022 not seeing a lot of positive movement in light duty chassis availability.. yet. Richard

Gorgeous! Our shop car when I was a teenager was a '67 Belvedere (more door though) 318, 3 on the tree. I prefer yours, though. Congratulations! Richard

Almost bought a '70, cheap, oh.. 30+ years ago. Turned out to be a bit too much of a pile for me at the time. Guy across the street from our shop got it and fixed it up a bit. I think this was the time I ended up with a '69 Chevelle (also a beater, just not as bad) instead. Richard

Beautiful Corvette. Real fuelie? What was it in for? Richard

Got to love seeing experienced members stepping up to help the new folks. As long as you're willing to listen and learn from those that have gone there, you're stepping in the right direction. Motor club work has got to be the #1 pitfall new towers get into, thinking they will "make it up in volume" - there are many calls that you will lose less money by never turning the key for them. Richard

That is their actual intent - for moving vehicles around in a shop. Smooth, level floors are where they work best. As others have mentioned, do not use them for loading/offloading with your rollback; they will not work for this, will be damaged, and likely damage the vehicle as they go flying off the tire. For PPI they are mandatory; no better way to get a vehicle that isn't a simple back-up-and-grab out of a space. They sit upright in brackets on the bed and get exposed to all the elements; it does wear on them a bit but all they really require is regular lubrication. Some folks put regular chassis grease on them and I think it's a terrible idea as it just clumps up and collects crud, and you get filthy every time you touch them. WD40 (although not actual lube) regularly, frees them up for use, and some white lithium spray grease goes a long way. They weren't meant for this kind of use (parking lots) because imperfect surfaces are murder on the go-jaks. The wheels are usually the first thing to go as the plastic will break and the caster frames will bend. If you treat them carefully and plan your moves, they will last a long time. If you just throw them on and shove, they're going to fail. Richard

Sign regulations vary greatly from state to state and I'm also guessing even at the county and city level in some places. Texas is pretty specific about what constitutes legal signage for PPI towing. For a while (years ago) we used to take pictures of the signs on the entry gate every time we would enter a property to tow. This was due to a high number of sign tear-downs for a while; these things seem to go in phases where a video or social media post might be making the rounds and goes "viral" and people begin copying the behavior. The sign picture (date/time stamped) would be included on each ticket along with the violation pictures, in the event of a dispute. It's a habit I personally have fallen short on in the past few years because the sign tear-downs have been minimal. Paying attention that the signs are there when you go in is still a priority. At some of these properties they are very busy and the driveway just off a busy street, so stopping to get a clear picture of signs every single time can prove to be tricky, as you can cause a momentary traffic jam, endangering the vehicles behind you, and also running the risk of causing them to start honking, drawing unnecessary attention to your arrival. Your paint and sign crew has to be on point to keep up with the legal requirements of sign posting, and some companies are better about it than others. Thankfully most of the people I've worked with understood the importance and respond quickly when we have some that need to be corrected. Our current crew (in-house) is top notch and I'm happy to have them working with us. Richard

Social media in its current form has turned many into simple consumers of media instead of participants. And some of the participants.. er.. "creators" aren't anything I want to watch. (Side rant: I don't get the transition to everything being a video that I have to watch. I'd much rather read. I can read without disturbing my sleeping wife, and I feel reading is more useful for retaining knowledge. Edit - to clarify, I mean videos where it's just someone talking, seeming to enjoy the sound of their own voice and seeing their face in the video. Not interested. If it's video of something that actually happened, that, I want to see.) I was gone from here for quite a while with persistent login problems but I managed to find my way back in as the news and information presented here is always useful. Thank you for all y'all do to keep the forums running. Richard

Good response Chris but I don't think it addresses the reality of the symptoms. There is something getting loose inside the battery casing itself. You can turn the lights on, attach them to the car, and they will turn off. I finally discovered it was the battery by flipping it upside down while loose from the light bar and can cause it to fail consistently. Trust me; in my case it has not been the switch, and more than one Towmate-supplied battery has failed on me in this manner. The batteries were sourced from a supplier that moves a lot of your product - this is a big city with lots of tow trucks - and they have dates written on the top in paint pen. I don't think old stock is an issue here. Y'all may have been handling these batteries the exact same way for many years, but the quality of batteries supplied to you isn't guaranteed to be consistent. I will agree that I haven't had this much trouble with batteries until the past few years, and as I said, I've been using your products for a -long- time. IIRC those white bars with the toggle switch on top came out over 15 years ago. So far with the alternately-sourced battery that I soldered the harness onto myself, no problems, more than half a year later, with heavy usage. Richard

Reminds me a bit of learning as a very young person about tow dollies in general (the regular pan style still used today); had a 1959 Apache loaded on one, pulling it with a 1970 C10. Took a downhill banked turn to get onto the highway with it and the road was a little damp, and the whole convoy went sideways into the curb. I never trusted tow dollies after that. However, they seemed better than the clamp-on style tow bars we used to move junk around with back in the days when everything had steel bumpers. Richard

I probably would have been wise to try test-fitting the new battery before mushing the terminals down at all. I suspect it would have needed some adjustment regardless. The "Outlast" brand batteries provided by Towmate have had their terminals smashed all the way down near flat which is excessive. I carefully bent mine down slowly by hand against a wooden desktop. I also wonder if the people soldering the wiring pigtails to them are taking care to not heat the terminals too much or too long, as that could possibly also be causing issues inside the battery casing where the terminals attach. If I have the same type of failure with this new battery I may look at going back to using crimp connectors and simply plugging the thing in, leaving the soldering iron out of the picture. For the record, the new battery I'm trying is an "AJC" brand bought from a-zon, was $17 to my door. Have only gone through 1 charge cycle with it so far so it's definitely too early to tell. I generally have to charge a good battery once a week. When it becomes more often I know the battery is going South.. Richard

I don't see any issue whatsoever with how the Mustang was towed except for one thing - it looks like it's being towed with the trunk lid popped? Seems super risky. Maybe they shut it before pulling away, assuming it was opened during the investigation. As far as whether keys were in ignition or not, irrelevant in terms of why dollies were used - it's so hit-or-miss these days which vehicles have locking steering columns and which don't. It varies so much even in the same vehicle depending on year model and sometimes on trim level, and in a few rare cases, whether automatic or manual transmission. A vehicle with non-locking steering column will absolutely move in turns with the dollies on the front wheels, so care must be taken to set the bars wide enough that the dollies won't contact the fender or rocker panels. Always Monday Morning Quarterbacking on stuff like this, and everyone wants to sound like an expert. As long as the tow operator didn't enter the vehicle or touch external surfaces (other than what was absolutely necessary for proper load securement, like as mentioned, the straps) then there should be no issues. -- And editing for clarification, I'm not saying anyone in this post is guilty of the quarterbacking 😃 but it's one of those subjects people love to pick apart. Richard

Hate to break it to 'em but it's not new anymore... 😘 Richard

So many ways to approach this and he demonstrated one of them, the one that can only be done if there's plenty of open space to one side of the vehicle. Dropping linkage (if automatic, which is almost guaranteed these days) is the quickest, if the park brake isn't set. Go-jaks would be my next approach. Richard

Sometimes I get nights where I've thrown them FOUR times in one shift. Other times manage to go a whole shift without throwing them even once. Really gotta come up with a more workable solution for mounting them on the truck because this mess is getting old, LOL No way boss is gonna spend the bucks for the fancy setups. Richard

I'm not writing this to shame Towmate; I love the product and absolutely will continue using them. It's more of a "heads up" for anyone experiencing these issues with their Towmates, I believe I have figured out what's going on. Specific product being used is a TM-21 light duty wireless tow light. Been using the various models of these light duty wireless ever since you guys came out with them way back in the old days when they were still in the white plastic housing with the rubber covered toggle switch on top so we have some history. In the last couple years the batteries y'all have sourced do not last. The one part I can't get covered under warranty. After having bought several replacements from the local wrecker supply (which are sourced from Towmate; they are the same "Outlast" 12V/1.2ah batteries with the pigtail already installed) I have given up on them. Symptoms: (1) the tow lights start flickering off intermittently, particularly when placing them on the towed vehicle. You'll have the switch "on", the lights come on, you place them on the vehicle and they turn off, or "reboot". Sometimes a gentle smack will make them come on again. (2) they do not charge reliably anymore as the connection to the battery has become intermittent. Since the batteries come from their makers with a raised pair of terminals, then you guys smash them down flat and solder on the pigtail with the fuse, so that the battery will slide into the housing easily - I think this is damaging the connection to the terminals inside the battery and causing it to become weak and eventually fail. I've replaced 3 of these batteries in the past year or so. The replacement lasts for a few months then begins the same behavior. For my latest replacement I bought one from a different vendor and soldered the pigtail on it myself, after smashing the terminals down but not -all the way- down. They offered up enough resistance and made a slight cracking noise anyway which is concerning; I can only imagine what it's like smashing them all the way flat like the Towmate-supplied batteries are. It still slid into the housing with minimal effort. Here's hoping the results are better. Richard

Wrong section? Maybe should have posted in Ford? Nobody has experience with this unit?? Richard

Anybody here have these units in your fleet, on your Ford F450/F550's with the 10 speed transmission? Comments, experience? Thanks, Richard

AWD badges get removed often for various reasons. Wraps, re-paints, collision repairs, owner just feels like it, etc. The two best things you can do - be aware that AWD models of a vehicle exist, and LOOK before you book. (underneath for the shafts/differentials, not for the badges! lol) Richard

The internet, and social media in particular, has given voice to mental illness that it did not previously have. Richard

Nice. Haven't seen one in that color before! Only black (dark gray?), and white. I loaded a white one a couple weeks ago, but since it was parked head-in, I loaded from the rear and dollied the front. A little trickier since if the tire sits too low in the bars, the rearmost bar will contact the rockers when you pop up the dollies. I extended the boom a couple inches to roll the tires up onto my skates so I could pinch the bars a little closer to each other; no biggie. Same (in reverse) to unload at the lot. Richard

Y'all killin' me with these cat stories. : ( But yeah; there does often seem to be someone around the yard that ends up feeding the lot cats and making them lazy. The little polydactyl monster (extra toes, also called "Hemingway" cats) curled up next to me on the bed was a wild lot cat that at an early age decided she liked people and started coming in to sleep in the office, whenever the owner wasn't booting her out. Right before a hard freeze several years back I brought her home, full-time indoor cat now. She's got reflexes for catching mice and birds for sure, though! And big ol' mittens to support those extra toes. Pic is her riding in my lap for the trip home. How's that for cat wrangling...or she wrangled me, lol Richard

Heavy doses of "not my truck" all around. Richard

"because they're looking legit" --- sorry; if I see a tow truck with no markings and no license plates, I see a likely thief. Don't know about other states, but in Texas it's law that the truck be marked conspicuously. The requirements of info displayed and even the size of lettering is stated in the law. Not that there's much enforcement of it, selective to be sure, but the more people are aware that it's law then the more can be aware of people operating illegally and easily differentiate them from actual honest, legitimate, hard-working tow operators. Richard