dperone

Congrats on the new toys Ed! I think you'll enjoy the 7.3, the only complaint my dad has with his new one is the milage but he also loves that skinny pedal.

This was about 15 miles from us, the house was knocked down by the next morning. For context is a 35mph zone where the crash happened and he blew through a car, a 12-14" oak tree that was blown apart on impact and still had enough force to knock the house off the foundation.

I bet he doesn't get tailgated a lot

Bet it made you miss your cougar

We went the same route at stubborn, our mileage rates went up to reflect the rising price of everything, not just fuel.

That job was tight in every direction. Nice work

Looking good Ed. How's your 550 like towing those mason dumps? I know my 165'' wheel base rides like a pissed off bull with one of them behind me

Damn, that little quad is impressive picking on that big bad excursion like that

Gotta love a long haul at retail rates with no complaints.

They should just include a set of dollies with every Benz purchase, they're going to end up on a set anyway

Seems like an odd time to move equipment but if they have the $$$ it's all good

Yup, she's a goner.

Those service bodies get stupid heavy. We had a local company finally switch from 550's to 750's and I can't feel a difference in the 2 when towing them. We scaled one of the 550's before at 23k and they couldn't figure out why the rear studs kept breaking off

Well that's a loaded question. I'd say start by learning the towing industry. Not just from a broker's perspective but from our perspective. Nothing irritates me more than having to have a Towing 101 class when I'm a few weeks from renewal because the person in front of me doesn't know the difference between a wheel lift and a flat bed or what police towing entails and how it differs from "regular" towing. The best agents we've ever had either came from the towing industry previously or worked around it long enough to pick up on it. The fact that you're here says a lot about your view on this and I applaud you for it.

There's so many good little spots in the downtown area. The waterfront restaurants are great and fill just about every cuisine imaginable. We usually go to Tir Na nog at least once over the weekend. The Pratt St Ale House is always a good choice and is usually the site of at least one show related event. We've found a couple little bars within a few blocks of the hotels that have good atmosphere, bartenders, and food. The ones off the top of my head are the Water Street tavern and Pete's Pour House, which I believe are almost next door to each other. A little ways away from the convention center is Sabatino's restaurant, which has great Italian food but it's quite a hike if you're staying at one of the hotels around the convention center. There's a ton of other places I can't think of off the top of my head but I'm sure I'll remember them in a few weeks when we're down there.

For what it's worth the Chevron's will sit pretty good even without the legs. This is my little honey badger pulling out a 24kish traffic truck that was buried at all 4 corners in sand. I had 2 wheel chocks on the back axle and she didn't move an inch once they bit.

Looks like she's a money maker for sure

We were called tonight by the NJSP for a single vehicle crash right around the corner from my house. As I was on my way there I got a text from my buddy who's a dispatcher. He heard his co worker call us and leave out a small detail..... The car rear ended a tractor and trailer that was making a turn. Since I was so close I kept going to assess the situation and see what else I needed. The tt was fine, it just had a bent DOT bar so he pulled it into the parking lot out of my way. As I was doing a walk-around I noticed the engine and trans didn't seem to be held in my too much anymore. I called my dad for a bed and started to try to put the puzzle back together. I put my boom on the motor to lift it up off the ground so I could pull the car into the parking lot and open the road. Apparently the drivetrain had other ideas and I ended up just pulling that into the parking lot and leaving the car When the car hit the motor dropped down and the car rested on top of it. When I pulled it up it never stopped until it was clear of the engine compartment. After we loaded the car on the bed I dropped the motor behind it. Then we started the hard part, the clean up. About twenty minutes, 2 bags of floor dry on top of the 15 or so the fire department already put down and 3 trash bags full of debris later we were clear. This was one of those jobs that doesn't look that bad at first and slowly builds into a pain in the ass.

Yup she's well done

I definitely had a jacket and gloves on when I went in and the owner unknowingly donated a blanket from the trunk for me to lay on. I checked the area and didn't see any poison ivy, but there was a nasty looking caterpillar right by the car. He was a fuzzy looking bastard and he wasn't concerned about us messing around his area, which is always a red flag so we have him a wide berth. As far as pulling it out it came pretty easy since the ride in cleared the path for the way out. Luckily the steering was still intact so we were able to just use one line and steer around the couple small obstacles along the way. At one point the side I was hooked to started to out pace the other side and I thought I was going to have to lay in the yuck to run another strap, but it straightened out by itself with a little string wheel adjustment. One of those ones where you needed two people because I couldn't see the car for the first 50 feet or so.

Yessir I already told the family we're pulling out early.

We'll be down for Sunday only

A few hours after our train track job we were called for another car that failed to stop at a stop sign and barreled into the woods. This one landed about 120 feet through some thick and pointy briars and wasn't visible from the road. Your can just barely see the tail lights though the shrubs. I ran a line to it and had my dad keep an eye on it while I pulled it to the roadway. After it emerged from the woods we loaded it onto the flatbed for the ride back to the shop.

Me too, especially when it originally came in as an abandoned car. Kudos to the trooper for tracking down the RO and staying with us until he was sure we were getting paid. I'm pretty sure the guy was just happy to avoid a DUI since the crash happened the day before it was reported.

We were called this morning by the local State Police station for "an abandoned car in the woods" about 20 miles away from us. The area it was in has a lot of trails so we were thinking someone joy riding in the woods, car breaks down and they take off. Sent a driver out there and he found quite the opposite story. Apparently a car had a brake failure as the driver approached a stop sign and he launched the car over a train track and into the woods approx. 130 feet, hitting a couple trees in the process at a height above my head. He was fine, the train tracks were fine, and even the woods were fine, but the car was toast. I took a ride out to see what we were dealing with and to come up with a plan of attack. He came down the road that my truck was on and jumped these tracks The trees were still intact between our only access point and the car which hampered our recovery plan. We called one of our customers who actually rents this track in the winter to do a Santa ride, and he made the notifications to Conrail that we were going to be operating on their track. They flagged it and let us know that they had no trains scheduled to be on the rails until mid week. Not knowing who actually owned the trees we needed removed we askedthe State Police track down the appropriate parties about removing the trees. The owner of the car offered to do all the tree removal to save himself some coin and just use us to winch the car out and tow it away. We decided to let the SP and the owner figure out the property issue and advised them to call when they were ready for us, figuring it would be a few days to get a hold of someone from the state. A little over 2 hours later they called back and said they were ready, so we went back out to remove the car. My plan was to winch the car straight out of the path he cut for us, spin it at the end to get away from the switch in the rail, then load it on a flatbed hopefully missing the rail in the process. Surprisingly it worked exactly how I envisioned it. It offered minimal resistance the whole time, even when we ramped the rear end over the tracks using blocks to avoid hitting the rails. The only hiccup we had was we couldn't get the bed as close to the tracks as I originally thought we would because of the angle the car came out at. We elected to leave the front hang off the bed until we could clear the rail and reposition the car. The troopers started on scene videoing our recovery so they could prove we didn't contact the rails at all and one walked the entire length we were working around with his body cam to show we left the area damage free. Once it was loaded and we were paid we headed for home with our new catch.