Handling bad weather multi car pile ups

[Andy]

Highway 84 east in Oregon is now the clean up site of about 140 miles of crashes and 100 plus vehicles. I’m 120 miles from where the pile ups start but I received a call to assist in it last night. Mentally and physically I was not capable to be a part of anything that wasn’t simple and short last night. I’ve only had two days off since early in December I also have an automotive shop and I’ve had one to two guys off the last five weeks and I’m still performing tows 24/7 by myself so I declined and turned my phone off. I could have been a bigger liability than help. 
 

how does working a scene like this go. It looked like there’s a lot of damaged vehicles, do the police locate a place to move these vehicles or are they being taken to impound lots of tow companies in the area and what about the winch outs. In regards to getting paid. Being a Good Samaritan is ok but a scene like this presents a lot of risk to us and our equipment. 
 

thanks Andy 

[ESC]

Good job in having the courage to say no.   Its a lot harder to make that judgment call than it seems.  But you put safety over profit.... impressive!

 

As far as helping in a big job like that, I have often wondered how it would work.   Seems like a lot of hands in the cookie jar and it would get very complicated, and no one seems to worry about how the tow guy gets paid.

 

The closest thing we have done like that was a local flood after heavy rain storms this past summer.  We towed over 40 cars that night.  We ended up just billing a flat rate per call.  Our emergency rate with a two hour min.   It was easiest to keep them all straight.