What is your felling these days on road side help ?

[sweetk30]

when i say road side help i mean services done on the side of a active road way such as : flat tire change out / bring gas / other small things ?

 

when i was towing 98% of the time the spare was flat / or dead / or newer vehicles with no spare .

 

also around 95%-98% of gas calls were not out of gas but dead fuel pump or other mechanical problems or you eat the gas and delivery service as the customer lied to the road side provider or dispatch and had no money .

 

my old boss basically told customers we will tow you to a tire shop or gas station . then if its gas related before the vehicle is off loaded pull to the pump and have them pay for 5 gal of gas and then try and start . if it starts great charge for a tow and unload . if not find a shop to tow the vehicle to . then for tires just let the tire shops do this work as lots of spares are stuck up under the vehicle / have to take 1/3 the inside apart o get to the spare crank guts / flat spare / no spare .

 

with all the major m.v.a hits and deaths of our fellow towing / service providers out there and people not doing there part to slow down and move over for the LAW why not just hook it and book it . ?

 

this was the policy of my old boss when i was towing and man did it make a lot of people happy to not me on the side of the road with us trying to do the service work that most times was a waste of time to begin with at least in my area of the country . worst case we towed them to the nearest off ramp or parking lot even just to get out of the danger zone . 

 

please post up your felling on this and lets see if we can come up with some good new ways to keep ALL of our towing & service providers safe out there .

[goodmichael]

The general public needs to take more responsibility for the condition and maintenance of their vehicles. Tires, fluids, and general condition of vehicle checks would prevent many roadside breakdown situations, versus the oh well I have roadside assist mentality. Hitting the person in the wallet for a tow versus a service call not only keeps operators from the kill zone, if even for a few minutes (exposure on a transport versus a tire change) but it teaches a lesson via monetary loss. 

I do nothing roadside, over thirty mile per hour zones, but transport. Absolutely no service calls, EVER.

[rreschran]

... the, "oh well, I have roadside assist mentality", in-part, comes from the lack of school funds not offering auto-shop and parents failing to teach their kids about jump starting a car or changing tires. But quite honestly, with a world full of incompetent drivers out there, I don't want my family changing tires for obvious reasons. The motoring world we live-in now guarantees that dealerships and tow companies are here to stay. Cars are too advanced to work-on under most conditions and the safest way to get a car off a dangerous highway is to call the services of a COMPETENT tow company whose tow operators practices white-line safety. I personally feel that it should be against the law to work on cars on a highway's shoulder or center divider, but that's not realistic. Wasting time to change tires, jump-start cars and add gasoline only increases a tower's exposure to dangerous approaching traffic. Load em' and go. Haven't there been enough operator fatalities to keep making the same old mistakes just for the price of a service call?  A good way to keep tower's safe is to eliminate service calls on the highway, or, stop responding to all highway related calls altogether and make it the government's problem.    R.

[dperone]

I have no problem doing minor things road side. I take it as a case by case basis, but most times I can have a spare on a car faster than loading it on a bed, even with taking the time to check the inflation. I'm all for using the method that gets me off the road the QUICKEST, even if it's not towing it off the road.