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Chico towing, helmed by third-generation owner, sold to Kitsap Towing


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Stacey Tucker took over Chico Towing from her father, who took it over from his father, who began the company 75 years ago.

Generational businesses are declining, and Tucker has decided it’s time for her to step away from hers. She's passing the keys of her tow trucks onto motivated younger owners who she says can carry on the same values of her business. 

The merger of Chico Towing with Kitsap Towing became official on Wednesday. 

Tucker said Kitsap Towing, owned by Jaci and Dave Bryant, is the only company she would sell to. The Bryants purchased Kitsap Towing from its original owners four years ago. 

“Anyone can learn how to tow a car but how you treat the people you’re taking care of makes all the difference in the world,” Tucker said.

Tucker said the two companies worked together many times previously as “friendly competitors.”

Jaci Bryant said Kitsap Towing's mantra is "We don't tow cars, we help people." She said they try to keep that in mind in every decision they make. 

"When you’re looking for growth I don’t know a better place to look than a family business that’s ready to move on to a new venture of their life, too," Jaci Bryant said.

Some of the tow trucks will now have "Kitsap-Chico Towing" lettering.

As of Jan. 1, 2020, Chico and Kitsap Towing are merging, as Chico Towing owner Stacey Tucker steps back from her family business.

 

Bryant said they just turned the phones over, and Kitsap Towing has gotten as many calls from people looking for their Chico Towing calendars as they have from customers who need help. 

"We’ve never done a calendar before I guess that’s something that we’ll have to keep going," she said. 

Kitsap Towing will be bringing on four previous employees from Chico Towing. Others will lose their jobs in the sale.

Tucker says she's trying to support her previous employees in any way she can.

All of Tucker's tow trucks will be moving to Kitsap Towing, though some will be sold off and will help fund updates to the fleet. The merging of businesses also allows Kitsap Towing to provide better benefits to its staff, Bryant said. 

Tucker said it was important to her to sell to someone local who understood the community. “I wanted the thread of the good things that we do to carry on. Kitsap Towing is the only one that could have done that.”

Towing is typically a family business

As of Jan. 1, 2020, Chico and Kitsap Towing are merging, as Stacey Tucker, far left, steps back from her family business.

As of Jan. 1, 2020, Chico and Kitsap Towing are merging, as Stacey Tucker, far left, steps back from her family business. (Photo: Contributed / Stacey Tucker)

 

There are about 45,000 towing companies in the United States and a vast majority are family-owned and operated, Tucker said.

It’s a capital-intensive industry to get into, with tow trucks costing upwards of $100,000 on top of expensive insurance policies.

“People don’t sit around and say, ‘OK, I got $2 million dollars in the bank, let’s run a 24/7, capital-intensive, really risky business with a super low-profit margin,’” Tucker said.

It also takes broad skillset to run the business, and people with that level of skill will get hired for other jobs before turning to towing, she said. 

“You really need that dedication of a highly-committed person at the helm,” Tucker said.

Tucker’s 21-year-old son is at Tish Film School in New York. Her 19-year-old is pursuing his own entrepreneurial endeavors, and her 16-year-old daughter is still in high school. None of her kids was a good choice to move the business to, nor did she want to put that work on them. So, she looked to Kitsap Towing.

Long-running Kitsap business

Stacey Tucker's grandfather Don Tucker stands with one of the original fleet at Chico Towing.

Stacey Tucker's grandfather Don Tucker stands with one of the original fleet at Chico Towing. (Photo: Contributed by Stacey Tucker)

 

Chico Towing started out in a location of its namesake on Chico Way, in what is now M&T Coffee, a small drive-through coffee shop. The shop now smells of bacon instead of gasoline, and bottles of flavored syrups sit where Tucker’s great-grandpa Harry used to sell eggs and bread at his country store.

Her grandpa, Don Tucker, founded the business in 1945. He came to the area from Montana looking for work during World War II. He got a job at the shipyard, but it didn’t fit him, Tucker said. He decided to purchase a repair shop in Chico, with the towing part of the business coming later.

“Little kids would come and need air in their bike tire,” Tucker said. “He was all about building relationships.”

2019 in review: Top Kitsap news stories

Tucker’s father started working at the business as a kid and grew up in a house right behind the service station.

“My dad was driving a tow truck when he was 12 years old,” Tucker claims. “State Patrol would be like, 'You’re 12 you don’t even have a license, get this car and get home.' You couldn’t do that today.”

Her father, Pat Tucker, now lives in a home across from the original site in Chico where Tucker and her cousins would play while her dad and grandpa worked.

“My grandfather’s love was the repair work and my dad’s love was the towing,” she said.

Growing up, Tucker recalls her dad’s work boots sitting next to his bed for middle-of-the-night calls. It wasn’t unusual to find a customer asleep on the couch the next morning if they had no way to get home after their car was towed.

In the late ’70s, her father sold the repair business and moved the towing operation to Bremerton, where it had three different locations over time. Chico Towing was once housed at what is now Gerber Collision and Glass before moving to Callow Avenue and eventually Wycoff Avenue. An ambulance-and-answering service was added for a few years, but both eventually were sold off, and towing remained the focus.

Shattering towing stereotypes

Tucker took over Chico Towing in 1994. She had a vision to create a professional industrial park, but it took eight years after buying the land in 1998 to move the business. In 2006, Chico Towing moved to its current location on Tweed Lane, hidden off the west side of Highway 3 past other auto businesses like Les Schwab, Enterprise and Nissan.

“People come up there and say this doesn’t look like a towing yard,” Tucker said. “And I’m like, I don’t want it to, so thank you.”

Tucker has had a strong voice in the towing industry and has shattered stereotypes along the way. Not many women advance in the towing industry, she said. Growing up in towing, Tucker witnessed women doing behind-the-scenes work for businesses that their husbands helmed. Rarely did they hold administrative roles.

Stacey Tucker is the third-generation owner of Chico Towing. She sold the business to Kitsap Towing at the end of the year.

 

But that’s changed during her 25 years in towing, and more women have shaped and improved the industry in big and small ways, she said. Women offer a unique and important perspective to the business: while men are often very technically savvy and great at running recovery scenes, women are great at monitoring the health of the business, considering safety and caring about customers.

“A woman’s going to make sure cab of the truck is as clean as you would have it for your grandmother,” Tucker said.

Safety has been one of Tucker’s main concerns over the years, and she’s promoted education in the industry at both local and national levels. Tow truck drivers are at risk of being killed along busy highways while doing their job — one of Tucker’s biggest fears. There’s a slow-down and move-over law, but it’s hardly enforced, she said.

“I’m not going to miss getting a late-night phone call in the office and being terrified that somebody’s been killed along the highway.”

But that’s changed during her 25 years in towing, and more women have shaped and improved the industry in big and small ways, she said. Women offer a unique and important perspective to the business: while men are often very technically savvy and great at running recovery scenes, women are great at monitoring the health of the business, considering safety and caring about customers.

“A woman’s going to make sure cab of the truck is as clean as you would have it for your grandmother,” Tucker said.

Safety has been one of Tucker’s main concerns over the years, and she’s promoted education in the industry at both local and national levels. Tow truck drivers are at risk of being killed along busy highways while doing their job — one of Tucker’s biggest fears. There’s a slow-down and move-over law, but it’s hardly enforced, she said.

“I’m not going to miss getting a late-night phone call in the office and being terrified that somebody’s been killed along the highway.”

A changing and growing Kitsap has transformed towing since Tucker was a child watching her dad and grandpa. It’s much less rural, and cars are more sophisticated and expensive, she said.

“Now the accidents are not low-speed accidents, even on the highway if it’s all clogged up are not low-speed accidents,” Tucker said.

A hallway at Chico Towing highlights Tucker’s success and chronicles the family business through its several locations. It's lined with framed photos of her family at the business over the decades, newspaper clippings, awards and a young Stacey Tucker on the cover of business magazines. She’s been honored as National Tow Woman of the Year, has spoken at national industry conferences, and was president of Washington state’s towing association.

“It’s a hard business, I don’t know why people love it, but I love it, too,” she said. “I guess we love it because we feel like we are uniquely qualified to help people in times that are not very happy for them.”

Despite her success in the industry, things weren’t always easy.

It took eight years to move the business to its current location and create a state-of-the-art facility in 2006. Then the economy crashed. In 2011, Tucker’s right-hand man, Larry Mersereau, lovingly called “Uncle Larry,” died suddenly of a heart attack. Events in her personal life colluded to the point that she felt she was at risk of losing it all.

All she could do was tell herself to “just keep going.”

“To me, failure wasn’t an option," Tucker said. "And I came through it, and I wish I could tell you how because I don’t really know. It’s just grit.”

There have been some memorable moments in Tucker’s time in the towing industry, like retrieving beached whales from the shore, rescuing horses out of mud pits, and moving torpedoes for the Turner Joy.

But most calls are just people who need their broken vehicles moved to the repair shop, accidents, DUIs or emergencies. Impounds are a relatively small percentage of the business, Tucker said.

2019 was Chico Towing’s best year of business, and she’s thankful to be “going out strong.” 

What’s next for Tucker?  

“The first thing I look forward to is a snow day at home with my grandkids. In the 25 years of the business, I never had that,” she said.

She plans to continue to manage the commercial property at Tweed Lane and help with administrative work for her husband’s construction business. Tucker will travel and visit her other home in Mexico, where she wants to become more involved in the community.

Chico Towing will still have its auction on the first Saturday of this month and will be auctioning off over 60 vehicles from its Tweed Lane site. It begins at 9 a.m. on Jan. 4 at 130 Tweed Lane NW.

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Stacey Tucker received many awards and recognition over the years,

being named American Towman in 1999. (Photo: Jessie Darland / Kitsap Sun)

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1997-1999 Stacey Tucker of Washington was WTRAA’s president.  Some of Stacey’s board consisted of Rhonda Bishop, Belinda Harris and Carol Boelter.  She completed her education with a Master’s Degree in Counseling and working in the mental health field.  In 1994 Stacey became the third-generation owner of Chico Towing.  She founded “Essential Solutions for the Business”, a consulting business and “Sun Select Window Tinting” a business she owns with her brother.  Besides doing some freelance writing for a number of towing industry publications she has been the Washington Representative for TRAA for many years, past president for the Washington Towing Association, and she has been warded many local awards and recognitions including the 1998 YWCA Woman of Achievement, 2005 Kitsap Business Journal “40 under Forty” where she was recognized as an outstanding your business and community leader.  Stacey is very instrumental in the scholarship foundation and is currently Chairperson for the WTRAA Scholarship Committee.  She is also very involved in many local organizations around the Seattle area, including the Harrison Hospital Foundation, Checkered Flag Club (promoting a NASCAR track in Kitsap County), and Project Family and is a Paul Harris Fellow in Rotary International.  Stacey has 3 children- JR, Brady and Sarah.  In her spare time she enjoys traveling with her family, capming and participating in her children’s sport activities.

http://www.wtraa.org/past-presidents-of-wtraa/

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  • 9 months later...

Twenty-one year's ago, I co-wrote with editor, Ryan Vaarsi, an article in American Towman, entitled, "These Ladies Can Lead", with focus to professional ladies working the towing and recovery industry. I had the pleasure of interviewing and meeting Stacy at, Chio Towing, in Bremerton in the Pacific Northwest. I have watched Stacy's participation and advancement to see her grow her business along with her husband. I'm pleased to see her accomplishments and am honored to know her as a leader in the industry and to be her friend.     R.

 

TUCKER.jpg

Randall C. Resch

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