What % of your impounds are unclaimed & unpaid?

[TowForce]

Tow411 Topic Created by Orcas Tow  in June of 2006:

 

I am going through a poor period of impounding, seems like lately I am only getting called by the PD for wrecked junkers that are not being claimed, most others have AAA which we are not part of.
I am having to eat the tow/disposal, looking for ammo before I walk away from PD impounds all together, what percentage of your PD impounds are unclaimed/unpaid, thanks.Hello from sunny (when its not raining) Orcas Island

 

timjohn said:

I would venture to say that 30-40% of the impounds we do go unclaimed. It is one of the reasons we do not do a lot of police towing. Getting rid of junkers is a real problem and too much paper work to get a clean title.

We will go through a stretch where we have 3 or 4 cars in a row go unclaimed, then get 5-6 get paid for. They say you have to take the good with the bad I guess....but yet moan when they have to pay a bill.

 

Orcas Tow  said:

Wow 30 40%! I'm sniveling about 20%, guess I dont have it as bad as I thought, personally I would have quit PD tows a long time ago if I had that many unpaid tow/disposal's, are you recouping any $ on these at all?
Here it costs me $170 per car to have a scrap processor dispose of each car, ouch, not including the 2am recovery , paperwork, 30 day processing time & Wa state saying that I cannot stop the registered owner from retreiving their personal belongings from the vehicle.Hello from sunny (when its not raining) Orcas Island

 

timjohn said:

I am only talking impounds not accidents. I am not sure if you included the two.

The other thing that is odd about our town is it's location and set up. There is one main road that is nicknamed the guantlet. A lot of people who work in the area but live down in Milwaukee, will cut through our town to get to work. Unfortunately, they drive P.O.S.'s that have no license or registration. We haul them in and sit on them. The next day the owner of the car buys a different car from his uncle. Thus sticking his POS with us.

It costs me about $20 bucks for the paperwork to get a title. Then we haul them to the crusher for money. Sometimes if we have a decent car, we can get 150-200 bucks, otherwise it is 50-100 bucks per car.

All that work is not really worth the effort in my opinion. But until legislation is written to deal with the problem, we have to deal with it.

 

wreckerman05 said:

you have to pay to get rid of the old cars in your area-right now they are worth more in nc than they ever have been-depends on the quanity of your load they are paying $5.50 to $7.00 per hundred at the crusher-i had a guy haul 2 for me last satuarday(this was whole units,fuel tanks,tires) paid me $450.00 for a 78 ford van + 84 toyota--i paid him his labor--usually when i haul to statesville,nc they have to be clean(fuel tanks-batteries,tires,no extra trash)-the 2 hauled saturday were full of junk,all tires +tanks--

 

Orcas Tow  said:

Yes I have to pay, I am on an island & the nearest legit scrap yard is a ferry ride, 7.5 hrs round trip & $180 worth of ferry ticket for a 40' or longer vehicle, they usually bring a 4 car hauler when they come, definatly not worth the trip for 1 car unless the trunk is full of $100's.Hello from sunny (when its not raining) Orcas Island

 

dmurph879 said:

After you obtain title and determine the info for the last owner can you refer the total amount to a collection agency? My last boss did that and got 50% of everything they collected which over time was about 60% of the referals. He put all charges on the bill, including the disposal cost if any. That works out to about 30% of your total loss, not great but better than nothing for just forwarding the bills to the collection agency.

 

Orcas Tow  said:

Don, here in my county we foreward our bill onto the court which issues a $495 littering ticket & our bill to the DMV, they hold the renewal on the last RO's license until its all paid, the court also hires a collection agency to hound the last RO & issues a warrant, problem with that is most of the junkers we get stuck with are from drivers with suspended licenses already driving a $hitbox without a license so what do they care.
I collect on about 15% of these that are submitted to the court.Hello from sunny (when its not raining) Orcas Island

 

oklatom said:

Overall right at 5%. Most of the wrecks are claimed, most of the PPI are claimed. I'd say right at 100% for the impounds. It's the abandoned ones that drive up the numbers. Almost never claimed.

 

Ed Narker said:

I would say ours is around 30%,not something we like to see but you got to take the bad with the good,,I just raise my rates on the picked up ones to help cover the loss of the other 30%,,,

 

Orcas Tow  said:

Wow, thanks for all the replies' I didn't realize so many of us are working for free at times, I was hoping to see more of you in the 5% range so I could go to the county here with some ammo for getting them to kick in some $ towards the abandond's, guess I'll have to figure out another way.
I am not going to take $ out of my pocket anymore for the pleasure of doing business with the local PD especially when they wont impound for DUI or DWLS anymore which is where I stand to make some of the $ back.Hello from sunny (when its not raining) Orcas Island

 

talmon said:

i am getting stuck with almost 50% of the impounded cars i tow for the local police,the state police is great almost all of them are picked up. the largest towing company in my town is owned by a county commisioner,who had to put ownership in his wifes name.he is the head of the budget committee,the 911 board. just a slight conflict of interest.his junk calls are better than most of my better ones.

 

I B X said:

Less than 1% total (.8% to be exact)
I must be lucky.

 

unknown mamber said:

15% of crashes, 15-30% of impounds depending on the month. After 90 days
the state comes by, holds an auction (which no-one attends) and leaves you with a title so you can scrap/sell it, but they only do that for state impounded vehicles.

 

Greg said:

Total is 15.2%

 

Lamb Towing said:

I just logged in to our Tracker Management and ran an Exception Report on Police Impounds. Out of the last 150 police tows, 37 have not been claimed. So that averages roughly 25%. I tried to start a salvage yard, but I don't have the time or patience to deal with people on that level. But after we do all the required paperwork, we remove radiators, aluminum wheels, catalytic converters, and aluminum intakes. We then take what's left of the vehicle, stack them up in the back until we get 150 or so, and then call in a crusher a few times a year. The crusher has their own loaders and labor, and I don't have a second tow involved in hauling them to a scrap yard. Then when the core guys show up, I get extra money from the converters, aluminum, and brass. After we load the vehicles down with scrap from our body shop, we can usually figure on getting about $200 a piece out of them by crushing them.

 

concordtowing said:

I just finished going through my log for the first 6 months of 2007 I am at 25% .Our local pd is the biggest source of junkers but you have to take what they call you for If you don't accept 75% of the calls for the month they call you for then you get suspended from the rotation list. The first offense is 45 days and it goes up from there.So you either pick up every call possible for them or your off the list.Just part of the business that sucks at times.

 

bigtow00 said:

We run about 35% on average ratio of vehicle pickup/abandoneds. Here lately it has been 45% for the past month or so. It is getting worse I believe with fuel getting higher.

 

bigberthastowing said:

At least 25% go to scrap or sold at auction.

 

Carco21 said:

All tows included last year 21%, year befor 25.9%, 2 years ago 24%, 3 years ago 19.6%. Have a friend 30 miles west 60% unclaimed! They may quit the impounding and police towing, hard to cost shift that many non paying jobs!

[GRUMPS The Towman]

between 25% and 45% of my impounds/wrecks get dumped on me. Thats the city, county and state. The city used to hold an auction about every 4 months so we could get rid of them but starting about 2 years ago they changed their law stating now we can only use their auction to sell off city towed vehicles. The county/state was supposidly going to start holding their own auctions but havent as of yet and they dont look like they will be anytime soon. So, yeah I have about 11 cars as of now that I have been stuck with for over 2 years.   

[yoBdaBenO]

Only Between 10% & 15% though we may see a spike this year do to many more vehicles being left along our roads.