Tow truck driver

[Oregonhunter5]

A week or so back, I posted the car wreck my wife got into. I mentioned I would share more of the story later.
It turned into a odd experience with the tow truck driver. (Pinks Towing), in Boise. Most words that I can use to describe this hump, will be turned into bubblegum. The saga went on for 2 hours, so I am going to explain in short story form.
Cop says, you take this car to auto body A. Pink says ok. Loads it. Looks at my wife and says you WILL ride withme and pay ME cash when I drop your car off. I can't pink. She calls me. I tell her to unload it. He says sure, give me $150.00 cash to do so. I can't. My mom showed up with my sister, cause all three were headed to lunch for my sisters bday. They try to talk sense into pink. Now, we are talking about some of the most easy going females known to man. He basically tells them to F off. I called and spoke to pink, and it was hard.
Ended up, he took it to his yard, and charged another tow guy $500.00 to get it to the auto body shop. So total tow bill was probably around $700.00. 5 minute drives. This pink dude has been somewhat of a Minus human to all people. Yelp him. Cops were trying there best to arrest him, cause they hate him. He also was trying to pick bugs out of my wife's hair, that landed there. Kinda odd. Cop just kept telling my wife to write that down, and write that down, and that, and that. On and on.
My aunt and uncle are very tight with the AG in Idaho, so I'm gonna call him into this.
Anyone ever been down this road?
He charges $450.00 per day for his holding yard.

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[Caveman Jim]

I'd say he is a prime candidate for the knockout game!!!!

I was on a family vacation out in Montana (1993) when the tranny started doin some weird stuff so took it to an A-1 transmission shop the next day. Guy comes into the lobby with a shop rag full of aluminum shavings off of a lathe bench and proceeds to tell me it came from my tranny pan. It was completely dry & no tranny fluid is present on the rag, I told the guy "How stupid do I look?" I told him to flush the tranny 2 times and close it up or I was gonna get MAD!!!! After he completes my demands I told him to give me the number to his boss (twas a Sat. morning & he was alone), he refused, back peddled and gave me a sob story about needing emergency money).
I called the Corp. office Monday morning and by the end of business that day the shop was closed due to an audit and found funds missing.....
Bubblegumms like that are the reason we have vigilantly justice in America!!!!

 

[Sgt Nambu]

^^^^^"Bubblegums like that" are why we need more vigilanty justice in America!

Oregonhunter5, so sorry your poor wife had to endure that unscrupulous hayseed on top of being in an accident! That's too danged much!

 

[Classic]

Sadly this is why I give the kid a AAA membership every year at Xmas.
The guy needs 5lbs of sugar put in the gas tank of his tow truck.

 

[mkwerx]

This irritates the crap out of me. I've been a tow truck driver for going on 11 years now. I've had the misfortune to deal with these types of jackwagons before. My question - who called him? Was he on a police rotation list, was he just driving by, or did you guys or your insurance call him?

You want to know how this stuff typically works?

We get an accident tow - if the car has collision insurance on it, we explain to the owner the options - our storage, a body shop, or somewhere else. If it goes to storage or a body shop - the customer has no out of pocket expense. If it goes someplace else, like to a residence, the customer is responsible for paying for the tow - most folks will have roadside assistance coverage that we can either direct bill, or the customer pays and gets reimbursed for by their insurance, or they have AAA. I'd say it's less than 5% of people who wind up paying out of pocket - it's usually because they don't have collision insurance, they don't have road side coverage, and they're not AAA members.

If he was told to take it to a body shop, that's where the car should have gone, peroid. Not to a storage lot, not to his house, not to the McDonald's next door. The car ultimately goes where the owner says - period. And if he's taking it to a body shop - you drop your bill with the keys and the body shop will pay for the tow as part of the insurance claim. Easy peasy.

One more thing - if this tow was dispatched by the police - he's likely subject to a maximum rate. I don't think Idaho would be all that different than Oregon, if your company gets on the rotation list you agree to charge no more than the rates set by the agency. Here in Washington County, all the law enforcement agencies except the state police use the sheriff's rotation list, and thus the sheriff's office sets the rates. I believe that currently that's about $170 for an accident hook up (no extra for flatbed or dollies) and 5.50 per towed mile, and I think it's about $100 per hour ($25 per quarter hr) for labor time with the first half hour on scene "free" - storage I think is about $30 or 40 a day max, billed per calendar day.
A rotation tower who charges more than the rates (which must be posted in their office visible to the public) on the contract faces potential fines and penalties, and is subject to being removed from the rotation list. Criminal behavior is always subject to prosecution.

Where things get muddied is in rural areas, where "good old boy" crap comes into play. OSP has their own rotation list, and last I knew, they didn't have set rates, but directed the tower to charge similarly to the local agencies rates. A few years ago, I was dispatched by AAA to go retrieve a wrecked vehicle belonging to Hertz - AAA does all of Hertz roadside assistance - out on Hwy 26 at Elsie. The local AAA contractor couldn't get to them, and so I got pulled out of Hillsboro to go get it. It was snowy and icy and chains were required. I got there literally as fast as I could. ODOT Incident Response was cool waiting with the vehicle and the driver - a lady who worked for California Fish & Game who was up here on official business. But then OSP showed up and declared the vehicle a hazard (it was on the side of the road - there was almost no traffic at this point because of the weather, and it wasn't really a hazard. And like I said, there was an ODOT IR truck already on scene with it to direct the two cars that were on the highway around it. 4 lane highway, vehicle on shoulder, not a problem, or shouldn't have been.

The OSP guy "ordered" the jackwagon who happens to have a trailer home across the street from the Elderberry Inn, where this accident happened, to tow the vehicle. He didn't want to wait for the tow truck that was already dispatched.

I arrive, found my AAA member waiting with the ODOT guys having pie at Elderberry. She says guy across street has the car. We go across the street. I ask WTF was he thinking, he said "OSP ordered a tow". I go across the street and the fattest OSP trooper I've ever seen is hoovering pie into his face. I ask him did you "order" a tow, he just grunted "yup, didn't want to wait for you" - some other folks stopped me and mentioned that this happened a lot. Working, but unprovable, theory is that these guys are buddies and ol' trooper boy was getting a little salad for his "referral" business. This towing "company" doesn't even have a name - nor does his "tow yard" meet any of the OSP or sheriff's standards for a secure storage facility. He also demanded cash payment - while every agency, including OSP, has a policy that their rotation towers must accept other forms of payment besides cash.
He literally moved the car about 400 feet from the road side to the top of his driveway. He wanted $350.00 cash.

I gave the lady a ride back to town to get a new rental car. Hertz contacted the tow jerk. He demanded cash payment, and wouldn't take a check from Hertz, or a credit card (probably too new fangled of a concept for toothless Rufus) - so Hertz told the lady they wouldn't pay for the tow, or to retrieve their car, and that she was responsible. The next day she called me back directly, and we drove out to get the rental car. He wanted $450. She had $350. He didn't tell her about storage. When we were about to leave and said "F it" and let it become Hertz problem, he changed his tune and gave up the car.

I still don't know this jack wagon's name, but I do know that if you get into a wreck anywhere between say Timber and Hwy 53 - call your tow truck first, THEN call the cops, unless someone is bleeding. Otherwise your car is likely going to wind up sitting next to a run down single wide while some crusty old **** holds it hostage for whatever he can bilk out of you, since he doesn't accept insurance payments either.

As for "Pinks" - file complaints with everyone involved - the police, the better business bureau, blow up all the rating sites, and find out if he's a AAA tower and complain to them, even if this wasn't a AAA tow, they need to know how their contractors are behaving.

And if the guy you were dealing with wasn't the owner, make sure to complain loudly to the owner about their guy trying to rip both of you off by demanding cash.

Jackasses like this make my entire industry look bad, and makes it harder to fight the negative image. Kind of like the SWAT cops in another thread who decided to demolish a house to root out a "shoplifter".

I hope your wife is OK. Cars can be fixed or replaced.

 

[mkwerx]

Sadly this is why I give the kid a AAA membership every year at Xmas.
The guy needs 5lbs of sugar put in the gas tank of his tow truck.

Sugar really doesn't do anything bad like people think, other than plugging filters and causing you to have the tank cleaned out. If one were to seek automotive revenge there are better (worse) things that could be deposited into the fuel tank, or the oil filler neck, or the coolant bottle...

 

[Velzey]

From Jeff B left Pinks nice Yelp review! And I quote "
This turd is about to find out what a curb stomp is. Keep your head on a swivel Sweetheart, cause your world is about to be upended. Sleep tight.
-100 stars."

$450 a day for storage? Isn't that just a weeee bit high?

 

[Oregonhunter5]

From Jeff B left Pinks nice Yelp review! And I quote "
This turd is about to find out what a curb stomp is. Keep your head on a swivel Sweetheart, cause your world is about to be upended. Sleep tight.
-100 stars."

$450 a day for storage? Isn't that just a weeee bit high?

That's Jeff B sounds like one tough SOB.

 

[Oregonhunter5]

This irritates the crap out of me. I've been a tow truck driver for going on 11 years now. I've had the misfortune to deal with these types of jackwagons before. My question - who called him? Was he on a police rotation list, was he just driving by, or did you guys or your insurance call him?

You want to know how this stuff typically works?

We get an accident tow - if the car has collision insurance on it, we explain to the owner the options - our storage, a body shop, or somewhere else. If it goes to storage or a body shop - the customer has no out of pocket expense. If it goes someplace else, like to a residence, the customer is responsible for paying for the tow - most folks will have roadside assistance coverage that we can either direct bill, or the customer pays and gets reimbursed for by their insurance, or they have AAA. I'd say it's less than 5% of people who wind up paying out of pocket - it's usually because they don't have collision insurance, they don't have road side coverage, and they're not AAA members.

If he was told to take it to a body shop, that's where the car should have gone, peroid. Not to a storage lot, not to his house, not to the McDonald's next door. The car ultimately goes where the owner says - period. And if he's taking it to a body shop - you drop your bill with the keys and the body shop will pay for the tow as part of the insurance claim. Easy peasy.

One more thing - if this tow was dispatched by the police - he's likely subject to a maximum rate. I don't think Idaho would be all that different than Oregon, if your company gets on the rotation list you agree to charge no more than the rates set by the agency. Here in Washington County, all the law enforcement agencies except the state police use the sheriff's rotation list, and thus the sheriff's office sets the rates. I believe that currently that's about $170 for an accident hook up (no extra for flatbed or dollies) and 5.50 per towed mile, and I think it's about $100 per hour ($25 per quarter hr) for labor time with the first half hour on scene "free" - storage I think is about $30 or 40 a day max, billed per calendar day.
A rotation tower who charges more than the rates (which must be posted in their office visible to the public) on the contract faces potential fines and penalties, and is subject to being removed from the rotation list. Criminal behavior is always subject to prosecution.

Where things get muddied is in rural areas, where "good old boy" crap comes into play. OSP has their own rotation list, and last I knew, they didn't have set rates, but directed the tower to charge similarly to the local agencies rates. A few years ago, I was dispatched by AAA to go retrieve a wrecked vehicle belonging to Hertz - AAA does all of Hertz roadside assistance - out on Hwy 26 at Elsie. The local AAA contractor couldn't get to them, and so I got pulled out of Hillsboro to go get it. It was snowy and icy and chains were required. I got there literally as fast as I could. ODOT Incident Response was cool waiting with the vehicle and the driver - a lady who worked for California Fish & Game who was up here on official business. But then OSP showed up and declared the vehicle a hazard (it was on the side of the road - there was almost no traffic at this point because of the weather, and it wasn't really a hazard. And like I said, there was an ODOT IR truck already on scene with it to direct the two cars that were on the highway around it. 4 lane highway, vehicle on shoulder, not a problem, or shouldn't have been.

The OSP guy "ordered" the jackwagon who happens to have a trailer home across the street from the Elderberry Inn, where this accident happened, to tow the vehicle. He didn't want to wait for the tow truck that was already dispatched.

I arrive, found my AAA member waiting with the ODOT guys having pie at Elderberry. She says guy across street has the car. We go across the street. I ask WTF was he thinking, he said "OSP ordered a tow". I go across the street and the fattest OSP trooper I've ever seen is hoovering pie into his face. I ask him did you "order" a tow, he just grunted "yup, didn't want to wait for you" - some other folks stopped me and mentioned that this happened a lot. Working, but unprovable, theory is that these guys are buddies and ol' trooper boy was getting a little salad for his "referral" business. This towing "company" doesn't even have a name - nor does his "tow yard" meet any of the OSP or sheriff's standards for a secure storage facility. He also demanded cash payment - while every agency, including OSP, has a policy that their rotation towers must accept other forms of payment besides cash.
He literally moved the car about 400 feet from the road side to the top of his driveway. He wanted $350.00 cash.

I gave the lady a ride back to town to get a new rental car. Hertz contacted the tow jerk. He demanded cash payment, and wouldn't take a check from Hertz, or a credit card (probably too new fangled of a concept for toothless Rufus) - so Hertz told the lady they wouldn't pay for the tow, or to retrieve their car, and that she was responsible. The next day she called me back directly, and we drove out to get the rental car. He wanted $450. She had $350. He didn't tell her about storage. When we were about to leave and said "F it" and let it become Hertz problem, he changed his tune and gave up the car.

I still don't know this jack wagon's name, but I do know that if you get into a wreck anywhere between say Timber and Hwy 53 - call your tow truck first, THEN call the cops, unless someone is bleeding. Otherwise your car is likely going to wind up sitting next to a run down single wide while some crusty old **** holds it hostage for whatever he can bilk out of you, since he doesn't accept insurance payments either.

As for "Pinks" - file complaints with everyone involved - the police, the better business bureau, blow up all the rating sites, and find out if he's a AAA tower and complain to them, even if this wasn't a AAA tow, they need to know how their contractors are behaving.

And if the guy you were dealing with wasn't the owner, make sure to complain loudly to the owner about their guy trying to rip both of you off by demanding cash.

Jackasses like this make my entire industry look bad, and makes it harder to fight the negative image. Kind of like the SWAT cops in another thread who decided to demolish a house to root out a "shoplifter".

I hope your wife is OK. Cars can be fixed or replaced.

Great stories. Well in short, this driver has the DA after him now. The DA slapped the wrist of the sheriffs dept last time they tried to shut him down. Now, due to my dog on a bone mindset, his bacon is cooked.

 

[Certaindeaf]

That sucks. It'd be nice if someone knocked his teeth out.
A few months ago here in Portland, they busted some dude with a bogus towing company. He towed (stole) untold numbers of cars directly to the crusher.

 

[Velzey]

$450 a day for storage he is trying to steal everything he picks up!

I'm surprised his business hasn't been visited by a road flare thru the window in the wee hours!

 

[Stomper]

More like splashing gas on his personage then apply the flare.