When I was in college, trying to squeeze in studies and work, I sometimes had trouble staying awake in class and in the truck.  I drank a LOT of coffee, at all times of the day and night.  One term I took 12 credit hours, drove swing shift, and then ran on-call for graveyard shift.  That was NOT a happy time in my life.  Graveyard shift calls were few and far between, but I had to get the truck back by 7 am for the day shift driver. That was cruel.  I learned to take naps efficiently on truck bench seats and on old overstuffed couches in the school halls.  Snoring was occasionally a problem on the latter.  At one point, when a new company opened up in our market and took away about 40% of our call volume, I started bringing a pillow to work to take better advantage of the longer periods of inactivity.  My boss saw me carrying the pillow from my car to the tow truck one afternoon, shook his head, and asked, "Can't you put that in the truck AFTER I go home?"

I did a lot of studying in the truck as well, or while waiting for vehicle releases to show up.  As you all know, the "real world" is the best educational system we have.  When I first started college, I majored in Psychology, and working in the impound industry, I got to "practice" a lot of what I learned.  I ended up changing majors in my sophomore year, so I know enough about Psychology to tell you why you do what you do--I just can't help you change it.  I'll tell you, impounded vehicle owners just don't appreciate a free psychological diagnosis.  They get angry when you start throwing terms like "misdirected animosity," "projecting your own incompetence," and "subconscious desire to sabotage your own life" at them.

We did a lot of impound work for Portland State University, the college I attended, which made it really fun when I ran across one of my classmates while trying to impound their car for unpaid university parking citations, or when someone recognized me in class.  "Hey,
you're that &%$#* that towed my car spring term."  One great thing was comparing my monthly commissions to the paychecks that my
professors were getting at the time.  I was making more money that many of them, which makes you smile until you think, "Uh oh, I'm going to have to take a pay cut to get into my chosen field of study."

My wife worked at AAA as a call receiver when she was in college.  She was a Phys Ed major, back when they still taught Phys Ed in this country.  To tell you how much she enjoyed her job at AAA, she quit when they weren't going to let her take a week off to go deer hunting with me.  That is SO funny to think about now.  Now, she wouldn't quit WASHING DISHES to go deer hunting.  And she's not particularly fond of washing dishes, if you catch my drift.  Ah, young love.  She spent many nights riding in the truck with me, running calls, though she tired of that quicker than deer hunting.  She probably could have hooked up a car, if she needed to, and once I was VERY tempted to have her run a second truck on a double-header accident I was trying to cover, and I would have had it not been  up on a steep road in the West Hills.

Now our daughter is in college, and my older son is in high school.  I'm sure all of you out there understand the value of a college education in today's world, and whether or not you went to college, you'd wish it for your kids and do whatever you could to promote
 college attendance and completion for all kids.  So I think you know what you need to do.  Right?  (Hint: go to www.TowPartsNow.com, and BUY some parts--help me put my
kids through school.)

Have a safe and profitable week.


  Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com

We were only a few weeks into summer, and Desperation arrived early this year.  My wife made the announcement at Sunday dinner:  if our 2 boys, ages 12 and 7, could get along on any particular day, they
would earn $1 for that day.  Any problems from either of them, while interacting, and they both lose the
dollar.

So a value has been placed on Peace, and it is low.  A dollar per day for juveniles, two dollars per day for adults (we have to pay out to multiple parties, so it’s worth twice as much to us).  I like the plan. 
It turns the Penalty into Opportunity.  This is a concession from my wife.  She expects them to get along, but now she’s willing to pay for it.

I don’t know if you’ve ever used behavioral tactics designed for children on adults who work for you, but I have.  We used to do this thing
with the kids:  if one of them misbehaved, we’d calmly say, “That’s one.”  If they did something else, we’d say, “That’s two.”  If they got to
three, they went into time-out. The actions didn’t have to be related to each other, and they didn’t have to be of the same severity.  If they got to one or two and reeled it in for awhile, say an hour or so, they would get to start over.  It was something my wife read about in a book.

A driver who worked for me came stormed into my office one day, ranting about something meaningless.  He was visibly angry.  I expected him to start stomping his feet at any moment.  I engaged him, briefly, then stopped and said, calmly, “That’s one.”

He yelled more incoherencies, so I said, “That’s two.  If I get to three, you’re fired.”

I really did not expect him to pull it together at that point.  This guy had a short fuse, and I could tell by the changing shades of red that he really wanted to say something more, but he kept his mouth shut and walked out.

It worked.  And he hadn’t even been clued in to the program at the family meeting.

Have a safe and profitable week.
Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
 www.TowPartsNow.com


 

Most of my tow truck driving career took place at a company that had an impound yard under an interstate freeway.  We had no running water.  For a long time we had a bucket and a bar of soap outside the office trailer.  Someone would go across the street to the cab company to fill up the bucket with fresh water every other day or so.  The bucket went away when we got 2 things: the "waterless" hand cleanser in the plastic outhouse, and a water cooler in the office.  Now, the water cooler shouldn't have anything to do with a change in hand-washing routine, but it did, because we all used the water cooler to wash our hands. You know, just run a little into your palm and rub your hands together to spread the germs around.  This led to 2 other things: rotten carpet in front of the water cooler, and a bacterial experiment in the overflow basin of the water cooler.  That little basin was like a primordial cesspool.  The water in there was an unnatural "color," and it smelled baaaaaaaaad.  Every once in awhile, someone would dump it out the window, but rarely did it get cleaned or wiped out, so the active ingredients kept a foothold.  I'm fairly certain that a few new species developed in that basin, and probably in the carpet below.

Working under the bridge had its benefits.  For one, it was dry mostly.  And the lot was paved.  And relatively flat.  Not completely flat, though. One afternoon I showed up for work, and my assigned truck was not there (a point of major irritation, I will tell you).  One of the day shift drivers had hooked up to a Subaru to retow it, and a police tow came in, so he left the car on his truck and took my truck.  I waited impatiently for him to return, and in meantime, ANOTHER police tow came in, so I had to unhook the car from his truck and take it.  Do you see the irony there?  If he would have done that, I wouldn't have had to do the extra work, and I wouldn't have had to drive
his truck, which was probably vastly inferior to mine.  And that's not all.

Because the Subaru on the back of his truck was locked up, because he had it lifted from the front (the drive wheels), and because it
had been parked in the center of the lot in a row without any curbs around it for a couple of days, I assumed that it was in park or in gear.  I
was also in a hurry to get to the police call.  I was also driving an Eagle, which works great for fast hookups, and fast UN-hookups.  So I merrily went on my way.  When I returned with the police tow, the front passenger-side fender of the Subaru was tucked neatly under the side of a long flatbed trailer parked next to it, with a nice long crease.  The Subaru's front wheels had been turned to the right, which promoted free rolling in the very slight downhill incline of the lot from west-to-east.  When it was parked in the center row of the lot, it had been parked so that the wheels were headed southeast, which apparently kept it from rolling away.  Which just goes to show you: never park the car in neutral in such a way as to let it be subject to any inclines.

Of course, you can block the tires or unlock it to put it in gear, but that requires getting out of the truck.

By the way, I am not certified in anything, so nothing I write in this blog can be legally construed as professional advice.  And it shouldn't.  I'm advising you of that.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com