Vehicle owners can be kind of funny about tow damage complaints, especially owners of impounded vehicles.  I had one man insist we damaged the tires and suspension of his vehicle by towing it on the front wheels (it was a rear-wheel drive) with the steering locked.  He claimed it caused "dragging" of the tires as the vehicle went around corners, damaging the tread due to the increased friction causing by wheels in a straight position going around a corner.  I pointed out 2 things to him:
1. If the steering is not locked, that creates a major problem that will lead to the friction of cars bouncing off each other.
2. The rear wheels on his car are always straight, and probably went around corners every now and then.  What was the sporadic but frequent "friction" doing to those tires?
He wasn't buying any of it.  He claimed his attorney would be in touch, and spun his rear tires on the way out of the lot.

I had another woman claim that towing a car backward with the front tires on the ground would cause "loosening" of the suspension that would lead to pieces falling off soon after she left our property.  Her brother-in-law, who owned a body shop, had told her that would happen.  I think she had heard something about the old "knock-off" wheels at some point.  I asked her how she dared to back her car into parking spaces, or out of a driveway.  She thought about it a moment and said the damage could only happen when the rear wheels were off the ground, because ALL of the weight of the vehicle was on the front wheels at that point.  A new towing technique, I guess:  Levitation.  I gave her a written guarantee that her suspension would not spontaneously fall apart for at least the next 1000 miles, with the exclusion of front-wheel-only driving.

Possibly one of the craziest claims was from a man who insisted we had damaged his door locks while unlocking his car to impound it for the police.  He wouldn't let me get a word in to explain.  How did we tow the car when it was in gear?  Didn't we get in the car to get it out of gear?  Did I know that those kind of vehicles were lockout-proof, and that ANY attempt to unlock them would result in damage?  That was one of the reasons he had bought that model--it was impenetrable to lockout attempts.  This was all BEFORE he paid his bill and inspected his car.  After several attempts to explain to him how his vehicle was towed, I just gave up and let him rant.  Finally, he paid his bill, and I handed him his receipt... AND his keys.  It was a DUI tow, and he didn't "remember" that the police had given us the keys.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper

www.TowPartsNow.com

 

I have had many Dollie Adventure in my time behind the wheel of a tow truck.  On one Sunday, I was sent out to impound an old Datsun 510, and when I got there I found that it had no wheels.  Other than it being an annoyance, it wasn’t  a terribly big deal, because I had towed many vehicles without wheels with a wrecker and dollies by that point in my career. Usually I would strap or chain the vehicle to the dollie, but it was a Sunday afternoon, so the traffic was light, and I was being lazy, so I centered  the Datsun on the dollie and headed for the impound lot (securing the vehicle  to the dollie prevents the load from moving in the dollie, which can happen with steel wheels on steel dollie crossrails). 

At that time, we had fixed-length steel crossrails on our trucks, which turned out to be important, as you will see. I got onto I-84 about 5 miles east of downtown Portland, and the 58th Avenue onramp went under the freeway and made a hard left just outside of the short tunnel.  I was going slow, but not slow enough apparently, because when I made the turn, the Datsun slid on the crossrails all the way to the right and slammed against the dollie frame.  The two dollie tires on the left came up off the ground about 2” and then rested back
onto the pavement.  I swallowed hard to get my heart out of my throat, and waited for the crossrails to fall out of the rail pockets.  I knew that only the weight of the car keeps the crossrails in the rail pockets, and since one side was temporarily hovering, even pulling the dollie tires up into midair, we were now defying the laws of science.  I was on the freeway now, with no emergency lane to work with, so I kept
going cautiously.  The left dollie tires were now sticking out about three feet past the wrecker bed, but everything held together, so I kept
  going.

If the crossrails had been telescoping crossrails, I think the Datsun’s suspension would not have slid so far or so easily, because the fixed-length crossrails are perfectly smooth.   As I approached the split to I-5, I remembered that the Steel Bridge offramp had nice right-turn angle to it, so I could correct the positioning of the Datsun on the dollie by swinging hard into the turn. These are the kinds of ideas that come into you head when you’re 25 years old, as I was at the time.

I tried the maneuver, but the exact reverse of the first shift took place, with the Datsun sliding all the way to the left, slamming against the left dollie frame, and the right dollie tires lifting off the ground and then settling.  Now the dollies were tracking three feet to the right of the wrecker bed. I was off the freeway now, so I could have stopped to make adjustments and maybe splash some water in my face,
but I was also close to the impound lot, so I just kept going.

When I got to the lot, I pulled in, put the truck in park, stepped out of the truck, and the rear crossrail fell out of both dollie frames and went “clink” as it hit the pavement.  Both ends had apparently been sitting on the “ledge,” waiting to pop out and make the entire dollie fly apart, but for some reason, neither end decided to do that.  The rest of the dollie stayed intact, with the wheelless Datsun still sitting on the front
crossrail.

I think I used up a whole lot of good luck that day, probably way more than an abandoned Datsun 510 with no wheels warranted.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
 www.TowPartsNow.com