A customer called me recently, pricing out a Fork Holder.  Seems he had lost one.  He called back a short while later to tell me he found it… in the ditch.  Not sure if it fell off while he was driving, or if he was working a recovery, but he found it, after a short search.

My experience is things are lost only temporarily.  I have many stories of losing or misplacing something, only to have it return later. I don’t even worry now when I do lose something of value.  It always seems to find its way back to me.  

One year, while elk hunting, I leaned my rifle against the truck tire, and later backed up and drove away.  I had been parked at the end of an old spur road that you could barely drive on. Not more than two hours later, a family member called for me over the CB, to ask if I had my rifle.  Someone I knew had driven out this same spur road, found the rifle, recognized it, and then ran into one of my family members out on the main road.  Hunting seems to be one activity that lends itself to me losing stuff and later finding it. I’ve found lost gloves, knives, had a lost gun belt returned to me, and last year my daughter lost her tag, license, and Hunter Safety Card, and we found them the next day on a trail we’d followed that day.

Years ago, before cell phones, tow truck drivers carried message pagers, and before that, beepers.  One late night I was sent up into the Forest Park west of Portland to meet a County Sheriff, who had found a stolen vehicle. He walked me out an old blocked-off road to this car, which was complete, but there was no way to drive to the vehicle.  The Sheriff has this idea that I could winch it downhill through the forest to the main road, which was about 500  yards. I had 150 feet of cable on my truck. He made me unspool it to prove I couldn’t do it, so I free-spooled through trees in the dark until it was all the way out, which was really silly because he just left me there and told me it was my problem.  I needed to make sure the car was impounded.

After I re-wound my cable, I left the scene, figuring we’d come back the next day with cable extensions and a
chainsaw.  I was halfway back to the shop when I realized I didn’t have my (bleeping) beeper. The forests here in Western Oregon tend to be thick, with a lot of underbrush.  At least it wasn’t raining.  I drove back up there, and fortunately I had the assistance of sound. I had the dispatcher set off the beeper until I found it.  I hadn’t particularly enjoyed being out in the dark forest the first time.  This time it was even creepier, with the faint sound of beeping getting slowly louder.  After about ten minutes I found it in the dead leaves.

My family gets irritated with me at home when there is a search for a misplaced item, because I confidently join the search, repeating the mantra, “I easily and effortlessly find the (lost item).” The idea is that if you walk around saying, “I can’t find my keys,” then your subconscious makes sure you’re right. I’m not saying my technique works best. I’m just saying I almost always find whatever we’re looking for first.  And I’m not unusually perceptive.  I think that’s what really bugs them about it.

So try it, if you’re ever in a ditch looking for a Fork Holder, or something like that.

Have a safe and profitable week.
 Sincerely,
Nick Kemper


www.TowPartsNow.com

Although I worked in the impound industry for many years, I did not do a lot of repos, but enough to have some good stories.  The first repo I ever did was for a small credit agency, on an early 70's model Chevy Nova.  The credit agency rep wanted to ride along, and one of the drivers who worked with me also wanted to ride along, so we all piled into a Ford Diesel (not ideal for repos) with an Eagle Claw and headed out.

The car was parked at a motel.  Seemed strange to me that the rep knew it was at a motel.  Turns out the vehicle owner was a lady-of-the-evening, and she was working.  I didn't feel particularly nervous, but the credit agency rep apparently was, because he starting breathing rapidly and heavily, almost to the point of hyperventilation.
  The angle to the back of the car was tough, so I didn't quite get the Eagle Claws set before lifting, and it slid off.  Then I got nervous.  I dropped it twice more before getting the claws set right.  The gas tank got kind of messed up.  But we got the car, and the agency rep was happy.

Many years later, the company I was working for got a repo contract for another small credit agency.  For these cars, we had owner info, but no one to find the vehicle for us, so it was a hunt-and-tow set-up.  One of the addresses, for a Dodge mini-van, was out in a rural area, so I waited until late (around midnight) and drove out to check it out.  The address was a mobile home in a very rural area.  No lights anywhere, except for a large floodlight on the front of the mobile home.  There were cars everywhere--on the lawn, in the driveway, behind the mobile home--about 15 total, but no Dodge mini-vans.  I was about to leave, and then I saw, out in the field behind the mobile home, the outline of the rear of a mini-van.  It looked like the right vehicle, but it was well off the road, on the other side of the mobile home.  There wasn't even a driveway out to where it was.  I sat there for several minutes and thought about it.  There was no easy access to the front of the van, which was a front-wheel drive, and that made it even more risky.  Finally I decided it wasn't worth the risk, and I drove back to the shop.

One of the other drivers asked me about it, and I gave him the scoop.  He told me he was going to go try to get the mini-van.  I told him he was nuts, and I went home.  The next day I came into work, and there was the mini-van.  He had driven out to the house, turned off his lights, backed ACROSS the front lawn, into the field, slid the wheellift through the tall grass under the bumper of the van, threw his safety chains around the rear axle and into the chain slots on the crossbar, lifted it up on the chains, and drug it back across the lawn, IN PARK.  The grass was slick, so the wheels just slid without tearing up the sod.  He got it out on the road, dropped it, turned around and grabbed it from the front, and got out of there.  He told me that while he was throwing the safety chains around the rear axle, the one thought in his head was, "When is the gunshot coming?"

Another driver I worked with did a similar repo in a rural area late at night.  He had an address, and he mapped it out in his Thomas Guide (days before GPS navigation).  He drove for miles on a rural road, and then it turned into gravel.  He drove farther, and then there was a gate.  He drove farther, and then there was a mobile home, with the K-5 Chevy Blazer with oversized tires he was supposed to repo, parked within a few feet of the trailer.  He snagged it from behind with his Eagle Claw, strapped it, and took off.  He told me later, "I was in such a hurry I didn't lift the claws high enough, so when I went through a dip it exploded the ratchet when it hit the ground."  Exploded the ratchet.  It would have exploded my HEART.   Who keeps going on a rural gravel road THROUGH A GATE?!?

Probably what the vehicle owner was thinking as he slept peacefully through it all in his mobile home.


Have a safe and
profitable week,

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com 

My daughter is learning to drive, and she’s doing fine with it, but it makes me remember some of MY escapades at that age.  Yikes!  It also reminds me of some accidents I covered, unfortunately. 

On one late evening, I was dispatched to W. Burnside Rd. in Portland, near the Washington Park Zoo, to recover an older Honda that was on its top about 50 yards off the road.  This was a wooded area, and the road went up a steep incline, but it was highly-traveled and narrow, so there were a lot of accidents on this road.  When I got to the scene, I tried to find where the vehicle went off the road, because it's often easiest to bring a car up the way it went down, but I couldn't, so I found the simplest route back to road, rolled the vehicle over, and pulled it up.

The next day, the vehicle's driver, 18 years old, and his mother arrived at the storage lot to view the vehicle and get some personal items.  He was pretty banged up, but okay, and I learned that there had been 5 teenagers in this little late 70s Civic, and that they were all okay, which was pretty amazing considering that there wasn’t a single piece of glass left in this car.  They couldn’t find his wallet.  I told them I would revisit the accident scene later that day and take a look for it, and give them a call if I found it.

That afternoon, I drove up to the scene and started looking for the wallet.  I couldn't find it, and I couldn't help noticing that there wasn't very much glass in the foliage and on the ground where the vehicle had lain on its top.  Also, I still couldn't see where the car had come off the road, which was strange.  As I looked around, I noticed some glass on a marked trail on the hillside above me, opposite the road, about 25 yards up the hill.  I hiked up to the spot, and sure enough, there was a pile of glass on the trail.  It was a wide trail, part of the Forest Park trail system, and I thought maybe they had been messing around, trying to drive this little car on the trail, and rolled off and down hill, but that didn't explain how the glass had gotten on the trail . Then I looked farther up the hill, and I saw the trail of crushed ferns and damaged brush.  I followed it uphill, passing a homeless person's tent about 5 feet from where the vehicle went, up about 500 yards, before I came to one of the Forest Park Roads.  There I found a long set of skid marks leading to the road corner.  I turned and looked down the hill to see how far this little car had flown into the air and rolled over-and-over down this steep, wooded incline, until it came to rest at the bottom of the gulch alongside the much busier Burnside Rd.

5 teenagers, and they all walked away.  I never found the wallet.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com

My first experience in a tow truck was on a family trip to Disneyland and back.  We were about 40 miles south of Bakersfield when the tranny went out in our '72 Skylark.  My parents had AAA, and we waited 4 hours for a tow truck.  Fortunately, we were on our way home from Disneyland.  Myself, my two brothers, and my parents all squeezed into the cab with the tow truck driver, in 100+ degrees, no A/C, and drove the 40 miles to Bakersfield.  Not fun.  The driver was nice, however.  I remember him taking us to a motel after we dropped the car off at a tranny shop, and we got 2 days in the pool while the car was being fixed.

3 adults and 3 kids (ages 10, 11, and 12) in the truck. Can we beat that?

Years later, I was working swing shift and got a police rotation call on US 26 westbound out of Portland.  There is a steep climb leaving the downtown area, through a forested area, and many cars conk out on this hill.  This night, an old mini-van had lost its clutch on a bend in the road where the emergency lane was not even wide enough for a single car.

The family in the van had just flown in from Disneyworld, Orlando to Portland.  It was almost midnight, dead of summer, very hot and muggy.  They were extremely tired.  The father wanted the van towed to his mechanic about 10 miles away, and they lived about 10 miles west of where they had broken down, just off the highway.

A family of 7, with 5 kids, all teenagers.

Yes, 7 people, 5 teenagers.  The youngest was autistic.

While the police blocked the lane for the hookup, I told the father we would have to call a cab for most of them, as there were only 3 seat belts in the truck.  The danger of the area made it necessary to get them off the highway.  There was an exit just about a half-mile up the road.  He asked if some of them could ride in the towed vehicle.  I knew that wouldn't fly, especially if some of them were teenagers.  There was only one time I ever let someone ride in a towed vehicle, a man who was extremely inebriated, and he thought he was going to be sick.  I made him sit in the back seat.

I had to get these people off the freeway.  A cab wasn't even going to respond to this location.  So I told them all to pile into the cab of the tow truck, and we'd get off the freeway.

Hard to say who was sitting on whom, but at least two people were facing to the rear, basically sitting on the dashboard.  The police officer immediately zoomed past me, on his way to another call, and I was about to take the exit when I asked how everyone was doing.  They were all laughing about the situation, having a great time.  I asked the father again where they lived.  I thought about it a moment, and then I told them we were just going to go for it.

This little episode could certainly have put a damper on the end of their trip, but I think it might have ended up being the exclamation point.  We all laughed and yelled and jostled and I think maybe a few punches were thrown, but hey, we're talking 5 teenagers who have been on a plane for 7 hours and probably awake for at least 15.

They all piled out at their home, unloaded the luggage from the van, and I told the father that I could get his van dropped off at the mechanic without him, and told him to call it a night.  They were all happy to be home, and I got two very sincere thank-yous from the parents.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com