Going through my old journals the other day, from when I was a driver, I found a page-long gripe about fleet maintenance.  Hopefully I'm not going to alienate too many shop managers out there, but it struck me funny to read it, so I'm going to include some of it here:

"Every day I fill out a pre-trip checklist, on which I list problems or repairs needed, like, 'RDS brake locks at crucial moments--please install drag chute.'  My boss looks at the list every day and tosses it, sometimes saying to me, 'You don't have to write the same thing every day.  Just write a problem down once, and it'll get taken care of eventually.'  Right.  And monkeys might (you know what).  Now I just write, 'Please refer to 3-17, 3-21, 3-22, 3-23, 3-25, 3-30, and 4-1 lists for previously listed problems.'  Each one of those lists has at least one new repair needed, including the locking brake and other insignificant trifles like inexplicable loss of power and random pulling to the left or right while braking and the SERVICE ENGINE SOON light coming on and coolant and oil and power steering fluid leaks."  I think I was irritated when I wrote that.

I never engaged in truck repairs unless I had to.  The companies I worked for usually didn't want the drivers doing too much, because most of us knew only enough to break something worse.  I remember once when my boss hired a "Security Officer" to spy on the employees, and it was someone I knew, who immediately blew his cover by frightening me near to death on a late spooky night because he thought it would be funny.  Afterwards he thought the Ford Diesel I was driving "didn't sound right," so he started messing with the fuel/water mixture control or some such thing, and then it REALLY didn't sound right.  I had to explain to my boss that I let the yo-yo he hired to spy on us do an in-lot repair, which didn't go over well.  For either of us.

After I got into management, I became a little more self-sufficient, once even changing a broken PTO belt myself on a weekend.  There are times when the back-up truck is so frightening that you'll go to great lengths to get your regular truck back on the road.  Another time I got a screw in a front tire of my truck, and I was able to slow down the leak by screwing it in all the way.  I returned to the lot and was bemoaning the development to our graveyard-shift dispatcher, who also happened to be a supreme computer geek, designing websites, creating a lien package program out of market software, and developing a complete DOS-based dispatching/accounting/auction software program for our company (better than any market program I've seen since).  He said, "I can show you how to plug the tire."  Trust me, this seemed suspicious.  The guy had an extra long fingernail on each pinky, so you wouldn't think he could plug a tire.  Turns out he had watched one of the graveyard-shift drivers do it a few times, so we found the fixins in the mechanic's cage and he talked me through it.  Employees who pay attention are priceless.

The best tow truck mechanics, in my experience, are the ones who get emotional and start throwing heavy sharp things when things aren't going their way, and when you get your truck back from them, you get a 3-part seminar on where to look for weld cracks on your dollie frames and crossrails.  Admirable to try to teach preventive maintenance to the commission drivers, who are then going to run the equipment into the ground and whine non-stop while the truck is down.

Takes all types.  Makes life richer.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com

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

Vehicle damage is one of those gray areas in towing that sometimes requires a crystal ball to divine the truth. Questioning drivers becomes a psychological exercise.  Outright denial is my favorite.  I called one driver shortly after he left work one day, and I explained to him that he had parked his truck a little too close to a vehicle in our storage lot.  He was driving an Eagle, and the fold cylinder had been leaking, so he flopped down the stinger before parking the truck, which was a good idea.  That way the stinger couldn't flop down on its own onto something important on its own.  Well, the problem was that he backed up a little too close to the Chrysler 300M that he was parking in front of.  "No way," he said.  "I know I didn't hit that car."  I explained to him that the end of the Eagle Claw was still inserted into the front bumper of the Chrysler.  "Someone else must have moved the truck," he said (he had been gone about 10 minutes).  Right, I said, and could he bring back the keys to the truck so we could move it away from the damaged vehicle?  Silence.I asked him if he had the keys still.  Might they be in one of his pockets? More silence.  "Yes," he finally admitted.

That conversation with the vehicle owner, when you tell them that their car has been damaged—always fun.

On another occasion, I had 2 complaints in one day for tow light damage.  Both vehicles had been towed by the same driver, from the same location, impounds.  A Mercedes SUV, and a Toyota Landcruiser.  The damage was similar, circular scratches matching the size of the round magnets used on magnetic Tow Lights, on the roof of the vehicle on the passenger-side.  The next time the driver came to the
lot, with a car in-tow, I came out and explained to him that I had received the complaints.  "No way," he said, "I'm always very careful when I take tow lights off the car."  No twisting, I asked?  "No, definitely not."  He was towing an old beater that had been abandoned, so I asked him to show me how careful he was, with the car he was towing.  He carefully lifted the tow lights off the car and put them on the back of his truck. Then I asked him to put them back on.  Rolling his eyes, he walked the lights back to the car, and carefully placed them on the car.  Then he plugged the cord back into the socket, grabbed the cord, and slung it up on top of the car from right next to the tow truck, like he’s on one end of a hellaciously long jump rope.  The cord hit the car's roof with a loud bang.  I walked over to the tow light on his side and showed him how it was now pointing sideways.  The pull on the cord was twisting the magnet around 90 degrees with gale-force whip action.  My next question, I said to him, is did you put the light back the right way without checking to see if you scratched the paint underneath, or did you drive to the lot with the light pointing sideways?

I wonder how many cars he damaged before someone looked on their roof.

One driver wanted to change a rear tire on a Chevy S10 pickup, but he didn't want to jack it up, so he lifted the rear with
his truck and placed a jackstand under the side with the flat tire.  Problem was, he placed the jackstand under the rear side panel of the truck, rather than the frame or a sturdy suspension component.  The fender folded.  At least he got the pleasure of being present when the vehicle owner witnessed the damage.

 Have a safe and profitable week.

Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com
http://www.facebook.com/#!/towpartsnow

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

In my early days of driving, I spent many afternoons in tow trucks with no air conditioning, sweating profusely.  I worked swing shift most of my career, so the summer evenings were typically beautiful working weather, but on occasion I worked the day shift.  One particularly hot day I covered a day shift for a driver on vacation and was sent out to recover a stolen vehicle for the County Sheriff in the Forest Park west of Portland.

I arrived to find that the vehicle was inside a railroad tunnel.  Some yahoo had stolen this old Nissan, drove it down the tracks, and wedged it against the tunnel wall inside the tunnel.  In doing so, they had broken the front suspension on the vehicle.  There was no access to the front of the vehicle.

I first had to back the tow truck down the railroad tracks about 1000 yards into the tunnel.  It was dark in there.  I asked the Sheriff when the next train was expected, and he just smiled and said he didn't think there were any trains scheduled for that day.  I don't know if you've done a lot of driving on railroad tracks, but it's not fun.  I had to position the passenger-side dualies between the rails and the driver-side dualies on the outside of one of the rails, but the loose gravel on the outside of the tracks meant I had to keep the truck as close to centered over the rails as possible.

The tunnel was a little bit cooler than the sunlight, but winching the car away from the wall to get it hooked up to the truck without being able to position the truck where I wanted it was a real pain.  Also, did I mention it's really dark in railroad tunnels?  They don't put lights in there.  The truck's worklights helped, but I kept wondering what might be creeping around in there in the dark.  This tunnel was curved, so you couldn't see either end from middle, which is where I was.

After wrestling around underground for awhile, I got the Nissan hooked up to the truck.  Now I faced the task of driving out on railroad tracks with no control over the broken front suspension of the car.  There wasn't much to do but drive forward and let it go where it wanted to go.  Thankfully, the front wheels splayed out, so that the car just skidded behind, a little off to the side of the tracks.  To be honest, I didn’t really look back – I didn’t want to know what was happening back there.  It was going fairly smoothly until about halfway out to the road when I got too far away from the rails and the rear differential of the tow truck hopped up over the left rail and I got stuck in the loose gravel.  I had to get the differential back up over the rail.  Using my trusty floorjack, I was able to get the driver-side dualies up onto some timbers and get re-centered over the rails, where I happily bumped my way to pavement, drenched in sweat.

Primary lesson learned: don't work the day shift.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com