One of my former drivers called me a few weeks ago to tell me he was moving, and he asked me to write a letter-of-reference for him, which I did happily.  I was his supervisor for 5 years, and he was one of these guys who always stepped up when something extra needed to be done, always working extra shifts, running on-call from home, coming in early, staying late.  If we’re lucky, we all have drivers like this.  It's easy to take these people for granted, especially once we get used to them doing this for us.  We have to remember to say Thank You once in awhile, and usually that recognition means as much, if not more, than the extra money they earn by working extra.

It reminded me of one of this driver's quirks, and if he's reading this, hopefully he can laugh along with us as I tell you about it.  One of his pet phrases was, "It's a Catch-20."  Now, most of us know that the correct phrase is "Catch-22," from the Joseph Heller novel about a WWII fighter pilot who tries to get out of the service by claiming he's crazy, but the military reasons that no sane person would want to stay in the military flying missions, so because he wants out, he's not crazy.  So he can't win either way, which is what we now call a "Catch-22."  But this driver always said "Catch-20," and it was a point of humor for those of us who worked with him.  I'm sure someone corrected him at some point, but he kept saying "Catch-20."

At some point during my management time I heard that if you want to change or establish a habit, you have to do some new behavior for 21 days.  I don't know if it's true, but it made sense to me, and I was having trouble helping my drivers establish new habits, or changing old ones, so I decided to try the 21-day program.  The way it worked was this: say your drivers were having trouble remembering to lock and secure impounded vehicles in the storage lot.  I would go out every morning and check all the vehicles.  If anything was unlocked or unsecured, I would make a note of which driver towed it in, ask around to make sure that no one else opened it up to move it after it was towed in, and then I would give the driver an assignment.  For the next 21 work days, he or she would be responsible for checking ALL of the vehicles in the storage lot at some point during their shift, and if they found anything unlocked or unsecured, they would lock and secure the vehicle, and report it to me.

This way, I had other people checking the vehicles besides me, and reporting the problems, and most important, locking and securing the vehicles.  If the driver failed to do this successfully during their 21-day sentence, the sequence would RE-START.  If I found a vehicle unlocked or unsecured, and someone was in the middle of their 21-day sentence, and I could determine that the vehicle was in the lot for their entire previous shift, then the driver who towed the car in would start a 21-day sentence, PLUS the driver who was in the middle of their sentence would get to start over.

This became almost comical (for me), as I had multiple drivers out checking cars at all times of the day and night, and some of them went on and on for weeks on end, because they couldn't put together 21 work days in a row.  The look on a driver's face when I told him his 21 days was starting over, as he suddenly remembered what he forgot to do the day before, was p-r-i-c-e-l-e-s-s.

You could do it for other things to, like pre-trip inspections, for instance.  If they didn't do their pre-trip inspection one day, then they would be assigned to pre-trip at least one additional truck other than their own for the next 21 work days.  Then you'd have drivers checking trucks that they didn't normally check, which of course would turn up maintenance issues that the assigned drivers weren't reporting because they weren't really doing their own pre-trips thoroughly or properly.  Then they'd start on their own 21-day cycle.

It was all so much fun.  I don't know if it worked, but it was one of those things that the veteran drivers would tell the new drivers about during their training, as if they were recounting tortures in a Turkish prison, thereby striking fear in the hearts of the newbies as they started to wonder about what this nice guy who hired them was really all about if he could come up with something so cruel and relentless.  As a manager, you KNOW something has value if it can do THAT.

When I first laid out the program at an Employee Meeting, I explained how it would work, which produced many groans and threats of legal action, then I told them, "We're calling it the Catch-21 Program."  This was extremely funny to a handful of employees who knew about the Catch-20/Catch-22 discrepancy, and they had great difficulty silencing their laughter.  Mr. Catch-20, who was listening intently, because he was someone who was very meticulous about his work and didn't much like people getting away with not being meticulous, said, "That's a great idea!"

I smiled. "I knew you'd like it," I told him.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com

http://www.facebook.com/#!/towpartsnow

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


 

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

I was thinking the other day about getting pulled over by the police while towing a car, which happened to me a few times.  We were all talking at the house about car accidents and tickets, and I really think how many miles you've logged should be taken into consideration. When you're driving 500 miles a week at work, or more, of course you're going to get into a few more fender benders.

There's a degree of professional courtesy between police officers and tow truck drivers.  Unfortunately, sometimes it's a low degree.  It's really a crapshoot.  You might get an officer who got towed away at some point and now they have an agenda.

  At one point when I was a driver I was given an assignment to record everything I did during my shift for a week.  I think it was the insurance company who was doing some kind of research.  Anyway, I was known for my obsessive-compulsive tendencies, so I took it to heart and scribbled down times and every change of status and locations and whatnot for a week, typed it up (yes, "typed" it up--this was awhile back), and turned it in.  Which is the first time my bosses got to hear about my run-in with Portland's finest.

I was impounding an abandoned van, with no tires and wheels.  I was driving an Eagle Claw, so I frame-forked one end and set the other end up on dollies.  I chained the suspension down to the dollies and down to the wheellift.  It was still a little iffyy--there was a
lot of play in the hookup--things moving around and shifting during stops and starts.

I didn't have far to go, maybe 3 miles, but there's a river intersecting Portland, so I had to go across a bridge, and I chose a non-freeway
bridge where the traffic was relatively light.  It was an early summer evening, after rush hour.  The first problem I ran into was driving down an urban street, where I came up to a stop light, and I was cruising slowly--about 20 mph--and the light changed.  I had enough time to stop, but I really didn't want to stop quick with the load I had, and I could see that there was no cross-traffic, so I rolled through.  I did not accelerate.  The light changed to red about halfway through.

I didn't know, but there was a patrol car behind me.  He didn't make his presence known.

The next intersection was a bigger problem. It was a stop sign, where I had to turn left or right onto a busy street.  Although traffic was light, cars kept coming from different directions, and the road had turns in it, making it difficult to see far in either direction.  Thinking back, I should have avoided that by taking a different street that put me at a stop light, instead of a stop sign.  Finally, after waiting for quite awhile, I eased out slowly, and sure enough, a cab came flying around the corner, so I reached down and switched on my overhead lights.  I was already out in the street, so there was no going back.  He slowed down, and I coasted through the intersection, and then I heard
the siren.

So, here I am, towing this abandoned van with no tires and wheels, FOR THE CITY, and the patrol car has been following me.  He
could have pulled up and offered to escort me through the intersection.  He could have looked the other way when I cautiously flipped on my overheads.  But he didn’t. I don't have a problem with any of that.  It's what happened AFTER all that that was kind of twisted.

He pulled me over, and asked for my info.  I was polite.  I'm always polite when I get pulled over.  He started asking me questions, like why
did I run the light, and did I know that it was illegal to drive with the overheads on.  I explained why I had done what I did.  Then he
asked, "What are you on?"  I really honestly did not know what he was getting at.  Then he said, "Your pupils are like dots! What are you on?"  Well, it was late afternoon, and we were parked facing the setting sun, so my first thought was that I was looking toward the sunlight, which would cause my pupils to get smaller.  I hazarded that guess.  He made me get out, and we went through a sobriety test, minus the breathalyzer.  I was a little unnerved, but had no problem because I was not "on" anything. He was adamant that I spill my guts about what kind of drugs I was taking.  I think I actually looked around to see if there was a hidden camera somewhere, because I've had tricks played on me before.  He seemed very serious, so I didn't challenge him at all, even though he was the one who was clearly  impaired.

He had me get back in the cab and let me sit there awhile, and then he approached the door and told me that he was letting me off with a
warning.  After all that, not even a ticket.  Are there drugs that make your pupils smaller?  I thought it was dilated pupils they were supposed to look for.  To this day, I don't know what that officer's agenda was.  My bosses read the report and were just as amazed, but they took that part out before forwarding it to the insurance company.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com