Roam Towing
Last night, at some point between the hours of 10pm and 1am, my car disappeared from the parking lot of Oak Brook Walk Apartments. Robbery? No. Theft? Nope. Did my butt get towed? Yup.
I had seen the intimidating red letters before “Warning: Tow Away Zone,” but for some reason I thought I was safe; I refused to park in the visitors lot and low and behold when I walked out to drive home, my car was no longer there. We called the number on the towing sign, found out the location of Watson’s Towing, and drove to the impound lot.
Watson’s Towing is located in the middle of downtown, ghetto Gainesville. The place was a run down building and a mangy lot surrounded by a razor wire fence. After arriving, I discovered that they only accepted cash, $76 cash to be exact. They provided no change, you either had to pay them the exact amount or too much. We drove to an ATM and I withdrew my ransom money to rescue my car from the mean kidnappers.
After having paid, they began to retrieve my car. While they were retrieving, I passed the time by talking with one of the nearby employees. There is now another career that I have trouble respecting: towing personnel are like meter maids, how do you go to sleep at night knowing what you tow cars or give out parking tickets for a living? What do you do when you introduce yourself to someone?
Person A: “So, what do you do for a living?”
Person B: “I tow cars at night and am a meter maid in the day”
Person A punches Person B while yelling obscenities
Person B: “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
While I do not agree with some of the aspects of the towing profession, I did learn a lot about it. The average tow truck can tow 3 cars per hour and the truck receives $24 per vehicle that it tows (the rest of the money goes to the company). They often work in twos, one person walks outside looking for decals while the other person drives, when they find a car to tow, they tow it. It takes only a few moments to tow most cars and then your car is $76 gone (in Gainesville, the city regulates the price cap for towing cars – $76). The $24 is split between the two of employees, they each receive $12 for towing your car. Okay, so these numbers may not be exact as I am actually writing this entry on January 20, 2005, but they were exorbitant and somewhere near the number’s I’ve stated.
I don’t know if towing is necessary, I’d say that in most places it is not: a simple fine would do. After this event, I have thought about leaving a note in my window, “Will give you $30 not to tow my car, call my cell at….” I have not done this yet, but it is an idea. I think it’s funny that tow truck drivers receive an incentive to tow more cars, it seems almost wrong to me. But I guess if there were no incentive, they might not perform their job.
