One warm summer night several years ago I was shooting pool at one of my local hangouts. It was nearing 1 AM, when I got a call from a lady friend of mine. She wanted to see me urgently; her pipes needed servicing. So I jumped into the Camaro I was driving at the time and sped off on my way. Pretty soon I saw red and blue lights flashing behind me. It was a State Trooper, and he stopped me for going 94 in a 65 zone, and arrested me for driving on a supended license. I sat handcuffed in the back of the cruiser waiting for the towtruck. When it arrived, I watched as the driver got into my car and drove it onto the flatbed and attatched the chains (this is an important part of the story). About 24 hours later I was out of jail, and I went to go get my car. I was expecting a bill of about $100 or so, but I was shocked when I saw the statement: $85 for towing, and $200 for special equipment! I asked what "special equipment" they were talking about, and the fat woman behind the counter said that because I had a sports car with spoilers and ground effects, that they needed to use special equipment when loading it to make sure that nothing was damaged. I protested, because I SAW how the car was loaded, and there sure-as-shit was no special equipment involved. But the fat wildebeest stonewalled me, and pointed to a sign on the wall stating that the fees were non-negotiable. Fuck. So I paid and left, flipping them off as I went. Fuck tow truck companies. Fuck 'em all. Focus: Tow truck horror stories. Let's hear them, I know y'all have some. Crown Royal has a good one about one of his friends involving a new Mustang and "the biggest pair of bolt cutters in Canada." Alternate Focus: Do you now, or have you ever worked for a towing company? If so, can you somehow explain to the rest of us why tow truck agencies are such ruthless assholes? Is that a requirement?
If the truck hitches on properly there shouldn't be any risk of the car BUMPing into the back of the truck. Also, remember to vote in the poll. Poll runs for three days, and you can change your vote. The poll runs as part of dixiebandit69's Toxx Clause.
Never had my car towed, and I honestly can't remember ever hearing of a friend having his car towed. Sorry, but I have to vote Not Awesome.
Just moved out of Boston which is an absolute parking nightmare. On move out day I pulled up to the gf's new place to grab something real quick. Her new place was only on the second floor and I was in there for probably about thirty seconds, but by the time I got back downstairs the tow truck was backed up to my car and getting the chains ready. Me: Dude, I was just grabbing something real quick, I'll move it right now. Him: Well, you should have parked somewhere else, now I have to take it. Me: I don't have sticker parking and all the visitor spots are taken. Him: Not my problem. Me: WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, I JUST WANTED TO POP IN FOR THIRTY SECONDS AND GRAB SOMETHING, I WASN'T LEAVING THE CAR HERE. Him: Hit me, I dare you. (he wasn't big or scary and said it in the nonchalant 'I'll just sue you' way, I was very tempted). Now the place he was going to bring it to was a few miles away, nowhere near a train stop and I was the only one of three movers that day with a car. The best I could negotiate was giving him $80 at the gf's new place within 10 minutes. Now there were probably 5 ATMs around the corner but I left my wallet at the old place which was at the top of a massive hill, I was at the bottom at the time. I had to break into a dead sprint up the hill, find my wallet at the old place, go to the ATM and sprint back down the hill to give him the money. Mind you it was one of the hottest days of the year, I had been packing and moving all week and was going to spend all that day and the next (also hot as fuck) moving and unpacking. Apparently I was not a one off case with this guy, the gf says he regularly tows unknowing people dropping one thing off or saying goodbye to their family members all the time and uses the same 'hit me' line when people get pissed. What a great business model, steal and hold people's car hostage and make them pay a ridiculous fee to get it back, all legal and in the open.
Back in the RMMB I told a long tale about how my friend stole his car back from an impound (when I was with him), so I'll tell the short version: Tried calling police first World's biggest bolt cutters Broke rear gate lock Pepper sprayed guard dog Started car and revved it loud enough to get lot guy's attention Gunned car at Lot Guy and missed Drove Out Front Gate
I haven't had my car towed for impound, just once for mechanical issues. The guy that helped me was not a dick, and the fee was reasonable - but, that was like 20 years ago. Several years ago, though, I did come up on an accident involving a tow truck. Tow truck was on it's side, and fairly well smashed up, as was the vehicle it was towing. It was the flat bed kind, not tow kind, so the car was kind of half still attached. I don't know what shape it was in before it got towed, but it was funny to me, thinking that somebody got a AAA tow for dead batter or no gas or something, and then ended up with their car wrecked. (Probably not too funny to the car owner.) Also, since the WDT is locked, I can't comment there . . . re: this Toxx Gayy thing. The poll is for whether or not the thread is awesome, not whether or not the thread topic is awesome. A lame topic can turn into an epic thread, depending on what others post, imho. A thread on dust, for instance, would be pretty lame. But, if there were pictures of hot chicks wearing French maid outfits dusting, or naked cheerleaders holding cans of Dust B Gone, that would really improve that thread. Just sayin
I've been picked up by a tow truck exactly once. Guess what happened? Nothin. Because democracy is so great I don't have to say which poll option I picked (and I totally didn't give it away) but looks like we're not gonna see dixie for a few days.
Like every other college everywhere, the parking on our campus sucks. We're also located right smack dab in the middle of the city, meaning the school is basically landlocked from doing any expansion parking projects. Unfortunately, the district around us (what's that called when it's like a city within a city?) is very old and has insanely strict rules in regard to when and where you can park on their streets. So, there's like three side-streets that the students have taken over as well. Obviously we can't block driveways, but damn do we come close. Also the streets, being old, are narrow, meaning in many areas, because of the cars parked on both sides, it turns into basically a bunch of one-way streets. This pisses off the residents as you might suspect, as it did me when I had a house down there. Regardless, still do it. Specifically, there's this one person that keeps leaving me angry notes when I park in front of their house, threatening to call the police if "I don't live in the area or am visiting someone who lives in the area." I keep tape in the car and always tape the notes back on one of their trees, writing that I am parked there legally on a public street, I am doing no damage to their property in doing so, and they are welcome to call the police and/or the university I attend (I'm even kind enough to leave the campus security's phone number) and tell them they need more parking. I'm probably asking to get my car keyed, but it's never been towed. That's the best I have for this bad idea for a thread. We get that you're "going against the man," Dixie. Here's an attractive female cop giving a blowjob and grabbing her tits, to spice this up a bit. NSFW
I've never really had a bad experience with tow truck drivers, but I read a story last year and it broke my heart a little bit. In a nutshell: Older gentleman loses his job, can't afford his mortgage payments and loses his house. He ends up living out of his van, parked down the street from where he used to live. He gets a few parking tickets, and eventually the van gets towed. The fines rack up, $72/day - money he just doesn't have. He asks if he can go into the van to retrieve some belongings that he could sell to make the money to pay the fines, but the towing company says no. They tell him that they will hold the van on their lot for 60 days, after which, if he hasn't paid up, they will auction off the van. After the auction, if they haven't made enough to pay the fines, they will sell off whatever belongings they can find in the van to make up the difference. The happy ending is that someone in the municipal government read the story and paid his fines. Yes, the guy was a bit naive, but he's homeless for christ's sake. Let him get his few possessions and leave with a little dignity. It was about a month before Christmas, and apparently the towing company got so many angry phone calls from the community that they had to upgrade their security systems. The worst I had to deal with was the hard-of-hearing Pakistani man who bottomed out my Mustang twice trying to get it onto and off of the hoist last time I got an oil change. I need to find a new mechanic.
So, this one time, I needed a ride from downtown because I was doing some training there and I needed a ride from my ex. She came in to get me, when she arrived downtown (mainly because she wanted to see the sweet ass building that my head office was located in) and then we went out to the car to go home. Turned out she parked in a no parking zone and got towed. I laughed at her, she got mad and then I realized we both didn't have a ride home; so, we cabbed it to the impound, she paid the 150 bucks to get it out and we went home and I made a frozen pizza for dinner. She wanted sex but I was tired from work all day and then went to bed where she blew me, hopped on my dick while I starfished the bitch and everyone kicked a goal.
The wife once had her car towed. She claims she was parked in a legitimate spot, but, who knows. Of course, we thought the car had been stolen, because the local (Boston) police had no knowledge of the car being towed as we went to report it. So, a month goes by, and we get a letter from some towing company located in an "economically disadvantaged" part of town saying that we owe them $350 for keeping the car in their lot. Thankfully, my wife's skills of crying and yelling at people came in handy for once so the company waived the fee. Too bad she'd already gotten the insurance check and bought a new car!
I have to go the exact opposite way, I had a really good experience with a tow truck company. Back in college, a few friends and I were going to road trip up to Massachusetts, from Indiana. At some point in New York (state, if I need to mention it), in the middle of a fucking toll plaza, the transmission on the car drops, and the car becomes a glorified paper weight. We manage to push it off to the side, but we are completely fucked. Three of my friends flew back from a nearby airport (fuck if I remember where we were, to be honest, but the exit for the airport was RIGHT after the toll plaza we broke down in), while the owner of the car and I stayed behind. My buddy stayed behind because it was his car. I stayed behind because we were using my AAA card to get the car towed to a place to get it fixed. Once we got it to the place, they informed us that the transmission dropped and the car was totaled and asked us what we wanted to do. He also said there were really no nearby hotels, and we were poor college students who had already reserved and paid for 2 hotel rooms in Mass. My buddy was on this trip to bang some chick he was talking to online, and he was determined to do so. In the end, the tow truck driver told us that he had to deliver a motorcycle to a city relatively nearby where we were going, and he offered to tow us the rest of the way there, so we could go to our hotel and my buddy could figure out what to do with his car. In this case, the tow truck driver went above and beyond, eventually going a good 100 or so miles out of his way, and a lot of it was paid for by my AAA membership. Related note: get a fucking AAA membership. That thing can be incredibly valuable.
Can we add an alternative focus to this thread? Something like "When have you been punished for being reatarded?" Obviously they added the extra charge because they were not fans of 2 Fast 2 Furious. If he loses his user name should be changed to Paul Walker. Vroom Vroom goes the rice rocket!
I had my car towed in Myrtle Beach when I was 17. A friend and I were down there for a weekend beach trip and got pulled over by the notoriously douchebaggy cops. Said friend had brought along his pipe even though we had no weed to smoke and neglected to tell me he had done so until he was shoving it underneath the passenger seat as the cop strolled up to his window. Smooth move dickhole. We went to jail that night, got out the next morning and headed over to get the car. Once we paid the ridiculous fee we jumped in and headed back to the hotel for a little bit of sleep before driving back to Charlotte. On the way back to NC, I found that someone at the towing company had helped themselves to my CD collection and decided to break a few that they didn't find appealing. There were a lot missing and just as many cracked, and they also threw in clumps of dirt as a nice parting gift. I know, I should have checked everything before leaving, but I was young and stupid, not to mention tired and broke and thinking of ways to hide the incident from my parents. At least they didn't find the handle of bacardi stashed in the trunk.
She's gunna be a sad clown, because that looks like a Subaru SUV on that lift. (See, for those of you who are not mechanically inclined, Subaru uses a full time all wheel drive system, which means you fuck shit up if you leave the back wheels on the ground and pull it.)
You guys do realize that the show is a fake, right? It is "based on actual" events, but the tools on the show are just actors. I never watched it again after I found out that fact.
I rear ended a chick a few years ago. Driving in rush hour traffic in the morning while I was really too tired to be out of bed. There was a kid on the sidewalk who was walking faster than I was driving at the time of the accident. My POS car took a fair bit of damage because it was a POS. Her car had the worlds tiniest dent on the rear bumper - I've known women who I honestly think could have sucked that dent out. At worst - 5 minutes with one of those home dent removal kits would have sorted it. Embarassing, all my fault, etc. But nobody hurt, no harm done to her car worth notcing, all covered by insurance. Then the tow truck shows up and loads my car - fair enough. Then he starts pushing the girl to have her car towed. We both look at him like he's on crack as he starts to explain that because the bump is a mere 9 or 10 inches away from her exhaust pipe, and despite the fact that the tiny dent would have to be a good thousand percent larger than is visible to the naked eye before it could in any way have contacted her exhaust, it's possible - nay probable andin his experience highly likely - that the accident has distorted the shape of her exhaust pipe to such an extent that there will be a gas feedback into her engine - causing it to explode five kilometers down the road, where she'll no longer be clearly covered by my insurance. I'm not a car guy, but I'm looking at him pretty fucking dubious. I figure it's covered by the insurance anyway so fuck it, if she wants too I won't argue. She asks the guy to wait for a second, calls her dad, leans over to look at the dent, mumbles a couple and says 'uhuh. Ok, I'll tell him' then she turns around, looks at the towie and says 'Dad says to tell you that you're a dickhead', gets into her car and drives off.
Here's another tow-truck story I have: The year was 2002. I made the decision to start college. But I had to take an entrance/placement exam. I had to pay something like $45 to take this test, and it was non refundable. There was an admission certificate/receipt that they gave me, and if I didn't have it on the day of the test, they wouldn't let me in. I put it in the console of the truck I was driving at the time. It was about 7pm, and the test was the next morning. I wanted to see if I had any important emails before the test took place, and the only place I knew of that had internet access available at that hour was Copy Zone in a plaza. That particular night, there wasn't a single parking space to be found in the entire parking lot. No big deal, I have legs. So I parked in the lot of a Hollywood video across the street and walked over to Copy Zone. I was in there for about 20 minutes and left. I walked back across the street to the Hollywood video lot, BUT MY TRUCK WAS GONE! What the hell? Had it been stolen? Those were the thoughts that flashed through my head as I assessed the situation. Then it occurred to me: What if it was towed? I went inside Hollywood video and asked for the manager. I asked him if he had my truck towed, and he said it may have been, just call the cops and they would tell me. There were two cops across the street at a convenience store, so I went over to them and asked. They made a call, and the radio squawked back that yes, indeed, it had been towed. I never saw any signs saying that it was a tow-away zone. Normally I would just let this go until the next day, but my ticket for the entrance exam was in that truck! I needed it now! So I called the company, found out the bill, called my dad, and told him where I was, and then I called my local Justice of the Peace. Why the JP? Because I was told by the cops that if a company wrongfully tows your vehicle, then they have to reimburse you TRIPLE the towing charge. It was too late for the JP, and I got his voicemail. Nothing to do but wait now. I went into the store and bought a pack of cigarettes and a Mountain Dew. Then I went back to the Hollywood video lot to look for any towing signs. Sure enough, there was one at each entrance, low and small, almost invisible when your eyes are busy scouting for a parking space. I felt deceived, and I wanted triple my money back, so I hatched a plan: I would stealthily take down the signs, then take the Wrecker company to court saying that there was no warning. I went up to the first one and twisted it off of its post (it was made of very thin, cheap aluminum) and threw it down a 4 foot wide standpipe that led into the city's storm drains. I heard a splash as it dropped. The other sign would be a little bit more of a problem; it was in a better lit area, and was at a busier entrance. I’d just wait for the right moment and be gone. I sat down on a curb and lit a cigarette. As soon as I was done with it, a fat-sounding voice said: "Buddy, you're going to jail! Come with me." I looked up to see a fat guy in shorts and a T shirt. I asked him why I was going to jail, and he said that it was because of his "sign." "What are you talking about?" I asked, knowing damn well what he was talking about. "You didn't know it, but I got surveillance out here. You took down my sign, so now you're going to jail for destruction of property." "Sir, I think you are mistaken." It was no use. He led me around the building through the back alley, and once we turned the corner, there were 3 tow trucks there; one was loading a Chevy Tahoe, the others were empty. "What did you do with the sign?" my flabby captor asked. "I didn't do anything with any sign!" "Look, you have 5 minutes to find that sign, or I'm gonna call those cops across the street." The burden of proof was on the drivers, and they didn't have much, but I didn't want to deal with the cops; I was pretty sure at the time that I had a warrant out for my arrest in McAllen. So I buckled. "It's in that pipe," I said, pointing to the standpipe. "Then you better go get it!" I looked into the pipe and saw nothing but blackness. I told the guy that I needed a flashlight. He shined the flashlight and there was nothing but murky water about 10-12 feet down at the bottom, and another pipe that connected to it at a 90 degree angle. That would at least give me something to stand on. So I climbed down into the rank darkness. Once I was on the pipe, I started feeling around in the water, which literally smelled like shit. I couldn't feel anything in the water; evidently it went much deeper, and I was NOT going swimming that night. I climbed back up the steep walls of the standpipe, thinking of what my next move would be. I told the guy to shine the light into the water again, because I thought I felt something (lie). We didn't see anything, as I knew we wouldn't. Then one of his coworkers called him over to the Tahoe they were loading. The fat guy told a young guy to keep an eye on me. It was now or never time; I was never gonna find that damn sign, and I didn't want to deal with the cops, so I made up my mind. I started walking off to the east, away from Hollywood Video. After a few seconds, the drivers noticed this and yelled at me to stop. I just kept walking at a steady pace, so as not to make a scene, but as soon as I got to the corner of a building, I turned and ran like my hair was on fire and my ass was catchin'. I turned and ran into an alley, but it was a dead end; there was a 7-8' wall that I had to get over. So I jumped up, grabbed the top, and pulled myself up and over. What to do? I figured that the drivers had probably called the cops already, and they would be looking for me. But I needed to meet with my dad, and I had already told him where to be. My options were either run some more or hide. I looked around, and there were only dumpsters and parking lots. Then it occurred to me: climb a tree. I climbed a live oak about 20 feet up, until I was well covered with foliage. From there, I called my dad again. He had already left the house, so I tried his cell phone. No answer, just voicemail. Shit. Where could I meet up with him that wasn't near the scene of the "crime," but not too far off? From my arboreal location, I scanned my surroundings. Then I saw my drop off point: a theater. I kept trying to call my dad. He finally answered, and I told him about the new location. I made it over to the theater without incident, sticking to alleys and going through parking lots, instead of around them; anything to decrease my visibility. He picked me up, and I explained the whole messed up situation. Once we got to the towing company's office, my dad went in to pay for the truck (I had to pay him later). I waited in his truck. Eventually, he came out, and we went to the storage yard a mile away. On the way, he told me that the driver said: "Your son destroyed my sign, sir. You can pay for it here, it's $49.95." "What did you do?" I asked. "I told him I didn't know about any lost sign, and that I wasn't payin' for squat. He said that they had filed charges with the police." "We'll just see about that," I said. My dad drove my truck out of the yard and over to a Whataburger, where we switched vehicles. We got home, I was there for the test on time, and made an admirably high score.