Strange loads & crazy profits: Tow Truck Stories

some of the best decisions you'll ever make are when you're desperate at night with a cop before i went to law school i drove a tow truck for a couple years from birmingham michigan and part of the job was towing vehicles for the police department and part of it was simply towing vehicles for customers and the weird thing is that they i was pumping gas at the gas station before i was towing towing vehicles and so one day they came to steve do you want to drive the tow truck and i said sure so they actually trained me on how to drive the tow truck which is this is the old style no flatbed this is the type that has the sling in the back and you back the sling up to the front of the vehicle and then you kind of get it kind of in there and then you put the hooks underneath you put chains and then you lift it up off the ground and you drag the vehicle on its back wheels and it's not that complicated but it's a little different than the way it is today you know so he showed me how to do that i walked through it a couple times ago that's great i can do this and they said okay now here's the cool part if you're willing to do the driving of the tow truck for the police department overnight when the gas station is closed from 10 o'clock in the evening till 6 next morning we'll give the police department your home phone number and they'll call you and say hey there's a wreck you got a tow or a vehicle you got to tow and they'll call you and you come to the gas station grab the tow truck go tow the vehicle wherever they tell you to tow it and then bring the vehi you know bring the tow truck back and then we'll pay you and the cool thing is we'll split the money with you so if it's a forty dollar tow you'll make twenty bucks seventy five dollar till you'll make thirty seven fifty and this is big money for an eighteen year old kid okay so i go great so they go okay you are now on call so that night i go home i've not actually ever towed a vehicle before but i've learned how to use the tow truck i just had the five minute training so i'm at home two o'clock in the morning my phone rings i answer the phone hey it's dispatch birmingham police department there's a vehicle to tow over by a street called pilgrim and maple road i know the intersection well it's about a mile west of the gas station so i drive down there in the tow truck and the first thing i see is a vw rabbit that's upside down it's on its roof it's night out but it's dry and i'm looking at the situation there's no traffic and there's a cop car guy sitting sheepishly in the back seat of the cop car and i pull up and i and i go yeah what can i do for you and the guy goes toe that i go okay it is upside down and the guy looks at me like that's your job and at first i go i'm curious how did how did he invert his volkswagen and he goes look he fell asleep he's driving along he fell asleep he woke up just as he hit the right hand curb jerked the wheel the other direction and managed to somehow it hit the other side but then it flipped and landed on its roof i have no idea what to do 18 year old kid never towed a vehicle before it's two o'clock in the morning so sleepy so like okay uh i let the chain off the back of the boom i put it over the floor of the car which is now upside down and i reach in with a hook and i put the hook around the seat and my goal is i'm gonna jerk it and flip it back over and so i pull forward with the tow truck and all it does it drags the car on this roof about 10 15 feet each time the cops look at me like you idiot what are you doing and of course there's a guy in the back see the cop car watching this whole thing i think the guy's wrecking my car even further but all the glasses busted out of the car the car was you know cars upside down so i'm getting desperate and by the way some of the best decisions you'll ever make are when you're desperate at night with a cop in front of you watching you so i backed the car the tow truck up as far as i could and just one good yank and it actually flipped over and landed on its wheels and i wanted to do like yes but i had to pretend like i knew what i was doing so i go back over now and i hook the car up and i take it back to gas station so the next morning i go into work and they they go oh you told a vehicle in last night what was that all about and i tell them the story and the owner goes it's upside down and he's smiling and i go yeah why he goes we charge more for that turns out that if you tow the vehicle there's a flat fee anything extra is going to cost you and they loved it when i had these elaborate stories about what happened when i showed up to tow a vehicle so am i cool and it's great money by the way again i'm getting half of this so a couple nights goes by and i get a call again and they go there's a uh an accident at greenfield in 14 and it's famous it's a famous intersection in the area because there's a t-stop green field runs into 14 mile road hard there's you can't go through because there's a house here well this house had been hit by so many cars that they put a big rock in front of the house an anti-car rock in front of the house and so i'm going oh i'm gonna go pull a car off that rock obviously so i drive over there and as i pull up there's no car on the rock the car is on the porch the house next door the drunk person driving this car woke up just as they saw the rock swerved to hit the house next door so there's this huge land yacht like the size of like a nimitz aircraft carrier lodged up on the concrete porch next door but as it went up on the steps it backed down and turned just enough to where there's a tree here so there's this car stuck between a tree and the concrete steps of this house and there's a drunk woman in the back seat of the police car and the cops pointing at the car and it's like that's you you know and i and i look at him i go how'd she get that there i'm walking around trying to figure this out because i got to get it out you know so finally i go i can remove it but it's going to get ugly and the cop goes oh do you want us to take her and i said would you please and so anyways the cop left i said i got this i drove the tow truck around to the other side of the car because it had a big old push plate in the front and i just basically um i guess the motion be like this nudged the car to the side and got it off the tree back tow truck up to it hooked it up and brought it back to gas station and the next morning the owner comes out and goes hey steve what what happened to that car because remember the front end is smashed the rear quarter is smashed and i go well drunk driver hit the house over next door the rock on 14 mile and i had to move the car a little bit to the side he's oh we charge extra for that so he was happy again so that's that's cool so i had a bunch of these calls a lot of them were just routine calls two cars smashed into each other and i had to go there hook one up bring it over the gas station unhook it go back at the other one and you know three o'clock in the morning you can do that so one day i'm getting another phone call late at night a lot of these are right after the bars closed by the way 2 15 2 30. and they go yeah over on lincoln road just south of or just east of southfield i go over there and there's a telephone pole leaning like this and there's a car which i think is associated with this transaction somehow wedged underneath that telephone pole so i show up there there's a bunch of cops standing around and i'm looking also i realize there's nobody in plain clothes and i go where's the driver of that car and he goes well that's the interesting thing several people nearby called the police instead of car just hit a telephone pole and i go okay and he goes and we trace the plates and the owner lives right there two houses down the street so apparently almost making it home she cut the corner too close and hit the telephone pole and telephone poles leaning over the car like that and i go okay and i now i realize the cop is on the front porch knocking on the door but the woman won't answer the door she won't answer the door so anyways i go okay um want me to tow that car i assume the guy goes yeah i go is that safe and the guy looks at me like you tell me i'm worried about the pole coming down but so i hooked the car up and i very gently pull it and i realize the pole's not coming down i go i hope you guys have called detroit edison yeah someone's coming so i'd take it i go back to the gas station and next morning of course the owner says describe this to me because it's a big old dent in the roof where the port hit it and i said you know telephone pole and i had to extract it that's extra now sadly i actually saw one fatality of all the time i'm driving a tow truck i saw one fatality got a phone call one of those really really warm summer nights two three o'clock in the morning dispatcher calls yeah um car accident single car accident uh maple road down by court and lake very very well known area the road comes out of downtown birmingham it winds around downhill and and i get there as i get there it's a sea of emergency vehicles there's ambulances and fire trucks and cop cars and the road's blocked so i pull my wrecker up off onto the grass near the scene and i walk over to a cop that i recognize and i said what's going on the guy as well and he points the z28 camaro brand new z28 that is run into an oak tree and the oak tree is yea big it's it's still there i saw it last week it's it's it's going to outlive us all gigantic oak tree guy hit the oak tree so hard it pushed the engine through the firewall and i was walking around this car it was still up against the tree but they had pulled the guy out of the car and they had him laying on the grass next to the there and they were working on trying to save his life so i was watching this whole scene unfold and i'm like i've never seen a car hit something that hard and i hope he makes it but he didn't and so the police officer came back over and see if i got a problem because since it's a fatality we can't tow the car for a little while gotta photograph it measure it all that stuff i gotta completely understand so a lot of the vehicles leave there's police officers taking photographs i look over there's an ambulance driver in his hands and knees going through the grass like what are you doing he goes well he's i can't leave till we find all the needles cause they've been using needles hypodermic needles on the guy that are trying to save his life and he goes and they were so busy just doing stuff he goes i lost a couple so i was on my hands knees with this guy and we found him we found him you know and right around then they wrapped up the deal on the photography so i can tow the vehicle i go over and i look at it and generally speaking back then you would try to put a car neutral and tow it on the rear wheels couldn't do that it had a locking front steering system you would tow it on the fronts and hook it up at the back this car had problems though because it hit the tree so hard the front end was mushed around the tree but the wheels were cocked one way and the fenders were pushed into the wheel so those wheels were not going to turn when the engine got pushed through the firewall the drive shaft got pushed back and caused the differential twist and i've never seen this before the drive shaft was now underneath the differential but it's still attached somehow and i think at least the front two were flat and the backs may have been flattened also it was a mess so i hook the tow truck up and i drag this thing off and i realize it's not going to toe on the fronts so then i go around and i start lifting it from the front and i and i hear a weird noise and the differential and the drive shaft are are hitting the ground they're actually lower than where the tires were so don't have a flat bed the only thing i can do is put it on dollies we've got those little dolly assemblies that you can put like the type you push a car around in a garage with i put the dolly assemblies together put them underneath the front tires and then hook it up at the back i've got about a mile and a half to tow it towing it up maple road and i hear some weird screeching noises it's not usually that good but it's early in the morning i'm all alone so i get out and i look and as i'm dragging this thing on the dollies the dollies are designed for tires that are straight and the tires are like this and so this tire is dragging on this dolly wheel and this tire is dragging on this w wheel nothing i can do except finish the drive so i take it to the gas station and as i'm unhooking it i realize i've destroyed two dolly wheels so the next morning i come at the gas station i said dude i'm really sorry but i destroyed the dolly wheels and he goes nice we just we charge for that you know i discovered that there's money to be made in driving a tow truck but the craziest story i ever had is that i was at the station one day pumping gas working on a saturday or sunday weekend day and the phone rings and i answer the phone and the police dispatcher goes um yeah this is the birmingham police department i said okay what can i do for you she goes look out your front window so i turn my head and i look and there's a cop car in the intersection which somehow had evaded my attention being the brilliant and attentive 18 year old i was at the time with his lights on in the middle of the intersection at maple road in adams road in birmingham michigan major intersection caught i go oh okay so i run out i jump in a tow truck and i pull out there he's standing next to an upright piano there's a piano in the middle of the intersection and i look at the cop and i go what's that piano doing here and he goes i don't know but you got to get it out of here like okay apparently it fell off a truck it was a junkie piano it wasn't like a you know steinway or something it was a piece of junk piano garbage mover was hauling it fell off the truck he just kept going someone else's problem now so i've never actually towed a piano before with a tow truck so again i have to think outside the box here so i back the tow truck up to the piano the back side and i lean the piano onto the straps where the the hoist is and when this is pretty cool so i lean it back and i take some chains and i put the chains around one on each side and this tow truck had a power take off in the back that you've worked the clutch with to engage and so i'm doing this when i'm watching it sure enough it lifts a piano up off the ground i'm cool whole time the cop is going come on come on come on come on he wants me to get out of the intersection it's backing up in every direction besides the fact it's just comical to see this piano in the middle of the intersection so i go okay cool so i jump in the tow truck and i start driving i'm gonna drive this to the impound yard which is about a mile down this way and two blocks this way i still remember that very vividly and as i'm driving along i felt the piano shift and you're always conscious of what you had attached to the back of your tow truck because you don't want a car coming off or swinging welding hitting something this is a piano i don't know what a piano is going to do back there so i look in my rear view mirror and i realize the piano is shifting and now it's dragging on the ground so i stop and i'm on maple road and the cop gets on his pa and goes no keep going keep going and i point i go but it's it's dragging because no keep going he's this cops had it with his piano so i fine there's a cop behind me it's not going to get a ticket for this so i start driving down the road and as i'm driving down the road i see smoke coming off the piano the piano has caught fire i lean my head out like this and the cop is going like this so i go down turn right pull into the impound yard where the piano is now billowing smoke i get the fire extinguisher out i extinguish the burning piano which is a sentence i've only said once today and lower the piano put it there in the impound yard cop comes over signs a thing i go back to gas station and again guess what towing the piano you can charge him for that use the fire extinguisher that cost extra so there you go we'd like to thank patrick adair designs for their support of the vinwicki channel this month patrick and his team make some of the most amazing rings out of the most exotic materials on earth they make rings out of superconductors and meteorites and stardust and all the things that you can imagine including old parts from broken exotic cars they've got over 20 000 customers and patrick decided to document his journey and the ways that he makes his rings and the cars that he enjoys on his own youtube channel so he's part of our youtube family he's coming by to tell some stories soon but check him out at the link in the description below and use the code binwiki for a 15 discount thank them for their support of the channel and find you an awesome ring [Applause]

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 286,771

Rating: 4.9682183 out of 5

Keywords: Steve Lehto, Tow Truck Stories, Towing, gas station, police, tow service, winch, accident, car accident, insurance, injury, problem solving, vinwiki, car stories, lawyer, attorney, damage

Id: NDvMbk9AtgA

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 22 2021