What are some of the laws governing towing companies? To clarify, I mean the companies who take your car away for parking in a no-parking zone and such.
Is there a certain limit to which they can charge in Florida? What if your car gets damaged… what type of liabilities do they have? (I just saw some jackass truck driver drop a minivan three times in a row in downtown Ft. Lauderdale, damaging the whole front end of the body and chassis, ridiculous! The crowd around the vehicle was about to lynch the poor mechanically-challenged bastard!) How can they get off charging so much money for protecting your car, when all they do is throw a tarp over it, since it’s an involuntary service? Are they contracted by the city/county or private or both? What types of licenses do you need to start a tow business and what type of drivers’ license does a truck driver need?
On another note, are these companies generally profitable if they are located in good areas near downtowns and such? Anybody out there owned or operated one that could share their experiences and maybe a funny story or two?
Thanks to anyone who can answer at least one of these many questions.
Sorry, can’t help much. . .but have a couple of things to contribute. I think a lot of times, a city will contract a certain company (I assume through the standard bid process, etc.) or companies to handle such things, or they might have their own facilities/employees for this purpose (if I remember correctly from my time in Chicago, they seemed to have municipal towtrucks, but I’m not sure–they were light blue, again IIRC). I know for a fact that businesses may contract specific towing companies to remove non-customer vehicles from their parking lots (many places have a sign that says parking for customers only, and lists the name of the towing company responsible).
Funny story (sort of). . .the aforementioned Chicago towtrucks. I was eating breakfast at a place called Toast. Actually I was waiting to eat breakfast, standing on the sidewalk. Along comes a guy in a uniform walking down the street putting signs on parking meters–"NO PARKING, June 15 [whatever that day’s date was], 8:00 a.m. - 5 p.m.]. It was about 8:05 a.m., and right behind this guy with the sign was a whole fleet of these towtrucks just pulling all the cars off of this street and taking them to wherever the storage lot was. I was standing there when one guy pulled up and parked his car and went into the restaurant before the signs were placed, and when he came out a couple of minutes later the sign had been put up and his car was gone.
Well, I wouldn’t blame it completely on the truck drivers (although they do often circle places like vultures. . .ie my old college campus). The whole operation was directed by the police department, to clear a street for some block party or parade (I don’t remember exactly)–I would think they could have planned for it, but I guess the city needed the revenue. Another interesting note about the incident is that the towtruck drivers actually gave people who came out to missing vehicles rides to the lot, something I thought would usually be totally out of the question.