Like I said. When we set the price they are compensated. Obviously you’ve never dealt with insurance pay, Because they set the price there and will cheat you every chance they get, so a $200 job becomes a $50 job and they send you a check for $40. If you do not believe this search for Allstate motor club ripping off its contractors. You will find tons of articles where they cheat companies out of 30 to 50k per year. Also I said expected to tip, Not obligated. If the guy did a shit job I wouldn’t tip either. But normally if I use my roadside program I always give the guy 20 wether or not he wants it because it didn’t cost me anything.
As for your skilled profession. Ha! Most drivers start in their 20’s and receive little to no training. I know I never got trained and was handed keys and told go tow this before I was a manager. Skilled profession means you need a certification or license that you get trained or schooled for.
Obviously the line of work your in doesn’t have to deal with being subcontracted by an insurance company.
Take what you want from it, but it’s just food for thought.
huh, in ID, tow truck driver is a skilled job, requires a CDL. Did I tip the driver the few times I’ve had a car towed? Depended on the driver and his attitude and the quality of the job. for the OP, not in a million years did that driver deserve a tip. I would have called the company and complained about the attitude.
I responded eight years ago but, coincidentally, I had to call a tow truck last week as well. The driver showed up, fixed two of my tires, and was able to get me back on the road. I tipped him twenty bucks (the basic payment was covered by AAA) and was happy to be able to drive home.
Just because it didn’t cost you something right then & there does not mean that it did not cost you something, either the cost of the membership to AAA (which I may have just renewed yesterday) or $x/month extra on my insurance policy.
You’re also assuming that the need for a tow happens at a convenient time, when someone has (extra) cash on them.
If you’re having issues with poor reimbursement, stop taking their business but don’t give us some sob story about why I should tip you.
I don’t for those who do the absolute minimum, but I do for those who are more helpful. This past summer, my car broke down in Oklahoma City and I have a large family. The tow truck driver managed to get my whole family into the tow truck and drove us to a good neighborhood to stay in for the night. I tipped him nicely.
I don’t know where you managed a tow shop, but around here that paragraph is just wrong. Tow drivers here are hourly employees. They work a set shift and are paid whether the company gets any business or not. Some companies do include a commission as well, but that is in addition to the hourly pay. They rotate overnight and holiday coverage and get a much bigger commission for those after hour tows, plus usually time-and-a-half pay for the hours they work. It sounds like your company used contractors, which is an OK model if the drivers are contracting for several services simultaneously, but crappy if they have to sit around your office waiting to be dispatched.
Let’s say we eliminated tipping from our society. People who get tips now wouldn’t be able to work for just their wages. There would have to be a general increase in wages in the jobs that are currently partially paid in tips. And prices would rise accordingly.
So we, the customers, would end up paying pretty much the same amount. We’d just pay it as a fixed amount rather than something we can adjust to individual performance.
And that’s a key factor. Few people who are towing trucks or serving food or cutting hair are doing it out of a love for their profession. For many of them, their motivation for doing a good job is collecting tips. If we had an economy where they got paid the same amount regardless of their job performance, the quality of many of those job performances would greatly decline.
Ultimately we’d be paying the same amount of money and getting worse service.
This is a silly statement, given that most professions are not tipped, and yet somehow people manage to be evaluated on their job performance anyway. Do you think that doctors and construction workers and concert pianists and <insert almost any job here> have worse performance on average because they aren’t tipped?
Lots of studies have shown both that people in tipped professions don’t have higher levels of customer satisfaction than people in non-tipped professions, and that people don’t actually give tips based on performance.
By far the best way to get tips as a waiter is to be an attractive blonde woman, and the best way to get good service is to be a member of a demographic that tends to tip well.
Plus, as is clear in this thread, a big problem with tipping is that there are weird unknowns and societal expectations. Pretty much everyone knows that you’re supposed to tip waiters, but whether or not and how much you should tip other professions is a big question mark. And you end up with people like the driver in the OP who feel entitled to tips.
First off, driving a tow truck does not require a CDL unless you are towing things larger than a car, i.e. Box trucks or tractor trailers. 2nd. Drivers do not follow customers directions because lots of roads have weight, height, and other restrictions that do not allow commercial vehicles that most car drivers are oblivious to. I remember back 20 years ago when I was driving before there were GPS’s customers would have to give us directions or we would follow them, and about 7 out of 10 people would promptly get onto the parkway with the HUGE SIGN that says “NO COMMERCIAL VEHICLES ALLOWED”. Then call up bitching 10 min later that the driver stopped following them.
I have also run into people that are aware of the restrictions, but after living at their home for 40+ years, STILL have no clue how to get home without taking the parkway… (NY RESIDENTS THIS MEANS YOU!!)
Unfortunately I was not able to edit that last post due to the strict guidelines of this website, But I did mean to say in CT there is not CDL. I know you said ID and that was a typo on my part.
I also wanted to add that in CT drivers can be claimed as “on-call” putting them in a separate pay class like waiters. They are not required to be paid overtime, time and a half, get benefits or, have lunch breaks. The only law is that they cannot drive for over x amount of hours without a break. Which they will never reach in a straight run.
