Innovation Enabler - NOT!

There are still people using sling trucks. This design was championed way back in the very beginning when tow operators used a chain to hold the car up and a pole to keep it from swinging to and fro as the converted Cadillac car chassis drug it down the road.

There are towers that still use the sling today and I am one of those towers. It's an amazingly simple and effective tool. It was an innovation created by one individual that needed to move a car to the mechanic instead of bringing the mechanic to the car. This and my trip to the PWOF show last weekend led me to write this article. What have we gained in a hundred years of towing? Judging by what I see available now, design and innovation has left the towing industry behind. Our industry just doesn't seem to attract new ideas like it used to.

I had the occasion this weekend to make the trip to Mickey Mouse's house for the yearly PWOF tow show. The show was ok as shows go. Allstate and GE were there this year (under one flag) doing their BMW certification classes and handing out awards, CCAS was in usual form with their new ideas to attract towers to their outmoded and antiquated performance scoring system, Road America looked positively snappy in their spiffy blue shirts and Geico got stuck over in the corner with what seemed to be a total lack of the support they enjoyed in past shows. (has anyone seen George lately?) As usual with the PWOF show, there were many conspicuously missing individuals and companies because of the ongoing association wars in Florida.

Digital Dispatching software seemed to be a big hit this weekend with a very good showing by Beacon Software. The sky seems to be the limit if you want to get digital control of your company for maximized profits.

The PWOF show always seems to have a good selection of participants making it a fairly well rounded show. As usual however, he who has the most money seems to win and Miller took home the display prize by buying up the entire parking lot except for a few square inches over in the corner of lot B.

I really have come to expect this over the years though. Lets face it, Tow shows are towing support industry driven and their basic premise is to give manufacturers and vendors the ability to display and promote their products the best way they know how. We all know this going in so we tend to overlook all these little lop sided issues, enjoy the free long reach tools, eat $15 hot dogs and take pictures of the kids standing next to impossibly large and mostly unusable in every day life equipment. It's something different to do and more like a mini vacation that can be written off as a business expense. (Nobody will tell the IRS if you take the kids to one of Disneys theme parks for an afternoon of fun in the sun)

I took my usual 500 digital photos of everything, then came home & threw half of them away, published the other half on TowTalk of which there were really only 4 or 5 good shots. I gave new meaning to sore calf muscle pain and actually made gains in the weight loss department from the 500 miles I walked in a circle for two days.

Having said that, I am afraid there was one very sour note this weekend. His name was John Hawkins.

As the vice president of heavy duty sales of such a large company, you would expect that they would put a person in charge of that department that had a little class. I have had many towers tell me they don't really enjoy listening to John's demos because he has a tendency to run the other guy down in his presentations. I usually just shrug these kinds of comments off but this weekend, I experienced his sales technique first hand. I was not impressed. In fact, I was so unimpressed with his comments I lost all interest in anything else he had to say and left the demonstration.

"You can't blow out other peoples candles in an effort to make yours brighter. You'll just end up in a dimly lit room by yourself."

Quote: John Hawkins

"Don't go out and buy an inferior product like Aatac and I won't even begin to talk to you about the problems with Chinese steel!"

What can you say to a statement like this? If I had any respect for this man, it's gone now. I won't even come to the defense of those he attacked as the comments themselves are baseless in fact and any person above the age of 5 should be able to see them for what they really are.

Industry innovations cannot all come from one company. We are far better served if there are many smaller players involved in the game instead of just one overbearing monster of a participant. Inspecting the new trucks that were there this weekend only proves this and after 2 days I finally came to the following conclusions.

• The new cabs from Dodge, Ford, International, Hino and all the others had great new innovations and were very nice indeed. The vehicle manufacturers outdid themselves this year.
  
• The new wreckers that were displayed all had new paint but were exactly the same as last years units. Although they were made to look a little different, I saw ZERO innovation in everything they had to offer.

This year, I have been shopping for a self loader. I looked at the Century, The Vulcan, The Holmes and the Dynamic and except for slight differences in the wrecker body styling, they were the same. In fact, I was a little surprised to see the Holmes appeared to be the weaker of the four and from what I saw at the rest of the show, the only new ideas that were displayed weren't new ideas at all, like the enclosed flatbed. There was not one single change to these wreckers that affected how they worked or made the job of loading a car easier or safer. I was very disappointed.

Innovation is tricky business. New, smaller companies have to innovate to get their foot in the door and older, larger companies have to innovate to stay ahead of the curve. Also innovation is not always about coming up with new product ideas, but about coming up with solutions to the problems that towers already face. Many larger companies (like Miller) lose track of this mantra and start moving towards total industry dominance. This almost always results in those small innovators being muscled right out of existence. In my humble opinion, that is where Miller is today. If you don't believe me, just listen to one of John's sales demonstrations.

I've talked to dozens of smaller companies, many of which are outside the influence of the United States and they have all told me the same thing. Trying to get their products displayed in a major tow show in this country is an exercise in futility. Even if the tow show creators agree and give them the space, the price, because of Millers influence, can be staggering.

Tow shows were designed to be innovation enablers, providing a circuit with which new ideas could be presented and marketed. I am afraid that now, they have lost that designation and are just more of the same each year. Much of that is a result of the heavy handed way Miller goes about it's eternal quest to monopolize towing.

Next year, I think I'll target some of the smaller shows around the country. Maybe I can get away from all this heavy handed big guy stuff and see what some of the smaller guys have to offer. I would bet a dime to a dollar, I'm going to be surprised at whats hiding under the corporate carpet.

Ok, that's it for now. I'm off to Whittier California next week. I'm looking at adding some "Chinese Steel" to my fleet on the back of a couple Hinos. You can expect a full review of what I find.

Bill Weihrouch
TowTalk.net

Defense of the Impound Tower

In the US, there will be 17 million new vehicles and more than 43 million used vehicles sold this year. That's an astounding number if you consider there will only be 4.5 million newborns in the same time period. That's 13 cars built and/or sold for each newborn child in this country this year alone!

Every day we are trying to park more and more cars in less and less space. Add to that the average Americans arrogance in the use of their vehicles & you could reasonably assume that the property owners in this country are under a full blown vehicular assault. I'm not sure how this happened but the American driving public has reached the conclusion that their rights as car owners supersede all others.

Enter, the impound tower. That's me. I don't really like that term, I would rather be known as the tow operator that does non consent towing. My job is to help those weary from the battle property owners regain and keep control of their facilities.

Like the property owner, I am constantly under assault. Many people have the mistaken notion that all tow operators that perform non consent towing are criminals or have criminalistic tendencies. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Of course there are those that look for ways to take advantage of the system but not any more than you would find in any other profession, police included. Because my business is to help these property owners defend their holdings, I not only come under attack by the car owner, but from the media, the local politicians and the police departments that don't agree with what I do even though it's the only solution that works.

The media tends to help feed the frenzy. In a lot of situations, they will word an article to create a false bias against the property owner or towing company who is only trying to defend his holdings or do his job. In every story I have ever read about a car being impounded you can find facts in the story that will lead you to the truth. The media is good at making sure these facts exist but keeping them well hidden among the different emotional levels of the story. To find them, you need to put the emotional grip of the story aside and look only at the content. Here's a perfect example.

This is an ongoing news story in Roanoke. There are bloggers that have taken up the challenge and the saga continues to grow and grow. Read this through to its end. Then come back here and I'll point something out to you.

Spanky Macher

There are three sides to any impound story.

1. The property owner. They are caught between a rock and a hard place. They have businesses that need those parking facilities for their customers whether it be a fast food restaurant, an apartment complex, an office building or just a parking lot. They also have to pay for the upkeep on those lots. Asphalt maintenance is not cheap and the more cars that use the lot the faster the lot decays and needs repairs. For obvious reasons, they generally do not like being in the public eye. The last thing they want is a negative news story that may affect their business. At some point however, they lose control and are forced to act.
   
2. The car owner. There are two types of car owners. There are car owners that have respect for other peoples private property and will never have their car towed. They pay attention, heed the warning signs and understand the rule that if you don't own it or have specific permission to use it, you need to stay off it! These types are generally good people. They pay their bills on time, they are upstanding citizens and generally have their acts together. Type two is just the opposite. This car owner's vehicle is always in need of an oil change, the tags are expired, they only do what they have to do to keep moving forward. These are the people that get caught with their pants down around their ankles. When you talk to these people, it's always someone elses fault.
   
3. The reporter. What a great story! Human interest and all that. The paraplegic that got his van towed! It sells papers and gets people to watch the nightly news. Usually the title itself incites moral outrage. The only interest that reporter has is to sell his story. These stories are rarely unbiased and most of the time, have little actual content other than the crying pregnant mother that parked at the mini mart because it was 5 steps closer to the burger joint than the parking facility she should have parked in.
   

This particular story (like all the others) has one fact that is admitted to by everyone. The warning. In this particular case, there is a FOREST of signs on that property warning people to not park there. It is a fact that gets slid under the carpet over and over as they try to attack the owner of the property by saying things like, It's unfair, It's theft, The poor person was a paraplegic, Spanky is just morally corrupt, etc.

None of that matters. What matters is the property owner has asked you not to park on his property with multiple, very large and easy to read signs and they were ignored. That's trespassing. They deserved what they got and it doesn't matter if you think Spanky is a little underhanded or just flat out an opportunistic pig. His mother owns that property and he's the agent in control of it. If you pay attention to the signs and do not trespass, you will never have to meet or deal with Spanky and his crew.

Yes, I know what you are thinking. There has to be a better way. After driving a tow truck off and on for nearly 30 years, I can tell you there isn't. Warning stickers don't help, they are ignored and by this story you can also see that big red ugly signs don't work either. I've even helped property owners that have hired employees just to stand in the parking lot and tell people not to park and they are met with foul language and threats. Once that happens, the property owner finally understands. The ONLY way to solve a parking problem is to remove the offending vehicle and make it EXPENSIVE to get it back. Surprisingly, 5% to 10% of these offenders will not learn their lesson and will have their car towed again within the same year!

Here are some realities.

1. No one has the power to usurp the property owners rights, not even a handicapped person.
2. All parking lots are privately owned unless stated otherwise, not the other way around.
3. A good tow operator can hook up and tow your car in less than 30 seconds, no matter where or how you park it.
4. There is no official time limit that allows you to park anywhere you wish. Refer to rule #1. It does not matter if you were only going to park there for 5 minutes, refer to rule #3.
5. It does not matter how you park your car, wheels turned, locked up tight, backed in, even upside down! You cannot defeat me. See rule #3.
6. You are only a customer as long as you are on the property. Purchasing a hamburger does not entitle you to in and out privileges or free all day parking. Once you walk off the property, you are no longer a customer. Again, see rules #1, #2, and #3.
7. It's ok to park in a fire lane if you're pregnant & you need to unload your groceries - Again, rule #3, groceries and all.

There you go. My first official post. I look forward to your responses. The comment field will be unmoderated and you may post anonymously.