A few weeks ago, my car got stuck. I called for a tow, and a wrecker pulled the vehicle to sweet freedom at a cost of about $70.
I hadn’t broken the law — except the law of common sense that tells one not to park in mud.
But some nuisance drivers in Chattanooga park illegally on private property. Their fees for an involuntary tow can run more than $125, and undocumented complaints to police claim fees run as high as $400.
Question: If a stranger parked in your yard and went off to party the night away, how much would you like to see him shell out when you had his car towed? Plenty, I bet, but some members of the city Beer and Wrecker Board say wreckers are “gouging” for involuntary tows from private property. They want the City Council to knock some heads and get the numbers down. After all, we mustn’t have mere companies setting prices for services when there are enlightened government officials to do that for us.
They undoubtedly know better than the wrecker services they wish to manage just what expenses the companies have. But to help them with their figuring, I called Les Cantrell, owner of S&H Towing on Highway 58, to discuss the costs and headaches associated with towing unlawfully parked vehicles. I rattled off a few, and Mr. Cantrell, who has been in business for decades, added some more, namely:
* Tow truck purchase and maintenance;
* Plentiful insurance (“If I go out and hook up a $60,000 Mercedes with no keys, I’m liable for any damage,” he said);
* Office space purchase or rental;
* Purchase and maintenance of land to store vehicles until they are claimed;
* Security at that site;
* Property taxes;
* The risk of getting shot, beaten or otherwise clobbered by drivers who catch you in mid-tow;
* Having to climb out of bed at all hours in all kinds of weather because some bozo blocked in a person whose car is legally parked.
Government’s assumption that it is a wise arbiter of prices is as irritating as it is contrary to historical fact. But the Beer and Wrecker Board doesn’t seem to be considering the cost-shifting it will invite if it gets the council to slap price controls on the towing of illegally parked cars. As Mr. Cantrell put it, “If we don’t make it on that, we may have to make it up somewhere else.”
Translation: To protect lawbreakers from “gouging,” the city may indirectly force people whose cars get stuck and who need only brief assistance to subsidize those whose cars have to be hitched up, hauled across town and stored until somebody claims them — despite a big difference in the costs of those services. In the alternative, wrecker services may lay off workers.
Never mind that government dictation of prices for towing illegally parked cars will guarantee — wait for it — more illegal parking! The lighter the penalty, the more people will risk a tow. I’m sure the businesses whose lots are frequent targets of trespassing motorists will love that.
To her credit, Kathy Jones of the Beer and Wrecker Board candidly acknowledged that the board hadn’t considered how a price-control ordinance could shift costs from the guilty to the innocent.
“That point has never been brought up, and that’s a very valid point,” she told me.
Glad to hear it but I doubt the city will back down. All the sympathy is with the visible “victims” of supposedly unreasonable towing fees. The real victims — laid-off workers or people who will get higher bills for a normal tow though they did nothing wrong — are invisible. They may not connect a scofflaw-protection ordinance with their joblessness or higher towing fees, so government needn’t fret that they’ll squawk much.
End result: an indirect tax on obeying the law and a subsidy for breaking it.
The security myth
“We’re here to do the job for the American people, to get them results that give them not only health security, but economic security.” — Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Utopia, on ObamaCare.
“Security is mostly a superstition.” — Helen Keller, on the nature of reality.
“Social Security and Medicare are … heading for insolvency years sooner than previously expected, the government warned Tuesday. Social Security will start paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes in 2016, a year sooner than projected last year, and the giant trust fund will be depleted by 2037, four years sooner, trustees reported. Medicare is in even worse shape. The trustees said the program for hospital expenses will pay out more in benefits than it collects this year, just as it did for the first time in 2008. The trustees project that the Medicare fund will be depleted by 2017.” — The Associated Press in 2009, explaining how much “security” existing entitlement programs have brought us all.
To reach Steve Barrett, call 423-757-6329 or e-mail sbarrett@timesfreepress.com.