Once upon a time, I had the perfect parking spot.
This was last year, when I was living at West Campus. I didn’t want to bother worrying about tickets, about feeding the meter or about drunken lunatics trying to thieve my precious Led Zeppelin cassettes.
I wanted a spot that was free, safe and convenient. But nobody seemed to understand. “Good luck,” they’d say, rolling their eyes. Some people just gave me the finger.
But with a little research, I found it. I parked at the very end of Harry Agganis Way, right past the police station, amongst a legion of unmarked spaces. It was the catch of a lifetime, and I enjoyed it for weeks on end. My old beast sat parked there until the very end of school, in May, when I emptied out my room and got halfway home before realizing I had no brakes. But that’s another story.
The moral is this: Midway through the summer I came back to visit Boston. “Parking,” I assured a friend, “will be no problem.” I waved to some police, glided into my old parking lot, and locked the doors. I felt good, like nobody could touch me.
Two hours later, my car was gone. The honeymoon was over.
Towers, I felt, must be the biggest bastards of them all. But still, I was curious, and so I took advantage of an opportunity to find out exactly what the towing business is all about. My motivation was double-sided: I wanted to know what towers were like, and I also wanted to know how to avoid them.
Meet Carlton Peters, standing in the driveway of his Brighton-based Liberty Towing Company. He is a big man with a cigarette between his teeth, a bandanna on his head and some dogs running around the yard. He’s telling stories from the good old days.
Like when he was thrown through the windshield of his own tow truck at age 17. That was just after the angry mob on Mission Hill broke his fingers and fractured his ribs and just before an emergency trip to the hospital.
Peters had received a nighttime call from a security guard to tow a car from the housing projects in Mission Hill. Although it wasn’t his normal route, Peters drove out and hooked up the car. Just as he finished, someone saw him and yelled. “One, then two, then a half dozen guys just start pouring out of this house, shouting at me to put the car down,” Peters remembers. And he said he would, if they paid him the standard $20 fee.
That’s when one of them pulled out a machete, says Peters.
Now Peters is in his later thirties, and he laughs about the ordeal. “I took five of them out with J-hook before they even touched me,” he chuckles. The only thing that seems to bother him is the security guard who called him in just stood there and watched him get beaten. “You know, they were all brothers. What are you supposed to do?”
Peters was born in Brookline and had been involved in the towing business since he began riding in a neighbor’s rig at age eight. Now he has two children, owns two towing businesses and tries not to worry about anything. “Towers have it pretty good,” he says. “We get to drive around, listen to music and drink coffee. And you can’t beat being your own boss.”
Liberty Towing is primarily a long-distance towing service for car dealerships and private owners, known for finding reliable towing services. ‘We tow cars from ports in New York, in Boston, and bring them all over. Sometimes we go all the way up into New Hampshire.’ Besides new cars, Liberty also is contracted to tow boats and motorcycles.
Although Liberty’s affiliation with the American Automobile Association guarantees work for his employees, Peters admits, “It’s not an easy job.” Repossession workers risk violence from angered car-owners. Peters, himself, has been shot at. Other companies, especially those that own trucks that can carry seven or eight cars at a time, compete for dealership business. Qualified employees are hard to find and rarely stay with one company long.
And tow trucks are expensive. Even the smaller models cost a company around $53,000, and Peters is making payments on three trucks for Liberty Towing alone. A $100 oil change is necessary every 2,500 miles, each plate costs $5,000 to insure each year and yearly inspections run upwards of $100 per truck.
Don’t even mention gas prices to Peters.
Still, nobody feels bad for towers. Parking near Boston University is hard to find, and towers just make things more difficult. The common consensus is towers are little more than professional car thieves, which isn’t entirely untrue; after all, both use the same tools.
To unlock the door of any standard automobile, a tower uses a Slim Jim to manipulate the internal lock cylinder, which is typically 4-5 inches below the driver’s side window. The $12 Slim Jim, a slender piece of hooked metal designed to slide between the window and door, is commonly used by thieves, as well.
Although tow companies often own pick guns, wedge systems and tryout keys, it is unusual for one to rely on any other method of lock picking.
Towers normally unlock a vehicle in 20 seconds.
Here the similarities end. While thieves next splice and cross the two black wires beneath the ignition console to spark and roll over the engine — a process known as “hot-wiring” — the tower simply releases the emergency brake and shifts the car to neutral.
By remote control from the cab of the truck, the driver raises the crossbar, and the car is lifted onto two wheels, ready to be towed.
But despite commonplace comparisons to thieves, towers have many legal responsibilities before taking away a car. A tow-truck driver can’t legally touch a car until he phones the Boston Police tow line.
“Without it, you go to jail,” Peters said. “You know, it’s grand larceny. The police need to know. Maybe it’s a crime scene, or maybe it’s some setup the police have. You always need to check.” Towers report car make, model and Vehicle Identification Number.
Towers who operate on Boston University property have an additional requirement: A staff member of BU Parking Services must be present. Otherwise, no tow can be made.
It must’ve been a spectacle when they hauled my car off to Somerville. There must’ve been flashing lights, police, laughing spectators, and I missed it all. Later that night, a friend drove me to the very beginning of the McGrath highway, where the towers had stashed my car.
After I coughed up $100, the guy at the desk turned to his pal and said, “Benny, this guy’s here for the old Volvo. Wasn’t that the one we flipped over?” Benny laughed harder than I thought he should, and the guy at the desk smiled at me with his teeth. I pretended to chuckle.
Bastards.