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Mastering Towing: Training Insights, Insurance Challenges with Mike Lard · Towing News Now

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Welcome one and all to the American Towing Recovery Institute podcast.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Remember this is your podcast to promote safety, education, positive public relations and networking within the professional and business-minded towing and recovery industry.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I'm your co-host, dj Harrington, better known as the Tow Doctor, and my other host is Wes Wilburn, over 40-year towing industry veteran, the founder of American Towing Recovery Institute of Fayetteville, north Carolina.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: He has produced and conducted training and certification programs for leading towing companies, equipment distributors, towing associations, dot, fire departments, rescue, as well as military installations across the United States.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Wes has been published over 100 times in major towing publications published over 100 times in major towing publications.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Wes has developed many courses, including the most recent awareness-level course for all responders that specialize in electric vehicles as well as hybrid, natural gas and hydrogen vehicles.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Wes has provided insight as the main speaker for over 30 years at more than 900 training classes and has been recognized as one of America's greatest towing trainers.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: He is well known for his straightforward but down-to-earth teaching style.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: No-transcript.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Without further ado, here's my dear friend and a great guy for our industry, wes Wilber.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: Well, DJ, as always, I appreciate your kind words and your warm welcome.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: I want to welcome all our listeners over 15,000 now subscribers.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: Yep Got even more listeners than that, so if you're listening without subscribing, hit that subscribe button.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: That's how they count it and that's what we appreciate.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, we hit a lot of milestones.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Just did 940th class Went up on 10,000 positive feedback On eBay Even though we've done 26,000 transactions only up to 10,000 positive, because people just don't leave feedback like they used to.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're hitting a lot of milestones, dj, real exciting.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: So yeah, DJ, summer's winding down.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: We're getting ready for the fall training session.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: We've got a super busy schedule and we're actually, believe it or not, working on dates for next year, working on a couple of super exciting ones One's going to be in early May we're going to be in St Louis and do a six-day program.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: We're going to start out on light duties and do heavy duties and do an extreme heavy-duty course that will be in St Louis next May.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: So we're excited working on the details for that kind of stuff.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: So yeah, dj, we got to get ready for the beginning of the training season.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: We're going to start out right after Labor Day weekend, september 7th and 8th we're going to be in Johnston, rhode Island Light duty and medium duty class.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: We're working with the Rhode Island Towing Association up there the register.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: Call Adam Branch 401-248-1600.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: And then just after that we have the Midwest Regional.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Tow.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Show You're going to be at that one, aren't you, DJ?
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, I am.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be up there with Bruce Bender and the most family-friendly event of the year.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: September 12th through the 15th.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: Held at the Roberts Center, that's in Wilmington Ohio.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: What's?
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: That about halfway between Cincinnati and Dayton, isn't it?
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly Right in between.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: This is Wes you are so right.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Last year, remember when you and I were there, we ate the most roast beef.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: We ate lug nuts.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: That were cheese curls and potato tots.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: They were delicious.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: The place is fantastic.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Complained about hotel rooms.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Not only do they have hotel, but they got camping so you can bring your RV, you can bring your pup tent, they got showers, they got everything for you and it's all BYOB.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Bring your own beverage and so you can bring whatever you want, and it's a real family affair.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: So hot dogs, hamburgers over the fire, it would be fantastic.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: They had a real tail affair.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: So hot dogs, hamburgers over the fire, it would be fantastic.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: They had a real tailgating vibe going on out there last year.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: It was really cool, oh yeah.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: I think so too, made me and April wish that we still had the camper to join them out there.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: I had to order here a little bit.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Let me finish up.
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: We'll finish up with them.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: Yes, for more information you can call 513-831-7469 or email bruce at traoorg.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: That's Towing Recovery Association of Ohio dot org.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: A little bit out of order.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: We got in North Carolina, raleigh, north Carolina.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: Until Expo September 5th through the 7th it's going to be at Raleigh, 919-921-8194.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: For more information 919-921-8194.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: September is still going to be busy too.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: I'm going to be at Lynchburg, virginia, be line-telling on Friday night, the 20th we're going to do that electric vehicle class.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: So free class for three hours.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: Friday night, saturday and sunday heavy duty tone recovery with some rotator usage.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: That's the lunch where they.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: We got 30 couple people signed up right now dj oh my that thing's on fire.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: Kabutale of Lynchburg is one of the many sponsors.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: They're going all out on meals door prizes.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: It's going to be a great event same weekend, basically, or no, no, this will be the following weekend.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: They have the tennessee toe show, chattanooga, tennessee.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: It's also the same as the museum event going on at the same time there.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: More information on the toe show brenda toe times, magcom or 407-936-2494.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: Following weekend I'll be in o, oregon for a private school out there Looks like they're about to open it up for some seats, so I'll let you people know about that.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: October 18th we'll be in Lake Station, indiana, just next to Gary, there just on the bottom side of Chicago.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: Friday night electric vehicle class.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: It's a three hour training class for free.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: Friday night the 18th.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: October 19th and 20th two day heavy towing and recovery class with some reclatered usage.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: November 2nd and 3rd will be in Elkhart, indiana, for a light and medium duty class.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: It's just a little bit east of Lake Station there on the top side of.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Indiana matter of fact, our interview will have something to do with that today.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: And then finishing out the year at this point, november, sumner, south Carolina, two-day fire tower cross train with myself and Ron Moore.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: So for more information you can go to our website wwwamtowriorg that's your complete schedule or call our office 910-747-9000.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: So that's what I got going on and where we're headed to right now.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: Dj Got a great interview lined up today, so I guess we'll ask everybody to hang around for the rest of the break.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: Come on back and start our interview.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Hang around for that.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: It's great.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: Come on back and start our interview.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: The EV Clever app is an app created for all responders and emergency service personnel.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: The EV Clever app is the only app containing easy-to-navigate quick links to access manufacturer-suggested instructions for emergency situations dealing with electric and alternative fuel vehicles while on the side of the road.
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: That includes hybrid, fully electric fuel cell, compressed natural gas and hydrogen buses and heavy trucks.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: These quick links are a convenient way to access information quickly.
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: To date, we have a total of 789 passenger vehicles, over 181 heavy-duty trucks, and adding more every day, thanks to our research team.
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: You can go to evclevercom and use the code podcast 2024, get a free 30-day trial and then after that you get 20% off.
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: Information in this podcast is made possible by generous sponsorship from Henry's Wrecker, serving the community with quality towing and recovery for over 40 years.
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: Henryswreckercom.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: You have been listening to the American Towing Recovery Institute podcast with Wes Wilburn and DJ Harrington Every week.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: We do our best to bring you new informative episodes like this one.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Make sure you download and listen.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: We're available on Spotify, itunes, pandora, stitcher, iheartmedia the number one podcast in the world Amazon or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Just like we said in the first section, we have over 15,000 listeners, so thank you.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you for telling your friends about it Without further ado.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: We've got a great one, so I'll turn it over to you Wes.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: Thanks, dj.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: We have a returning guest, someone that's a friend of the podcast, friend of the program and definitely a friend of mine, mike Lahr from Times, 24-hour Towing out of Elkhart Indiana.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: Mike, introduce yourself to our guests, would you please?
• 10:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah, like Wes said, Mike Lard Tom's 24-Hour Towing, Elkhart, Indiana, Third-generation tower.
• 10:27
  Speaker 6: I worked for my boss for about five years before I bought him out three years ago and we just keep pushing away with training and equipment to be the best we can in this industry well, that's.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: That's an awesome pursuit.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: That's hard, easy to say, hard to live up to sometimes, but you do a good job with it looks like to me from what I'm saying and you've grown the company tell us a little bit about the scope of scope of operation yeah, well, we still.
• 10:54
  Speaker 6: We still focus on the light, medium and heavy-duty towing that Mike and Nancy had the company doing all these years.
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: Since I came about, we've focused more on the recovery and transportation and specializing in the tools that not a lot of towing companies have.
• 11:11
  Speaker 6: We just added a roll-off trailer with roll-off boxes and stuff and we just used that this morning.
• 11:18
  Speaker 6: So that's nice you buy something this week and you get to use it that week.
• 11:22
  Speaker 6: So, yeah, just trying to build ourself up to having those tools that make things easier and keep everything in-house, where you don't have to sub it out to other people, especially when we fight these insurance companies and it's harder to pay somebody else than to just swallow the loss on your own.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: So I'm going to go down a rabbit hole with you for a second.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: Have you had many jobs you've been stuck with this year?
• 11:46
  Speaker 6: No, we're.
• 11:47
  Speaker 6: Actually we have one that we had about 80 some days ago.
• 11:51
  Speaker 6: It was a load of milk that burnt.
• 11:53
  Speaker 6: The trucking company themselves did not have insurance.
• 11:58
  Speaker 6: They had actually running two trucking companies with different employees with the same name.
• 12:04
  Speaker 6: One had an S on the end of it, one didn't.
• 12:07
  Speaker 6: So the carrier denied the claim just because of that.
• 12:11
  Speaker 6: They couldn't prove who, what, when, what, when, where and so.
• 12:15
  Speaker 6: But as everybody knows, when a truck backs up to a dock, the broker that brokered that load to them, even if that trucking company has insurance, that broker also has a secondary policy on them.
• 12:29
  Speaker 6: So I've reached out to him and actually got him on a recorded conversation stating that he knows that he is liable for the bill, but they're just exhausting every avenue before they just go and write that check because they have collected on their portion of it.
• 12:44
  Speaker 6: So now we're just waiting on the lawyers basically to handle their deal.
• 12:49
  Speaker 6: It's sad it's got to get that way, but there's really no way that he can back down from one, he openly admitted it and two, we know that he has insurance on this loan.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: Well, good, I hope that works out for you.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: How about the last county?
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: Did you have any of your stuff with the last county here?
• 13:05
  Speaker 6: No, we actually got paid on everything last year, not to say it was easy and we didn't have to fight with people.
• 13:10
  Speaker 6: But one thing I will say is the class I took out in Baltimore last year with Eric at Big Wheel definitely opened my eyes and taught me you know how to go after these insurance companies and trucking companies.
• 13:24
  Speaker 6: You know and do things the proper way.
• 13:26
  Speaker 6: But to protect our assets you know what I mean and keep our business going.
• 13:30
  Speaker 6: We can't run for free, like these insurance companies want us to.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: So before that class.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: So you feel I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I just want to summarize.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: You feel that class helped you get paid on some of these bills that you may not have gotten paid on.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Oh, 100%.
• 13:46
  Speaker 6: Especially.
• 13:47
  Speaker 6: I mean just opening your eyes to like the whole property damage, like liability coverage on something you know before.
• 13:54
  Speaker 6: That I mean I was dumb to it.
• 13:55
  Speaker 6: I figured if they didn't have full coverage or no collision then we were just stuck with it.
• 14:00
  Speaker 6: And that's just not the case.
• 14:01
  Speaker 6: Even if you have a 1985 Ford Crown Vic with heavy front-end damage and they got PLPD on it and it lands in somebody's retention pond and you take a rotator and lift it out of there, there is money to pay you for those services.
• 14:16
  Speaker 6: You just got to go to these classes and learn how to word things, how to go about things, document it.
• 14:23
  Speaker 6: And these insurance companies, the adjusters that you talk to I don't really think it's their fault because they're just going off the training they've had, but they're trained basically to say that if there is no collision coverage, any time you hear the word towing or tow truck, it's automatically denied.
• 14:41
  Speaker 6: And sometimes you've got to enlighten them a little on that and it's not always easy to enlighten them.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, but that's a great point that you make.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: You have to educate them a little bit and they are trained.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: I don't know if it's trained or conditioned, or it seems like the second they hear that word tow truck yeah, but I would, I would have to agree with you on that too.
• 15:01
  Speaker 6: And the other one of the other things that's really helped in our industry too is, uh, guys out there that are doing this.
• 15:08
  Speaker 6: They're they're saving claim numbers.
• 15:09
  Speaker 6: So when they do get paid on this, you know, they share with other um towing companies too.
• 15:14
  Speaker 6: So if they're having an issue out of an insurance company, they said, well, we don't pay for that.
• 15:18
  Speaker 6: All you got to do is say, hey, look up this claim number, it's the same issue.
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: You guys paid it out.
• 15:22
  Speaker 6: There's no, you know, I mean they can't, it ends right there, you know.
• 15:26
  Speaker 6: I mean there is no questions asked, you know.
• 15:27
  Speaker 6: So that's helped out a lot too, when you can.
• 15:29
  Speaker 6: Uh, we're starting to see these little one-off insurance companies that are branches off of you know, the big ones and they're just selling these policies to people that are not.
• 15:39
  Speaker 6: I mean, they're really not.
• 15:40
  Speaker 6: They're not covering anything.
• 15:41
  Speaker 6: They don't even have coverage at all, like for collision anything.
• 15:46
  Speaker 6: It's like it's crazy what they're selling people yeah, it really is the uh.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: A lot of times almost all their policy limits are nowhere near what this average cost are for the service you're talking about.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying?
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and on that a little bit for me.
• 16:04
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you're seeing a lot of policies.
• 16:05
  Speaker 6: I mean today, I mean with the modern recovery equipment we got.
• 16:10
  Speaker 6: I mean the days of going out and working a truck trailer rollover for eight to ten grand, days of going out and working a tractor trailer rollover for eight to 10 grand.
• 16:17
  Speaker 6: I mean, in my opinion, those days are gone, Unless it's like an end dump for your customer that you, you know you treat really good every day.
• 16:21
  Speaker 6: But there's a lot of these policies are only like $5,000 for cargo damage or cleanup and stuff and I mean heck, you can hire your local trash company to bring out roll-off dumpsters and go to landfill and you're going to almost eat that up before you include your labor records and everything else.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, and they're making a gain or not playing you.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: They're winning the game financially by not paying for these services.
• 16:48
  Speaker 6: Yep, and one thing that's come into my head.
• 16:54
  Speaker 6: I don't know how to do it yet, and if somebody would help me I'd be game to learn.
• 16:58
  Speaker 6: Is you know?
• 16:58
  Speaker 6: We know how to do it yet, and if somebody would help me I'd be.
• 17:02
  Speaker 6: I'd be game to learn.
• 17:02
  Speaker 6: Is you know we can pay for?
• 17:03
  Speaker 6: Uh, when we do our insurance policies, whether it's for a business or your personal car, you can get uninsured and underinsured on your auto policies.
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: I feel that there should be a policy that we should be able to get as towing companies to protect us from these uninsured and underinsured trucking companies too.
• 17:15
  Speaker 6: So when we present our case you know what I mean You're going to have to be legit because, as we know, there's certain companies out there that try to get paid for doing nothing.
• 17:23
  Speaker 6: But when you have a legit case, you know you take it before them and say, hey, this company, this is our bill.
• 17:29
  Speaker 6: You know it's fair, it's customary, it aligns with all of our other bills we've ever done.
• 17:33
  Speaker 6: And they don't have the coverage for this.
• 17:36
  Speaker 6: The bill's $40,000, and they got $5,000 of coverage.
• 17:41
  Speaker 6: That'd be awesome if we could get an insurance policy that would cover us.
• 17:44
  Speaker 6: You know what I mean.
• 17:45
  Speaker 6: The same aspect if it was your personal car.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to believe that policy coverage is available, whether it be financially feasible or not or worthwhile, but I have to believe it's available.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: If anybody's listening to the podcast and has information on that from the insurance side of the telling industry, please reach out to us.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: Call the office 910-747-9000.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: Ask for Wes Wilburn, your podcast listener, about insurance.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: If anybody has that information, we'd love to have it and pass it on.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Well that's good information, wes.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: What I wanted to say when Mike was talking about Eric.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: I have Eric's number here and the name of the company.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Mike is called Recovery Billing Unlimited and Eric's phone number.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: And Eric is a good friend of the podcast.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: He's a good friend of Wes.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: His phone number is 508-763-5474.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: It's proper ways of writing invoices accident scene cleanup, keeping the paperwork trail, incident scene cleanup keeping the paperwork trail, billing on property damage, liability insurance, communicating with the insurance company.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: It's all part of Eric's class and it's 508-763-5474.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: He's a good friend of the podcast and a dear friend of Wes's.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: He is a good friend.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: He's a good guy.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: I'll say this, I've said it many times, no-transcript.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: When they first started to build anything, I was suspicious and you know what I was suspicious, heck of them, but I watched them and almost everybody that goes comes back and talks like you do, michael.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: By paying attention you earned all kinds of way to collect on bills you weren't collecting the nice part about it is, too, is like when you hear like I agree with you.
• 19:41
  Speaker 6: When you hear of a class like that you think somebody's gonna tell you you know what you should charge, how you know I mean, and that's not what he's doing at all.
• 19:48
  Speaker 6: He's literally just showing you the tools you know I mean, and every one of his classes he starts out.
• 19:54
  Speaker 6: I want you to be fair.
• 19:55
  Speaker 6: I don't want you to bill for nothing you didn't do like.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: He teaches nothing dishonest about his classes yeah, that's one of the things I like as well.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Just to finish my thought real quick, a few have come back and said they didn't like it.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: A couple of those people were the kind of people that would complain if they had to carry too much money home from work and then a few others.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: There's been some people that I know of that went and got a little overzealous with it and definitely one of the things I like about him and everything I hear about what they do with their training is it's being honest going, you know, but that honesty goes both ways.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Got to be, got to be fair to yourself but definitely be fair to your customer.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Don't cheat anybody, and that's one of the things I liked about hearing about them.
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: You know, we weren't even playing this wasn't even on the subject of what we're going to talk about, but I think we've had a real good first part of this interview with talking about the billing.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: Anything you want to add to the billing, and let me ask you a question, and then you add anything you got.
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: Mike Was taking it at a tow show a good environment.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: In other words, if it had been at the tow show, would you have probably gone to it.
• 21:05
  Speaker 6: Being that usually they're far away.
• 21:07
  Speaker 6: No, I probably wouldn't have went.
• 21:09
  Speaker 6: It was convenience for me and I like the way it worked out.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard several people say the tow show was good because it was there.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: They were there, they went.
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: Yep, I would have to agree.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: Traveling to that part of the country on a business trip is a whole other challenge.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: We've had a good first section.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: I want to ask our listeners to hang around until after the break and we'll finish up.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: Be right back.
• 21:38
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• 21:44
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  Speaker 4: That's 910-747-9000.
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: We look forward to serving you.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Welcome back listeners.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: You know you're listening to the American Toe and Recovery Institute podcast with Wes Wilburn, dj Harrington, the toe doctor.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: We want to remember you.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Just like Wes said, please remember to like and review.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: If you hear an industry expert that you'd like to hear on the program, like an Eric or his dad, bob, or somebody special like Mike that we're listening to right now from Tom's 24-hour towing, just dial our hotline number here in the podcast center 706-409-5603.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: And Wes and I will do our very best to get that pro on the phone and on this podcast.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: All right, wes, I'll turn it over to you.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: You and Mike are doing a great job.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Mike, we'll get to some of the things we were going to talk about on the podcast.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: You just went to our first ever train recovery class.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: We know there are a few bumps with the organization.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: I'm working a lot of that stuff out.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: He just went to our first ever trained recovery class.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: Yes, sir, two bumps with the organization.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: I'm working a lot of that stuff out Overall, tell us what you thought about the class.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: It was a lot of information.
• 23:56
  Speaker 6: The Maggio brothers they're awesome.
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: Their establishment that they got there is a lot to take in.
• 24:03
  Speaker 6: I mean, honestly, I think that's what a lot of uh owners should do is get out every once in a while and, you know, go to these guys that do open their shops up and let me just walk around and look at how other people do things.
• 24:18
  Speaker 6: Um, but uh, jay and his brothers I mean they and their family they've they've got a top not top notch operation going on, and I mean everything is loaded, ready to go and everything has got its place.
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: I mean it's something, in my opinion, to look up to.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, the loaded ready to go part I was going to bring it up earlier when we were talking.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: That's one of the things that you have improved upon from when you took over Tom's.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: They had some stuff ready to go, but you've taken that to another level uh yeah, so I know that's important to you.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: So expand on that and talk a little bit about what you saw in that category with with magia's equipment yeah.
• 25:02
  Speaker 6: So you know, I mean, as we all know.
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: I mean even if it's a simple, you know, two-truck crash or something, you know there is debris on the roadway or in the ditch, I mean, yeah, we can get brooms and shovels out and charge some labor for it, everything else.
• 25:15
  Speaker 6: But if there's a $110,000 skid loader sitting at the shop and an $8,000 broom attachment and all that just sitting there looking pretty, that's not making us any revenue.
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: So that's one of the biggest.
• 25:26
  Speaker 6: That's not making us any revenue.
• 25:27
  Speaker 6: So that's one of the biggest.
• 25:27
  Speaker 6: The first things I did was put together a trailer that had all my attachments, the broom, grapple bucket, all that stuff and the machine loaded at all times and it's hooked to a dump truck so it's turnkey, ready to go.
• 25:39
  Speaker 6: So that shows up on scene with the wreckers and everything else.
• 25:47
  Speaker 6: And you know local agencies they really love that because we're known for getting in and getting out.
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: Because the biggest thing like, especially around here with the car, road and stuff, they don't take kindly to traffic backups, you know they're very serious about that.
• 26:00
  Speaker 6: Secondary crashes, you know what I mean.
• 26:02
  Speaker 6: They're not good for anybody, they're most time fatals and we don't want to see any of that.
• 26:06
  Speaker 6: So taking those extra steps to have your equipment ready to go, in my opinion, is at times, like I just said, is a matter of life and death, and when we're out here cleaning up these crashes, when you're out there working on the toll road which runs through elk right there, a little bit of a different ball game than a regular interstate because you're working under the authority of the toll road authority at that point.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: Is that correct?
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: Yes, sir, and they definitely call the shots out there.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: They definitely get involved somewhat, don't they?
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: Yes, they have their safety rules.
• 26:38
  Speaker 6: There's nothing that happens on that road without their say-so.
• 26:41
  Speaker 6: It's no different.
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: Like Illinois, Ohio, PA, they're their own authority.
• 26:46
  Speaker 6: It's not state-owned and they have certain record services.
• 26:50
  Speaker 6: Anybody can go up there and tow or do service calls you know what I mean.
• 26:53
  Speaker 6: But when it comes to a wreck recovery, burn, job, load, transfers, anything like that you're not supposed to be on their property doing any of that.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's not like the Northeast, where another service can't come on the roadway no, it's severely limited.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: And come on the roadway?
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: No, they're severely limited and anybody on the roadway is controlled by them at that point.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: Is that correct?
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's a little bit of the same where the banjos are out there.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: So for reference, train recovery, talk about how they were.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: You know how response ready they were.
• 27:26
  Speaker 6: All the machines, whether from their dozers to excavators, to their cranes, that they you know how response ready they were.
• 27:29
  Speaker 6: All the machines, whether from their dozers to excavators, to their cranes, that they you know their Miller booms that they got on these excavators, everything was loaded on their beam trailers, tractors were, you know, set right there to hook and go.
• 27:40
  Speaker 6: I mean everything around the place, even their.
• 27:44
  Speaker 6: I noticed he had a really cool aluminum uh beaver tail step deck trailer.
• 27:50
  Speaker 6: It's 53 foot long, that he had an excavator on and I saw that and now I got a new want list.
• 27:57
  Speaker 6: But that's, that's everything that you've seen there.
• 28:01
  Speaker 6: Everything was, you know they're thinking of the forethought.
• 28:03
  Speaker 6: Not well, we'll wait till they call and then we'll take an hour to load everything up and then get out there.
• 28:07
  Speaker 6: That you can't do that in this day and age yeah, they, and they handle everything like that.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: That's one thing I've noticed about them.
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: If you call them for a service truck with a tire airbag problem, tractor, major tractor, trail rack, major train recovery or whatever it is in between, they jump on and go, they get on it, they, they move.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: That's one thing I've noticed about them and that's part of the reason I think they're successful.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Yep, and they're not young pups either.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: No, that's true, that is true.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: What else can you say about the class With the wider range of students traveling in, was it a different networking opportunity?
• 28:44
  Speaker 6: Yes, it was.
• 28:45
  Speaker 6: There was guys all over and it was good to hear what they had to say and what their backgrounds were and it'd be interesting what you do with that class in the future.
• 28:55
  Speaker 6: I'd be, I'd be.
• 28:56
  Speaker 6: I am excited to see what you do with it and hopefully it evolves into something that's more in depth and you know more hands-on and stuff and like anything else, it just takes time and you know rail cars and stuff are not easily, uh, obtainable, like tractor trailers or box trucks and stuff like that, so it just takes time, a lot of resources that's where we're going to give a huge shout out to the whole mad joe family for everything they did to make that happen.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: We are going to try to grow it.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: We formed a committee.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: I haven't even addressed this group yet, but we it's on my list to get done this week, hopefully that are going to help form that class what it's going to be and what it's not going to be.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: I came away from the class.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: Let me back up.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: Coming into any new class, new format, you have different visions of things, of how the class is going to go, what the students are going to be interested in, et cetera.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: I didn't strike out, but I didn't hit a home run.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: I was somewhere in the middle, but the good part about being in the middle there, not being a home run rather, is it made very clear some different changes we need.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: To make so long story short to our listeners we're working.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: I'm going to work as a group with a group of these people that attended this first class Redevelopment.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: This will probably be a class we're only going to do once a year.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: We're probably going to do it a little bit later in the year.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: So the heat was intense that weekend up there.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: I'm someone from the south, so for me to say it was intense, it was pretty hot and we're going to change some things up, but we're going to come back at it, michael and do it again at least one more time, hopefully a couple more times, but develop into an annual thing, maybe even twice a year.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: If there's interest in it, I'd love to hear it.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: So yeah, we're working on it.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: We've got a lot of big things planned.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: Next year we're going to do the training six-day training in St st louis, missouri, in may.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: I was trying to bring time with you and I think we got it all confirmed.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: We're going to actually text back and forth today.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: So we got a lot of big things happening for training.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: The trained recovery course is just going to be one part of it.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: So while we're talking about that, we always want to talk about the big, exciting things.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: But I'll tell you I get just as excited as the nuts and bolts class you know basic, like medium class as I do as anything else, because there you're dealing with the future.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: Definitely, you know we don't get a lot of hosts willing to step up and host a light, medium duty class.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: It's not as exciting, not as glamorous, and I'm not knocking anybody, but I'm just saying it's reality.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: So we'll, we get a host.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: That's well to do that.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: I really appreciate it.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: Michael has convinced me that we're going to do one of his place there first weekend in november.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: Talk to us a little bit about why you feel that light medium class is important, what we can expect at your place for hands-on well in my opinion is I mean there's guys out here that do start out in the heavy duty market.
• 31:45
  Speaker 6: I mean, if that's what they're hired to do, that's fine.
• 31:46
  Speaker 6: But I mean you see guys out here along the roadways that are fighting a 6,000 pound car that's rolled over and they haven't mastered that skill yet, but yet they want to go wrestle with an 80,000 pound machine on its side and I just don't think that equals each other.
• 32:03
  Speaker 6: You know what I mean?
• 32:03
  Speaker 6: It's a recipe for disaster.
• 32:04
  Speaker 6: When you learn the light and medium duty stuff, you're using smaller equipment, smaller weight.
• 32:10
  Speaker 6: You know what I mean.
• 32:11
  Speaker 6: But all the other, the same things are there.
• 32:14
  Speaker 6: You know what I mean.
• 32:15
  Speaker 6: Your rigging is there, your angles are there and stuff, and that just in my opinion, it's a building block to transition yourself into a safer, better operator to go from that to you know stepping up the ladder.
• 32:28
  Speaker 6: You know what I mean.
• 32:28
  Speaker 6: Operator to go from that to you know stepping up the ladder.
• 32:31
  Speaker 6: You know I mean you perfect each skill to get yourself to where you're.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: You're a master of it all on all light, medium and heavy duty, rotator, whatever you want to be yeah, a lot of times I see folks with track and trailer driving experience or heavy truck driving experience maybe transporting equipment or whatnot and then or they don't even have the transporting equipment, but they've got the truck driving experience and they immediately want to go into heavy towing or maybe into the transport side and discount the light-duty towing and recovery and how much that can teach you about heavy-duty towing and recovery.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: It's setting a good foundation, good fundamentals yes.
• 33:04
  Speaker 6: I see that all over the place too.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: So we're going to do a light medium two-day class at your place.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: We're gonna uh, you're gonna get us a couple challenges there, hopefully yes, yep, well, of course, have your vehicles.
• 33:18
  Speaker 6: Uh plan to get a school bus and uh medium-sized box truck hopefully get it filled with some tires or something like that and have a good situation for the guys to use their heads and what you've taught them in the class west to uh get it back into, uh out of the environment that it's in awesome.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: We always do a great job hosting.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: We love going up there.
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: We're gonna be looking forward to working with you.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: That's gonna be the first weekend in november.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: Anything else you want to share with us?
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: Michael, I do appreciate you being part of this podcast for me today.
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: No, I mean just like anything.
• 33:51
  Speaker 6: I just encourage the industry to not accept anything less than the best, and you know we need to keep pushing to do so, whether it's no matter what it is.
• 34:02
  Speaker 6: I mean our everyday customers, law enforcement, insurance companies.
• 34:07
  Speaker 6: I mean sometimes you got to say no, it doesn't always go as planned like they want it to.
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: But you know what I mean.
• 34:17
  Speaker 6: You got to fight for what's right, because our industry is under a lot of heat right now and everybody just needs to stand true and be true to yourself, be true to your customers and just perfect your business is what I'm trying to say, I guess.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: Good and right.
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: I want to thank you for being on here today and talking to us Appreciate your open comments.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: I know Eric appreciates the endorsement of his class.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: How can folks get in touch with you?
• 34:46
  Speaker 6: if they want to reach out to you, you can contact me through the shop 574-264-5331, or via Facebook Messenger, whatever you prefer.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: As always, we appreciate you and all our listeners.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: Be safe out there until next week.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: We'll see you then.