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Transcript

The Price Per Pound Revolution · Towing News Now

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: you're on the train to success with april and wes wilburn.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I'm dj harrington, the co-host, better known as the toe doctor.
• 0:12
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• 1:10
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• 1:14
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• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I will turn it to april loomis well, dj.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Thank you, as always, I appreciate your kind words and your introduction.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: As we talked about in the first segment, we got a great returning guest.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Today we have the man that invented the price per pound.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Not only invented it, he used it for years in his towing business and there's a lot of facts and fictions about price per pound.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: There seems to be a fair amount of conversation going on about it right now around the country.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: I know here in North Carolina the state association president who we had on last week talked to me about how the legislators had a lot of questions about it and he was trying to put together some information on it.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: I guess he hasn't been in touch with you yet, but I'm sure he will.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: He's a busy guy.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: So we have Stormin Norman out of Alabama.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Stormin, for the folks that don't know, you give us an introduction and a brief background about your involvement in towing and what you're doing today, if you don't mind.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: Sure, I started out in the garage business in 81, I think it was, and had to work for a bus company and was always fascinated with the tow trucks, even more so when one of them decided to pass me on the interstate that I was towing as a result of some crappy welding jobs on a homemade hitch.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: I thought you know, I'd love to get in the record business, but there has to be a better way.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: And so in 89, 80, 89, something like that, somewhere in there, I bought my first tow truck, which is an old 600 on a white, with a 238 Detroit Holes in the floor, and when I showed it to my banker he said do not let me see this truck until it's painted and you have it fixed, otherwise I will lose my job.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Like so many in the towing business, we started down a lick and a promise and a prayer and built the company to where, I think in 98, 99, something like that, we had 16 tow trucks, 25 employees, and then sold the business.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: But along the way we went from the old mechanicals to hydraulics and underlifts and air cushions and so on and so forth and realized that something was not right.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: We were going to school, we were going to classes, we were trying to learn from the best of the best on how to do the job better, to do the job quicker, so we could charge by the hour, so we could get paid less.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: And not coming from the towing industry, I looked at things a little bit differently because I've never been in all my life.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: So the question I had time and again was why?
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: Why are we doing this?
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: And I had some great mentors, like Gary Coe, that took some time to share pricing matrices and some different concepts that you know that made sense.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: It was something that made sense, let's go with it.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: But if we're doing it just because Grandpa did it, why?
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Gary Coe was excellent at putting numbers to paper and thinking about things from a real logical point of view.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: He really was excellent at putting numbers to paper and thinking about things from a real logical point of view.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: He really was excellent at that.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: He was an amazing guy.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: He was a businessman.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: And one of the things that I've noticed in the business and we're doing German Shepherds now, same thing.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: I mean there are a lot of people that are doing something but they're not in business.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: It's more of a catch can or whatever.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: And Gary had started with nothing, basically, and ended up with I don't know what 200 tow trucks, four employees, 11 milk cases, something like that.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: This is the guy I want to learn from.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: And I called him up one day and said Gary, can I come out and shadow you for a couple days?
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: I did and I walked away with two concepts One, he hired people that were smarter than him, and two, he gave them the authority and the ability, with accountability, to get the job done.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: That's important and that was the key.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: That was the key, because so many towers that were so afraid to take a vacation, so afraid to turn their business over to their employees and trust them with that and take a break.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: You know, because they weren't able or willing to learn to delegate to their employees, and so the same concept happened with the pricing part.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, we've always done it this way.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: Hang on Before we jump.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: Happened with the pricing part.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Well, we've always done it this way.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Hang on.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Before we jump on to the pricing, can I add a comment?
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: To your vacation?
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: And taking a minute away, I lost a very good.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: I thought he was a friend, but he was definitely a customer.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: He got offended one time because I said to him and this was when he'd been in for 25 years, he had a big operation, a couple locations, and he was afraid to take a minute away from there not to be there if the big wreck came in.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: And I said to him, if you built something, you can't leave.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: You built nothing and he took it the wrong way.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: He thought I was picking on him personally and I wasn't.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: But you know, if you're a slave to this thing, you built nothing.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I just wanted to touch on that.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: It's also very timely, Since we're at summertime it's very timely Norman Go ahead.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: It really is.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: And if I can use a, because in the toy business it's, you know, so often we say, okay, this person did this, this person person that and that.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: And if I can use an object, a person is an object.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Lesson, you know, kevin Goodyear is one that started out, you know family business and basically see the pants and whatnot bought a tow truck from me and we were competitors but remained friends and friends to this day.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: He has finally understood that he has to run a business and he's up to I don, rolling stock now something like that.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: But he brought, uh, some of his family members and they had experience in commercial interest.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: Uh, it's pretty, involves, you know commercial interest.
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: Uh, connected, understood.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: Uh, you know networking and the things that take it takes to the right a business.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: Any delegate you know in the business has been growing, has cost of money, you know, and the things it takes to run a business and he's delegated and the business has been growing.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: Has it cost him money?
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but he has invested in the right people, which Gary Coe did, and he's turning them loose and for the first time he's actually taken some time off and becoming a business owner instead of a token of bribery, I'll get you something.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: Go out and work with Rick, with his rotators.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: He's as good as anybody, but it's a business and he's realizing that if you're going to have a business, you need to run it like one.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: And that's one of the things I started doing from the get-go is that we had a logo.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: We painted our trucks all the same.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: We had a light and bold logo and my cousin actually came up with the idea of a smart and I thought you know, little children can't read, but they can see the golden arches and they know it means happy time, happy meal.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: So why do we want to have tow trucks that we can have occluded?
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: Beautiful graphics, beautiful paint jobs, ornate, and you've got to be right on top of it to be able to see who it is.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Why.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: Why not market your business with consistency?
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: It's something that people see your truck go down the road and they don't have to read anything.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: They know who it is.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: Because so often we get our ego wrapped up into things, and ego is important.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: It takes that to be able to run a business and to face failure and to face the things that happen.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: But we're not running our business for our competitors, we're running it for our customers.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: It is our customers that pay our bills.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: It is the customers that need to tell other potential clients about it and so often we forget what we're doing and what we're selling.
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: We're not selling tow trucks.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: If we're a tow operator, we're selling a service, we're selling peace of mind.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: And back in the dark ages, when those arcs were still floating, I used to do Yellow Pages ads, which are a big point now, but I've never had a problem borrowing concepts from smarter people to make.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: If it works, then maybe I can take part of it.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: And back in the day, if you remember, allstate used to have these ads where they would hit hands cradling their car, you know, and they weren't selling insurance, they were selling peace of mind.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: I thought, well, that's smart.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: You know I'm not selling a tow truck.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: I look at all these yellow pages ads and here's 15 tow trucks lined up in a row.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: And here's a young lady uh, a young mother with her child on the side of the road.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: It's pouring down rain.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: She doesn't care how many tow trucks you have, it doesn't mean a thing to her.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: What she does care about is her child and her family.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: And are you going to show up as a professional?
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: Are you going to treat me with respect?
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: Are you going to treat my car with respect?
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: That's all she cares about.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: That's right and that's what we're selling.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: And again it ties back and it almost ties back in, ties back in the price per pound.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: How we charge, everything is not how we would perceive it, but how does the customer perceive it?
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: What are we doing to make us look as professionals, as business owners?
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: You know we've come a long, long ways and you've done a great job in helping to bring us in the point of this out of the dark ages, and you've repeated the same message over and over and over again for years.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: We're better than that and we are, but you've had to spell it out bit by bit.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: This is how we work with companies.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: This is how we do things.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: This is how we be professional.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: It's not just the mechanics of it, it's also, as you know, the pricing and the image that we present to our customers, whether it be trucking customers or individuals.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: We're not vultures.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: We are a professional cleanup crew.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: We're here to make your problem go away for a price.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: But that's what we're here for and we want you to feel good about it when we do that.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: So I think it's more of a mindset for the total business, not just the pricing, not just price per pound, not just where trucks look, but the whole mindset.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: And it starts with what are we selling?
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: And it's not tow trucks Right Now.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Excellent point, excellent.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we haven't even started talking price per pound.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: I've already learned a lot.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: That was some good information, but we do need to take a quick break.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Can you hang around until after the break and we'll come right back and we'll get right into the Pressure Pound.
• 12:09
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• 12:16
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• 12:19
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• 12:32
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• 12:35
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• 12:41
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• 13:12
  Speaker 2: All right, we're back from the break.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Got Storm and Norman out of Ozark, alabama here with us.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Been out of the towing.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: You were in the towing business for a number of years and you sold towing equipment.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Am I correct?
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: That is correct.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: And then you got out of both of those at the same time, or how did that work?
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: Sold the towing business first and shortly thereafter got out of the towing industry.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: In going back to the state of mind and running it as a business, I wasn't going to give it to my kids number one and number two.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: I wasn't going to force it upon them if they had no interest in it, because we had two goals for our kids when they grew up to love God and they work.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: And then what they did and their dream they followed me to be theirs, not mine.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: And so they worked in the business and everything, dispatching their horse and trucks or whatever, because it made them work.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: But at the end of the day it had to be their dream.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: If it wasn't, then I wasn't going to force it upon them, and so we sold the business and they're all successful in their, in their own rights.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: But part of running the business is building one that you can sell.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: number one number two, or pass down, or, you know, bring out a second generation.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: But that needs to be a choice that you think about about five minutes before you decide to do it, but much, much earlier.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: And then you plan how you run your business.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: What kind of image do you want to have?
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: Am I?
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: Because then they go buy a tow truck, you know, but there is a difference between that and having an established business that has a brand.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: So everything you know and you mentioned weaving things together, and it is it is a tapestry of business.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: It is a means of working everything together and, as an owner, that's your job is to orchestrate everything orchestrate your people, your plan, the vision that you have.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: And it's not an easy job at all.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: It's lonely, you know, at the top, and any time you try something different, like price per pound, it's scary.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: You know, because you have competitors that are saying, well, that's stupid, I would never do that.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: Well, they're not paying your bills.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: You need to work for your customers.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: So many tollers are so worried about what the competition is doing and they should be worried about what the man with the paycheck or the right in the check is doing.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: That's who you worry about.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: You can watch your competitors, but run your business off of your customers and don't be afraid to try something new.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: Will it work?
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: Not always, but if it does, great If it doesn't try something different.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: Don't be afraid to step out and uh and try something that looks like it might be a good concept.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: Well, a lot of people think price for pounds new, but it's not.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: How long, how long has it been out?
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: oh, my word, that's been out uh 30 years.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: I think it started sorry 30 years, I'm guessing probably 90.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd say about 30 years, I'm guessing probably.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd say about 30 years.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like anything that's new or different.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: You know, sometimes it takes different amounts of time for people to catch on or for it to, you know, gain momentum.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: But it started when, you know, I'd bought air cushions from Mark Anderson and I think I had that old 600 and I found I was doing the job quicker.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: And so I thought, well, yeah, I need to do something different.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: And the seed was planted with Mark, and then we took and worked and expanded it.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: And then what we did because I want to be fair to people, I don't want to shortchange myself, I don't want my customers to feel like they've been ripped off and so what we did, when we designed the price per pound and went through the process of fine-tuning it, we actually ran for probably a year or so, ran our regular bills right alongside the price per pound.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: So, every bill I did.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: I did both Because I wanted to say, okay, is this fair?
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: Does this come in within reason, is it something that is explainable and justifiable?
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: Because I want to be able to justify what I built and keep it in mind that there is a price that people have in mind, that they want to pay for recovers, and that price is zero.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: Nobody wants to pay anything for recovery.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: So it doesn't matter what you charge.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: It's more than they want to pay.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: So you're not going to make people happy with a particular number and you can't make your decision based on what you would pay or what you would do.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: It has to be based on several different factors.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: But one of the things that frustrated me is in this industry, unfortunately, you have some people out in left field, let's put it that way.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: They're a little bit ethically challenged and that's something I've always had a problem with.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Well, you have that on a couple levels.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: You have some folks that are out in left field that are maybe a little bit off, and you have some people that aren't even in the ballpark.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: They're not even in the stadium.
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: So there's really two different levels of that, because the not-in-the-stadium folks are almost criminal sometimes.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: it seems to me Correct.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Sorry for interrupting.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: And I had I think it was executive with Schneider, I think and we sat down a while.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: I was up in Washington DC at panels speaking to DOT and some big insurance companies, trucking companies, about price per pound, because it had been abused and it had been misused.
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: And it just got ridiculous and he pulled out a picture of a gentleman that had sat down and this had been 20, 25 years ago, something like that, and prices had certainly gone up since then.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: But he had sat down and when he finished his recovery he sat down in the waffle house getting a cup of coffee and scribbled on a napkin $100,000.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: Here you go, here's your bill, you know.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, is it a $100,000 job?
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: I don't know, it wasn't there.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: I mean it could have been a five-day job.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, who knows?
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: But where's the justification?
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: Where's the description of the work that you did?
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: What is that customer buying besides a cocktail napkin that has $100,000 on it?
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: How is that fair to your customer or the insurance company?
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: with that I agree.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: I totally agree.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: So big picture explain the concept of price per pound, how it works.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: The concept is basically you're taking a job that you do not every day but on a regular basis, and you're flat rating the job Okay and you're flat rating it with a measure that trucking companies understand.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: They live and die below weight.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: Everything is measured in weight at the scale house.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: You know your LTLs are charging so many pounds, 100 weight, so everything is something they can understand.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: Your insurance companies are looking at percentages, actuarials and risk.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: So when you take and bring things down to the point of ridiculous, then it helps them understand what you are doing.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: So what was happening is that these individuals in telecoms were buying hydraulics, they were buying air cushions and some of them were getting into rotators so that they could get in training from you and from Ross and from different places, so they could be the best at their trade, and they were losing their butt because they were getting the job done too fast because of the investment they made.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Where is the return on their investment?
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: Trade?
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: And they were losing their butt because they were getting the job done too fast because of the investment they made.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Where is the return on their investment?
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: Not knowing what else to do, they would circle the wagons, bring every piece of equipment they had out there, start charging for every stash block, every inch cable and who knows what else, to run the bill off to try to justify it because they didn't know any better, because it's the only way that they could get the pricing there and justify it.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: And the customer's like what are you doing?
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: I mean this is ridiculous.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: The second concept that I looked at with this is that anybody is uncomfortable when they don't know what they're going to have to pay.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: Yes, it could be, you're working on your house.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: It could be working on your car.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: If you have some storm damage on your house, which is happening to a lot of people now and a contractor comes in and says, yeah, I can fix it, I'll let you know how much costs I've done, you are not a happy camper.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: You're on pins and needles.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: You are dependent solely on this individual, this contractor, this tradesman, this craftsman treating you right or what you feel is being treated right, and you do not know until the end.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: Why can't we give our customers a price before we ever start?
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: And with the price per pound you can.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: Then, if you have another call, come in, you can send the truck over there.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: You can pull a man off.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: He's not paying for that, he's paying for the recovery.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: He's paying for the results.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: How those results come about is my problem.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: To store it never, ever should be his problem.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: As to how I accomplish the job, just that I accomplish the job properly, get safely, and I do the best job possible to protect his equipment.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: That's all he cares about.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: If he could do it himself, he'd do it.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: He wouldn't call us.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: We're the experts.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: Act like it and charge like it, but don't place our internal machinations on our customer.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: When you get insurance, they don't show you what the actuarial tables are.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: They don't tell you how they can ride with the number.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: This is what it's going to cost you for your truck insurance for a year.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: In return, we're going to be a stopgap for you on your losses up to a certain amount.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: So you know what you're buying.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: You know what the risk is, they know what the risk is, and so we have a happy medium where everybody walks away with something that they can live with.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: So when you have a truck trailer rolled over inside and you're charging so much a pound, so when you have a tractor rolled over inside and you're charging so much a pound and they've got a load of ribeyes at $7 a pound and you tell them that this is what it's going to cost and you've reduced it to the point of ridiculous, similar to what a life insurance agent will do when they come in and pat your knee and say my son, your lovely bride over there, isn't, isn't she worth 10 cents a unit per day?
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: And they say, no, right, go see your lawyer.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: But when you add it up all the units, and you add per day, now you've got a pretty healthy bill every month.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: But when you bring it down to do I want to keep my wife and take care of her, uh, or do I do I want to pitch a bid over a few cents?
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: Uh, when you're able to say, hey, for a few cents a pound, we're going to set your track trailer up, we're going to save your stakes, but we will save you money for this amount and we'll take care of it.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: We'll take care of everything.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: All the details are our problem, not yours.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: That is what people want to hear.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Is everything's handled?
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Hey, I've got to get you to hang around for one more quick break and we'll get back on it.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Sure Dig in a little deeper.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Be right back folks.
• 25:14
  Speaker 5: The best towing companies offer a combination of great training, efficient operations, along with quality supplies.
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: Towing Equipment Direct is committed to help your towing company stay ahead of the competition by providing the best quality of towing equipment and supplies.
• 25:25
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• 25:29
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• 25:32
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• 25:40
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• 25:46
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• 25:51
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• 25:56
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• 26:04
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• 26:12
  Speaker 5: That's 910-747-9000.
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: We look forward to serving you.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Welcome back folks.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: We really appreciate it.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: We've got Stormin' Norman, the inventor of price per pound over 30 years ago Now, just so some folks don't, I don't think this is a new concept to them.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Basically, what the concept is is you use it on major recoveries.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Is this something that's meant to be used for tow calls or this is for recovery only?
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Is that correct?
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: Absolutely not meant to use for tow calls or this is for recovery only.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: Is that correct?
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: Absolutely not.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: If you, if you've got a you know bread and butter, nose down, trailer you back up, you pop it up and go about your business.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is not, absolutely not designed to be a normal tow swap out or anything such as that.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: This is strictly for recoveries there, nothing.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: It's a pricing mechanism that's in your tool bag.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: You do not walk your toolbox and pull out a combination wrench every time.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: Sometimes you use a ratchet, sometimes you use an open end In your financial business.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: It should be no different.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: When you're pricing, sometimes you charge over the mile, sometimes you charge a simple job by the hour, but on a recovery, when you have a fairly standard bread and butter job, then you charge with a pound.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Now there may be instances where you say I'm going to have to do this one.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: By now You've got a D9 stuck in the mud someplace, you know, and it's been buried for a month, traction locked up, you've got a mess on your hands and you may tell them I'm going to charge you by the hour because of, and explain why, okay, but you never, ever, and this has happened before, and this is one of the reasons that I ended up years ago speaking to the DOT.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: This is one of the reasons that I ended up years ago speaking to the DOT was that it was being promoted that you double dip.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: You never, ever, charge someone by the hour and price per pound.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: It's one or the other.
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: You use it for recovery.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Don't abuse the system or we will end up inviting regulators on top of us well, that's what's going on in many states and we'll talk about that more in a minute.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: But so one of the things I remember about it if I'm correct me, if I'm wrong, 60,000 pound minimum.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: This is for attracted, you know, loaded tractor, trailer type work, and then you had a base rate and then an add-on.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: I remember one of them was if the wheels were higher than the roof, expand on that for me a little Very, very similar.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: So it kind of built that concept off of a flat rate book for engine work okay, right.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: So let's say you had a water pump job and it was 3.8 hours times your hourly rate, and then you had an add-on for an alternate or for a air conditioning, you know so there's different add-ons if the complexity of that job yes so if it wasn't there, you know, as a customer you weren't paying for a expanded water pump.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: Job before you had was simple and or the water pump and so we look to use, used basically the same concept where we had a minimum of $60,000, I think it was on a tractor, $30,000 on a straight truck.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: Okay, good point, good point.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: Just going out there and doing the job for nothing, okay.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: But if it was fully loaded or if it was overloaded, it could have been an oversized load.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: Then the price went up accordingly.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: Then, as the complexity happened, if it's raining outside, inclement weather, okay, that's additional challenges.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: If you're using airbags.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: On top of that, if you're head down, okay.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: It's always more difficult, especially if you have a box van, because you lose and those of you in the touring business know this.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: I mean you lose the roof, you lose the walls, you lose the floor.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: Okay, so it's not.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: So when your head down and the weight is up there in the roof, you've got a problem.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: It's hard to work and you want to do a good job.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: You want to recover intact as much as possible, unless you're in the risk program or something where you just get paid to clear the road and we don't worry about that uh.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: But at the end of the day it is more work and even if you're in the risk program, uh, or trip program or some of these uh, different highway programs, now you're having to bring out extra equipment you know to to get that job done and clear the road, because they're looking more at cleaning the road quickly as opposed to saving the equipment.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: There still involves more equipment, so you add an add-on to that for the additional work.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a great analogy about the mechanic flat rate.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: If the vehicle has an air conditioner, it's a harder job to do, so there's a little bit more of an add-on.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: That's a really good, clear definition.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: And what was there?
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Five, six, seven add-ons, if I remember originally.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Something like that it's.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: You know, try to keep it simple, and this was one of the problems with the concept is that everybody wants to make things difficult.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: It's the simplest things that make life easier, but I don't want to use my human nature.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: I remember reading years ago about Thomas Edison.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: When he hired his engineers, he wanted people to think outside the box.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: That would make things simple.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: And so he would take them in the lab and he'd say, okay, here is a light bulb minus a socket.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: I want you to tell me what the volume is of this light bulb and what would be contained in this light bulb.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: And he'd get some engineers to pull out their slide rules and calipers and measuring.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: And you have a globe and a tapered sphere.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: It's a very complex shape to try to measure and determine what the volume or the content inside that semi-globe is, and then they would just figure it and put it around and then you would have an engineer that would come in and say, oh okay, took a beaker of water, poured it in and then took a graduated beaker, poured it back, said okay, there's your water.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: Absolutely Making things simple is so much harder than what it would appear to be, and the problem that we had with the concept it was too simple.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: It sure has to be harder to do this.
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: I don't want to spend eight hours building a massive head recovery.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: I want to do this.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: Why do I want to spend eight hours building a massive head recovery?
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: I want to live 30 minutes, you know, and what we would do is we would put a little write-up.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: This is the scenario.
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: This is where we're at.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: This is what we're dealing with.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: It was hazmat.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: This is the placard numbers.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: This is the dangers that we faced and that we have willingly obligated ourselves, our lives, our health and our insurance company to.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: I want you to know that when I'm charging you an additional add-on for hazmat, that this is why I'm eliminating your risk, I'm eliminating your blowback for a price.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: And so when you do the write-up as to what's going on oh, that's what the job is I guarantee you the driver didn't tell the company it was that bad.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: He's trying to keep his job and then you would have the actual price per pound on that, listing out what details that you used, and then you have your total, and it makes it very, very simple, understandable, because whoever's the main candidate of the trucking company, they have to justify it to their comptroller.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: So give them something to justify it.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: They're just looking to see why, so help them.
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: You want your check.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: You're right.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: Make it easy for them absolutely.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: Because if things are simple and easy then it works so much better.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: Case in point I had another little side story here.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: We live in South Alabama and so we had a tornado, hurricane no, yes, well, hurricane, hurricane Michael and found out on the last claim that I had, with some water damage, that insurance companies no longer use this system of go get two quotes and we'll pay the most one.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: They have a consortium of insurance companies to build their software problem called Xactimate, and it's 10 to the nth detail.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: It's like we used to do with measuring every single snatch, block, inch of cable out there and everything else.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: It's just to the minutia, and there's so much stuff there that a client or owner of a house would look at and just get blown away.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: But you can have slow, medium and high levels and if you're not careful they can skim 10%, 15% off at the top of what is owed to you to properly repair your place.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: And so I thought, ah, this is the way the game is getting played now.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: So I heard somebody that had that very expensive program, interesting enough, as I mentioned, designed by the insurance companies, surprise, surprise, and I had them do it, and so when the adjuster walked up, I had a stack of papers and he said well, we need to do this.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: I said here, it is right here.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: And when he's, what about?
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: I said it's in there.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: What about it's in there?
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: It's like ragu spaghetti sauce, it's all there.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: And then I asked him.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: I said would you like me to give you the electronic file where everything is done for you?
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: Would you do that for me?
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: I would love to do that for you, sir, and in my mind, if he's not having to type everything in, he is not going to be nickel and diamond what my estimator came up with and he didn't.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: That's what we want to do.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: We want to make our pricing simple, explainable, justifiable and easy to explain for someone that doesn't know a thing about towing wreckers or even trucks that sit in the office and are being counted.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: Let's make their job easy.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: So what are you doing nowadays, normally?
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: We never did tell the folks that, and being talented, let's make their job easy.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: So what are you doing nowadays, norm?
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: We never did tell the folks that we are raising German Shepherds and we have quite a few with veterans that are alive today because they're Shepherds.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: We give a 10% discount to military and families with disabilities.
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: I'd strongly suggest them to towers because they.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: As I've dealt with PTSD with our disabled veterans and whatnot, I've realized that in the toying business there's so much that we face that we never get credit for.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: You know, I remember stuff from 20, 25 years ago and to me the worst ones were burned jobs and kids.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: You know, and I don't think we get enough credit for I don't know if you want to call it PTSD or what we have to live with, because we have a job to do.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: You can't talk to people about it.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: You know the brain matter is gray.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: You feel like leaning over a ditch sometimes and throwing up when you pull a car off somebody that's not pretty made up in a casket, and I really wish that people would respect us as true first responders in the job we do and the emotional price we pay, because we pay an emotional price, and so I have seen shepherds literally keep people alive, help them with their mental state of mind and so on, and then, because of that, we and a bunch of Karens back in 2015, 2017, something like that.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: We got involved in Montgomery legislation and I've written I don't know six, seven, eight laws down in Alabama.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: The last one I wrote is one that is very prescient to the Towers, and it was the John Hubbard New Roller Act and again, I, look at stuff, not how does everybody else do it, but how can we make it better?
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: And particularly in Alabama, we're known as the bottom of the heap.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: We just do what other people do.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: We don't think outside the box.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: Most states, including Alabama, had to move over a lot.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: Not enough teeth in it.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: In most mills You're slapping the wrist if you didn't slow down and move over.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: And most people don't slow down and move over and most people don't even think about slowing down.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: They think about I have to move over.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: A young man, john Hubbard, was on his rollback changing the fight tire for a lady and a young man from going to Isle of man off of school there, looked in the left mirror and went to pull over, not realizing there was a lady running 93 I think the computer said miles an hour.
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: She swerved, hit the guardrail, came across and killed John In his 20s.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: He lost his life.
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: What a waste was.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: What a waste and what a waste.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: And a tragedy that never seemed to happen.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: It didn't have to happen.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: It's hard to see how late as well as it should have, if you walk out of court, a free woman, right, mother, devastated, yeah we've seen that Nobody's doing anything.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we've seen that time and time again around the country, it's you know.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: So hopefully this will be a model law, but basically what I did is increase the fine.
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: If you get caught the third time, you lose your license for six months.
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: Then the real kicker was if there is physical injury, which is you just basically hurt yourself serious injury, which would be something that would take the rest with your life or death it goes from a Class A misdemeanor all the way up to a felony.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: That's good Now and I don't want to be in the middle of this when you're doing that but why, again this goes back to?
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: Sometimes we have to demand, as tollers, to be treated as professionals, and if you're going to kill one of us, you better pay the price.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: That's right, and that's what I've been doing behind the scenes trying to fight for veterans, for disabled and for tollers, because we deserve better.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely Well.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: Thank you for what you do.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: We really appreciate it.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: Thanks for taking the time for this podcast.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: If people want to get in touch with you, how can they reach out to you?
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Do you have an email form or?
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: something Sure.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: Stormandnormanhorton at gmailcom.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: My 6201 triple S Shepherds is my address.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: We mostly raise DDR East Germans, amazing dogs.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: But like anything else you gotta be in charge.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: But if you have any questions, feel free to reach out and talk to me or contact me through Wes and Wes.
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: I appreciate you reaching out and appreciate what you're doing for this industry to bring us kicking and screaming into modern history.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you, I've got to credit DJ Harrington for dragging me into it first.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: But yeah, we're thankful to be here and communicating with as many people as we do on podcasts, and part of the reason I think a lot of people listen is good, insightful interviews like you just gave.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: And part of the reason I think a lot of people listen is good, insightful interviews like you just gave.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: For anybody involved in the management level of telling, it was a master course on different subjects.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: Thank you, stormin.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: We'll have you back on.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: If you see anything pop up, reach out, but if not, we'll have you back on and talk soon, okay?
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: All right, Take care Wes have a good day.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: Thanks, dj, take us home buddy.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Thanks, wes, this has been a good one.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: I am so glad we archive every one of these things.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: So if you're archiving and I hope you do you listen to this again.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: When he brought up the name of Gary Coe, I loved it.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: When he talked about the great Kevin Goodyear, from Alabama, where, of course, stormy Norman lives Kevin Goodyear, from Alabama, where, of course, stormy Norman lives.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: But to remember Mark Anderson, my dear friend who has passed away many years ago, it was wonderful.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: Great tips Invest in the right people and in your people.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: So, without further ado, I want to tell all of our listeners I'll see you next week on the Great Towing News Channel.