Interview with City’s Towing coordinator

In following up with repair shop accusations, Collision Standard spoke with the City of Portland’s Towing Coordinator Marian Gaylord.

CS: We would like to sort out some accusations that came our way that the City of Portland has been showing favoritism toward some body shops and that certain tow companies are directed to take damaged vehicles to certain shops and not others. One of the tow companies mentioned may have lost its city contract because it towed vehicles to one shop and not others. Is that true?

Gaylord: Yeah. The tow contractors are forbidden by [their city] contract to suggest or influence in any way where a car is taken for repairs of any kind. A pattern existed there. Apparently, a Portland collision repair shop had offered bonuses to the drivers from a lot of companies. But the only one we had an unnatural pattern with was one tow company.

CS: How was the pattern different with that one tow company?

Gaylord: The number of tows that that company took to the Portland shop was out of line with the pattern of all the other towers.

CS: So they took a far greater number to the Portland shop than to any other repair shop?

Gaylord: Right. We wouldn’t have even questioned it, except that I received specific complaints from citizens saying, “I was unconscious; I couldn’t tell them to take it there.”

CS: In that situation it would be hard to express ones wishes, wouldn’t it?

Gaylord: Yes.

CS: What is the general policy – what happens when a tow company receives a call? Where do they normally take cars?

Gaylord: If a car is simply being impounded like, for example, for a DWS [Driving While Suspended] or a DUI [Driving Under the Influence] kind of citation, those [vehicles] normally are going to be taken to the formal police storage hold.

Many cars are taken to the towers lot for safe storage.

But when it comes to accidents or break-downs, that sort of thing, the [tow companies] only have two options.

They can take the car to where the citizen asks them to take it.
Or they can take it to their [the tow company’s] yard.

CS: What happens when an AAA contracted tow company who also has a City of Portland tow contract gets called to go to the scene of an accident. Whose towing rules apply?

Gaylord: If it’s an AAA requested tow, then it’s entirely in their bailiwick. Then, we don’t worry about it. Because the only way it is going to be a Triple A tow is if, first of all, there is no citation issued or anything. That’s no different than a citizen being in an accident; the officer arrives and asks, “Where would you like your car towed?” The citizen says, “Take it to Academy Body Shop.” So if it’s an AAA requested call, then it is not one that would be involved with our contracts.

CS: According to one body shop in Portland: One tow company tows primarily for one of the prominent local body shop chains. This shop owner was told by tow drivers that if they did take any vehicle to his shop the drivers would be fired.

Gaylord: That’s not something I can attest to. There again, a lot of times, the towers will have a contract with a body shop to tow cars to them.

But if it’s a tow that comes through our tow desk, where [the tow drivers] are sent out on rotation, then they cannot suggest, influence, threaten [joking], or anything else.

--Anne Koppel Conway