Service Request #5: Dude, Where's My Car?

A missing car reveals the confusing rules, murky fees, and private actors behind modern towing.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:39Speaker 04

  Well, I thought my car had been stolen.

• 1:43Speaker 04

  Which, I was like, does that even happen? I guess it does, but, you know, my car is really old. It's like 2011 Mazda 6, so I really didn't know why anyone would want to take that car.

• 1:56Speaker 05

  This is Kelly Prime. We work together at 99PI and she lives in Brooklyn. And not too long ago, she had an experience that shook her. She and her friends had been out for the day in Coney Island and they were stopping to get some takeout on the way home. They were looking for a place to park, not too far from the restaurant.

• 2:15Speaker 04

  And you know, this is Brooklyn, so there's not a lot of parking available. And all the street parking looked like it was filled up. But on the right-hand side, we come upon this brightly lit, beautiful, empty parking lot in front of a 7-Eleven.

• 2:33Speaker 05

  Perfect, like irresistible, it sounds like.

• 2:36Speaker 04

  Irresistible, an oasis, allure, some might say.

• 2:42Speaker 04

  So we parked in the parking lot, pulled up, only car there, what a miracle. And just ran out into the supermarket and spent probably like, you know, 15 minutes grabbing our stuff.

• 2:55Speaker 05

  They came back out, went to the 7-Eleven parking lot, and the car wasn't there.

• 3:04Speaker 04

  Disappeared. The car was gone. And I was sort of in denial for a second. I was like, well, surely, like, I just, I'm not that great at remembering where I parked anyway. But it's not a big lot and it's super brightly lit and there's no cars there.

• 3:17Speaker 05

  So she and her friends went into the 7-Eleven to ask if anyone had seen anything.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  We go to the register and we're like, I think our car just got stolen. Did you see anyone steal a car? And the guy was like, no, it didn't get stolen, got towed. And this guy is just acting like, like he's never heard something more boring in his life. And he was like, yeah, like 20 cars get towed a day. There's a sign out there, call the number.

• 3:47Speaker 05

  Back out in the parking lot, they did find signs warning that unauthorized cars would be towed. One was in Cyrillic, one was covered in graffiti, and another was tucked away in a far corner of the lot. Kelly had the idea to pull up the Google reviews for the 7-Eleven. And they found dozens of people telling pretty much the same story.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  Says, "I was their customer for many years, "gave a great business for all those years, "till my car was towed, less than six minutes' absence." If you read the other one-star review, you'll understand what's going on. "This store is running a scam. "We bought drinks in the store, "and someone called the towing truck. "Never buy anything from this store. "Call 311." "Terrible and unethical." "Take your car hostage and get $150 from you."

• 4:39Speaker 05

  I'm Delaney Hall, and this is Service Request from 99% Invisible and Campside Media. We take your burning questions about infrastructure and we investigate. Kelly eventually got her car back that night, and we will get into that. But the whole experience left her with a question that she could not shake, or really, a whole bunch of questions.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  How is it that you can just park your car? 15 minutes later, it's gone? I don't know who's in charge of regulating this. I don't know who empowers these tow truck guys? Under whose authority are they working? It just feels like this black box of mystery that's affecting clearly a lot of people, if the Google reviews are to be believed.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  Today, the black box of mystery of towing and impoundment. Who decides when your car gets taken? Who decides where it goes? And when things go wrong, which it turns out, they do a lot, why is it so hard to fix?

• 5:44Speaker 05

  When we started trying to find the answer to Kelly's question, I learned the term that describes this kind of practice. It's called predatory towing, and it describes towers who actively hunt for cars to pick up and then demand inflated fees when owners try to get them back. Predatory towing happens everywhere, but in some places, it happens a lot. Detroit, Michigan has a well-documented and long-running predatory towing problem, and so that makes it a good case study for us.

• 6:14Speaker 06

  I mean, it's a big business. It's a multimillion-dollar business, and they make a lot of money doing this.

• 6:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 06

  So, that's why they do it.

• 6:22Speaker 05

  This is Tom Berry. He spent 35 years as a police officer in Detroit, and he retired as a lieutenant about a decade ago. Since then, he's worked as a fraud investigator for insurance companies. And he has seen the towing industry from basically every angle. He's been a cop who called tow trucks, and he's been an investigator who's uncovered how corrupt towing companies actually operate. I'm curious, can you help us understand, in an ideal world, how is towing supposed to be a public good? What kind of service do towers provide when they're working well?

• 7:04Speaker 06

  If it's working good, which we all like to see, you live on Elm Avenue, and you come out one day and you can't get out of your driveway because somebody's parked there. So of course, you call the police because you've got to go to work. And the police call the tow truck, and the tow truck comes out and moves that car out of your way so you can go about your business. That's a good deal. Also, we have accidents. Once they take care of the injured, we need to remove those cars from the road. The tow companies take them to a tow yard. So they can be good.

• 7:38Speaker 05

  In many cities, when there's a crash that needs to be cleared or a vehicle that's been abandoned on the street, police will call a private towing company to haul it away. That's how it works in Detroit, too. Tom says that when he was a police officer, the department gave him a list of the tow companies that he was allowed to call. These were companies that had a contract with the police to cover a certain area of the city. And most officers would go down the approved list calling companies until one was available to send a tow truck. But years later, as a lieutenant, Tom discovered that not all police officers were doing it that way.

• 8:19Speaker 06

  They were using a certain tower. They weren't calling the scheduled towers, the towers on the list. They were calling their friend.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  Some cops were calling tow companies they had a relationship with. And many of those companies were inflating their fees way beyond what a typical tow would cost. Then they'd pay kickbacks to the police officers who sent the business their way.

• 8:45Speaker 06

  And the corruption kind of swelled. It just keeps surmounting and eventually, you know, it comes crashing down. That's what happened here in Detroit.

• 8:56Speaker 05

  Eventually, there was a federal investigation into the corruption that Tom is talking about, and some cops went to jail. But that wasn't the end of towing problems in the city. In fact, Tom says some of the most problematic towing doesn't even involve the police. It involves situations like Kelly's, where people get towed for parking in a private lot. I'm curious if, kind of zooming out, you can walk me through how a predatory towing operation works. Like, what does a typical day look like? What are the most common schemes that you see?

• 9:37Speaker 06

  Well, I think that most towers are basically honest. First, I want to give them a little accolade. But so what happens, like your friend there at the 7-Eleven? So it's illegal to park in private property and go to the doctor's office, let's say, or go, you know, go do your shopping. So if you own a business in your city, you know, McDonald's or Burger King or whatever, and you have private citizens that are patronizing your business tying up your lot, and they keep coming in there and you're losing customers because your lot's full of people going to shop at Macy's, then you're mad. So you, the business owner, can contact

• 10:23Speaker 06

  You know, Joe's Towing and say, hey, I got a red Chevy out in my lot. Can you come and get it? It's been here for a half hour.

• 10:30Speaker 05

  This practice makes sense. A business needs to keep its lot clear for actual customers. And that's what happened to Kelly. She parked at a 7-Eleven, walked to a neighboring restaurant, and then came back to find her car gone. She technically broke the rules and the tow company had the right to take her car. But there are sketchier tactics that some towers use to maximize the number of cars they can grab. For instance, spotters.

• 10:59Speaker 06

  Spotters are paid citizens that live in that area. I approach them and say, hey, I'm the owner of Joe's Towing and I know that your apartment overlooks, you know, the Burger King lot over here. So we meet. It's okay. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to watch this lot and if you see somebody go into that lot and not use the business, you call me. And so I'll be right there. And if I get the tow job, you get 50 or 100 bucks. So tow truck makes cash. People make 50 bucks, no taxes. Everybody's happy, except the person that parked there.

• 11:35Speaker 05

  Except the person who parked there. So this is interesting. Some tow companies, they basically recruit a neighborhood network of eyes on the ground, of spies.

• 11:49Speaker 06

  That's a good way to put it. A neighborhood network. Excellent.

• 11:53Speaker 05

  People who are just keeping an eye on these various parking lots and when they see someone park there and not use the business, they just give the tow truck driver a call and they get a kickback.

• 12:02Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 12:04Speaker 05

  In some cities, it's illegal for tow companies to use spotters, but not in New York City or in Detroit. One tow company there became so notorious for using spotters, they felt the need to put out this little explainer video on their Facebook page.

• 12:19Speaker 07

  A lot of people think a spotter is illegal, but it's not. There's nothing illegal about it. They're just maintaining parking spaces for the property owner.

• 12:29Speaker 05

  After the break, we'll talk with a driver who used to work for that notorious Detroit tow company.

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• 15:17Speaker 02

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• 15:48Speaker 05

  Well, I guess to start, could you just introduce yourself? Like your name and where you are and what you're doing?

• 15:55Speaker 08

  My name is Shane Nation. I'm in Detroit, Michigan, and I currently tow. And I've been in the industry for about five years.

• 16:05Speaker 05

  When I spoke with Shane, he was in his tow truck between calls on his lunch break. As far as I can tell, there aren't a lot of tow truck drivers who are willing to talk with a journalist about the realities of the job, but Shane is one of them. He started in the industry when he was just 16 years old.

• 16:23Speaker 08

  Once I started like working in the industry, it's like a bug. It's very hard to go do something where you're not as free. Like go sit in an office or inside all day long. And honestly, it's not boring. There's people that have been towing for 25 years and they'll tell you that they learn new stuff every day because it's just genuinely that type of job.

• 16:46Speaker 05

  So for people who are not familiar with towing, what is a typical day like in the life of a tow truck driver?

• 16:53Speaker 08

  You normally sit in the truck, you play on your phone, do whatever to like. Let time pass and then you just wait for police calls to come in. Those could look like impounds, like somebody got arrested. And we would tow their car to impound lot. It could look like a car crash and we have to be out there cleaning the scene on the highway or something. And it could be as simple as your, you know, your mom broke down and she just needs to tow to the mechanic shop and to get her car fixed.

• 17:20Speaker 05

  Have you towed your mom?

• 17:22Speaker 08

  Yeah, uh, not my mother. Luckily, she buys newer vehicles and gets warranties and stuff, but, uh, family members, yes.

• 17:31Speaker 05

  So they're like, oh, I know exactly who to call. Shane.

• 17:34Speaker 08

  Yeah, unfortunately, that is what seems to be what they do.

• 17:40Speaker 05

  Shane's first real towing job was with a company in Detroit that had a reputation for predatory towing. Shane doesn't actually have a problem naming this company. He's spoken on TV in Detroit about them. But we don't want to name them in this episode. We don't want Shane to get in trouble.

• 17:58Speaker 08

  So since day one there, they would say, hey, look, we're on the news all the time. It is what it is. People don't like their car getting towed. So that's pretty much how I was told there, like, hey, you're gonna see that we're this, this and that. And, uh, just don't believe it because, you know, we're just doing the public a service and some people don't appreciate that.

• 18:19Speaker 05

  At first Shane thought, maybe that's just how the world works. People just complain to the media a lot. Plus, he liked his job. He liked the trucks and getting greasy and how every day was interesting and new. A lot of the jobs he was doing were private property impounds, or PPIs. That's when a tow company has a contract with a property owner, like an apartment complex or a 7-Eleven, to tow cars that shouldn't be there. And this company that Shane worked for was aggressive about it. They would work with spotters, like the ones Tom told us about. They had people sitting in the parking lot, watching and waiting for someone to park illegally.

• 19:01Speaker 08

  We had two different spotters. They would sit and tend it out cars and just wait for somebody to pull up. We would sit around the corner. We wouldn't be no further than five minutes away.

• 19:12Speaker 05

  One of the lots Shane worked was across the street from the Med Center, which is a cluster of major hospitals in downtown Detroit. People would park in the apartment complex lot and then walk across the street to visit someone in the hospital. And Shane's job was to tow their cars the moment they walked away.

• 19:29Speaker 08

  We'd pull up right away, grab their car and drive off with it. Now, these people, sometimes they would come out and, you know, they'd be screaming, yelling, "I don't have another car. How am I supposed to get to work? How am I supposed to take my kids to school?" And when I was 17, I'm not gonna lie, I had no remorse for them. I didn't feel bad for them at all. But, once I started getting older and having bills to pay and understanding that it's genuinely hard out here in the world to survive, especially on a low income, and then somebody's coming and taking your car when you're just trying to visit, you know, your mom or your dad that's in the hospital, I can understand now, that's like just a really crappy thing to do to somebody.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  Shane says he would sometimes spend whole shifts sitting in his truck near that one parking lot, waiting for spotters to call in tows. Because that single lot was sort of a goldmine.

• 20:28Speaker 08

  It's 100% returns, other than the fuel you used, on profit. So, I mean, they're making a killing just towing 15 to 20 cars a day off that one lot. And they have all of downtown Detroit. So, I mean, it's a big operation.

• 20:45Speaker 05

  Given the company's reputation, sometimes the Detroit police would show up to see what was going on. Or they'd respond to complaints from people who were getting their cars towed. But the company was ready for that. Shane says they trained their employees on what to say when the police arrived, which laws to mention in their arguments for towing a certain car. Shane's interactions with the public weren't any better. It was all so confrontational.

• 21:12Speaker 08

  They would always beg and plead, and that's understandable, especially if you don't have the money. It was standard. I was constantly, for lack of a better word, I was constantly the a-hole in every predicament I've ever, like, every interaction I had, I was the aggressor. And I just, it wasn't a good feeling.

• 21:35Speaker 05

  If you think about it, it is kind of wild that these non-law enforcement private companies are allowed to just take people's unattended vehicles. Shane says that bad practices are common in the world of private property impounds because there are basically no checks in the system.

• 21:53Speaker 08

  Definitely. It's the least regulated. You're not pulling up on a police scene with police there. You're not pulling up on a broken down vehicle with the car's owner there. You're pulling up on an unattended vehicle that you have full access to. And I mean, you just hook up this car and you call the police nearby and you go, "Hey, I'm towing this car because it's parked incorrectly on this lot." There's no verification of this whatsoever. You just, you call the police and you tell them you're doing it and they put the car in lean so it can't be reported stolen. That's all it is to PPIs and there's just no verification in the system. So, everybody exploits it.

• 22:34Speaker 05

  So, you're doing this at this apartment complex lot. You've gotten a little older. You're like, "This doesn't feel good." Because you understand kind of the implications of having your car towed. It's expensive. It's like a huge headache. So, what happened from there?

• 22:52Speaker 08

  So, it was never that, like, I wanted to continue doing it. It was kind of the fact that I had bills to pay and my own family to feed is why I stayed there for so much longer after that time period.

• 23:05Speaker 05

  Right.

• 23:06Speaker 08

  But, yeah, like, I hated it every day after that. Like, it made me lose my love for towing and I genuinely just wanted out in any way, shape, or form by the end of it.

• 23:17Speaker 05

  Shane was having a full-blown crisis of conscience. He dreaded going to work and spending all day towing people who he believed didn't really deserve it. Eventually, he left the predatory tow company. He thought he might go back to working in fast food. But instead, he started with a different company where he was doing different kinds of toes.

• 23:38Speaker 08

  I just didn't want to do PPIs. That was my biggest thing, was private property impounds feel like... They're just not necessary, like at least in the way they did it. Like it was just unnecessary and I just, I did them so much 24/7 that I just didn't want to do them ever again. And that was my main thing. Where I'm at now, all I do is services. Like I, I'm not towing anybody's car because I want to. You know, it's simply they call or the police call and I'm going there to either clean up the wreck or I'm going there to get those people home. Especially where I'm at now, it's never the case that I'm going there for any other reason other than to service them.

• 24:27Speaker 05

  These conversations with Tom and Shane helped me understand so much better what might have happened with Kelly's car. She was involved in a private property impound situation. She parked at that 7-Eleven illegally. There may have been a spotter that saw her do it and the company probably had a relationship with a toer who was contacted as soon as she walked away. So after standing in the parking lot trying to figure out what to do, she and her friends decided to call the tow company.

• 24:58Speaker 04

  So we called the number and we actually had to call like multiple times to, to get the information we needed because like we'd call and then they would hang up or we'd call and sort of not get the right information.

• 25:14Speaker 05

  At one point Kelly asked the tow company to confirm that they had her car by reading back the license plate number.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  And they're like, we can't give you the license plate. And at one point they were like, yeah, we have your car, but come back tomorrow.

• 25:28Speaker 05

  It was all extremely confusing, but eventually Kelly took a cab home to let her dog out for a walk and her friends decided to go get the car themselves. The impound lot was about a mile from the 7-Eleven and they had to walk there. They eventually found the place and through the holes in the front gate, they could see Kelly's car.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  They got there and there was a building that was brightly lit up inside indicating that perhaps the office was not actually closed. But they were brought into this building and the guy was like, it's going to be $350 to get your car back because the office is closed right now.

• 26:07Speaker 05

  Wow, that's a lot of money.

• 26:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, especially, I'm pretty sure the sign said 125. Like, the sign had a pay scale on there. And he was immediately like, that's gonna be 350.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  So there's sort of this, there's this negotiation going on. It's like,

• 26:26Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, totally.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  There's totally a negotiation. And it included, like, at first, they said, oh, because I'm not physically there, that's an extra fee. And then they said, oh, the business is closed. It's after hours, so that's another fee. But there wasn't actually a fee structure. It was just like a negotiation, like a bartering.

• 26:50Speaker 05

  They were just making it up.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, they kidnapped my car and then like ransomed it for an uncertain amount of money based on how much cash my friends had on hand. Like, it's crazy they can do that.

• 27:04Speaker 05

  But according to Tom, the retired cop, tow companies do this all the time. They pretend they're closed so that people have to come back the next day. And that allows them to inflate the storage fees they charge. They demand to see registration and insurance, which is often in the car that's been impounded. And so people have to run around gathering new documents.

• 27:26Speaker 06

  Might take them a day, might take them two days to go get that information and bring it back to satisfy the tow company. Meanwhile, another 50 bucks a day, another 50 bucks a day for, for keeping your car.

• 27:39Speaker 05

  Often, these businesses don't disclose their fee structures. And even when they do, the fees can be manipulated.

• 27:47Speaker 06

  So, well, it came in on the second at 11 o'clock at night. And here it is the third, and it's 1 o'clock in the morning. Well, that's two days' story, so it's $110. Well, wait a minute. My car's only been here for two hours. Yeah, but that's the way it is.

• 28:02Speaker 05

  Cause it's technically touched two days, even if it was just a few hours in the middle of the night. I see.

• 28:10Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 28:11Speaker 05

  Kelly's friends were lucky, if you can call it that, because they showed up that same night. They eventually paid $200 to get the car back.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  It's really, really sketchy. Like, none of this feels legal. You can just take someone's car, ransom it, figure out an amount of money between you, and then they said, no receipt. So they just had to pay their $200. How else are you gonna get your car back? Like, these five guys have it. What else are you gonna do?

• 28:39Speaker 05

  It almost seems like the towers don't want you to get your car back. Or at the very least, they might not mind if you don't retrieve your car.

• 28:47Speaker 06

  Well, what some of these tow companies do, they know good cars and bad cars. You know what I mean by that? Like, hey, that's a, that's an older car, but it's got good treads on it, good struts. You know, it looks pretty okay. I could probably get some money for that. So they kind of pull that to the side of the auction that they have every 30 days. Cars are valuable.

• 29:07Speaker 05

  This is another way they're making money.

• 29:09Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 29:10Speaker 05

  They hold a person's car until the fees are so high, the person can't afford to

• 29:16Speaker 06

  Get it out.

• 29:17Speaker 05

  retrieve it.

• 29:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 05

  And then they sell that car at auction, scrap it for parts, make money on the car itself.

• 29:26Speaker 06

  That's why it's a multi-million dollar business, towing is. And people don't realize that.

• 29:32Speaker 05

  For that reason, Tom says bad towers might target cars that look a little bit junky or old, like Kelly's 2011 Mazda. Cars that look like they might be underinsured, or their owners might not have hundreds of dollars on hand to get them back.

• 29:47Speaker 06

  Because they're easy targets. And generally, those, those owners of those cars don't squeak. They don't make complaints. I don't know if that's their reasoning, but it sounds reasonable to me. You know, go after the low hanging fruit versus the high hanging fruit.

• 30:04Speaker 05

  Towers can get away with this in part because there's very little oversight. The towing industry is regulated by a patchwork of laws across the country. They vary state by state. According to research done by a consumer watchdog group, only about half of states set a cap on towing or impoundment fees. More than 30 states don't require rates to be displayed or disclosed. 13 states don't even require the towing company to notify you that your car has been towed. And in 34 states, kickbacks are legal. All of which creates a massive gray area. Some of what they do just sounds like aggressive business practices.

• 30:47Speaker 05

  You know, like towing companies working hard, working proactively to tow illegally parked cars and to make money. And I guess I'm wondering, when do you think it crosses the line from, you know, going hard for business to something more like fraud?

• 31:05Speaker 06

  Sure, I don't know where the line is, but there's certainly a wavy line there that nobody knows about.

• 31:14Speaker 05

  It's interesting what you're saying because it strikes me as part of the problem, which is that you hear about these tactics that bad towers use, and they just seem unfair. And yet, it's not totally clear they're breaking some law.

• 31:34Speaker 06

  You're absolutely right. There's a big gray area there, huge. So the only way to stop it is get a law, make a law, or an ordinance in the city you can make it, and prosecute them. And don't take your foot off the gas. And unfortunately, many cities don't fight it till it's so...

• 31:54Speaker 06

  Out of control, that now they can't get it all back in the box. You know, the box has been opened and that crap's flying all around. How are you going to get that box closed again? You know, it's difficult. And that's what happens when you let little things like the little tow. Hey, you charged your four days' towing, you only had it one. When you do that, if you don't stop it, it's just going to be six days, seven days. Because that's what happens. It's just human nature. It's just going to keep growing. So the only way to stop it, in my opinion, is sort of nip it in the bud. You know, stop it when it's small, so we can control it.

• 32:28Speaker 05

  Tom's advice is to pass regulations and then crack down. But some cities have tried a different approach. They've just cut private towers out entirely. And they've set up their own public towing operations. But getting that going can be a heavy lift. It requires a city to acquire land for the impoundment lot, and trucks to do the towing, and people to staff the operation. How common is it for a city to have their own trucks, their own lot?

• 32:58Speaker 06

  I don't think it's common. I think it's a rarity.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  And why isn't it more common?

• 33:04Speaker 06

  Um, it's, it's a lot. You got, who's going to oversee it? Are you going to have policemen oversee it? There's so many cost considerations, I think, for that. That they just don't want to do it. They want somebody else to do it. Which I would too. I think that's what happens with the cities, is they don't want to deal with it.

• 33:24Speaker 05

  What's one piece of advice you have for someone whose car has just been towed?

• 33:30Speaker 06

  Of course, it's the situation. If it's, it was legitimate, you had an accident, and the police come out in a, in a normal city, and they're going to tow it to their yard, that's the way it should go. If you've got insurance on your car, let it run its course. Make your claim, call your company, make an insurance claim. But be aware of, especially in parking, private property tow's. It's extremely lucrative. When you pull into a lot, if you see a sign, you know, this area controlled by Tom's Towing, you know, violators will be towed.

• 34:06Speaker 06

  Pay attention to those signs because a lot of those places, they got somebody watching and they're gonna tow ya. Be careful where you park.

• 34:14Speaker 05

  What I hear you saying when I say, you know, what's your piece of advice? It's basically, "Don't get towed." Like, do not get yourself caught up in this situation.

• 34:25Speaker 06

  If you come out and they got the car on the hook, okay? Pay the drop fee. Pay it. Just pay it right down. You're saving yourself time, aggravation, trouble, problems. Just pay it. Try to negotiate it down. Say, "You know what?" And this is what I tell people. Let's say it's 400. Say, "Oh my God, would you take 250?" Barter, barter, barter.

• 34:51Speaker 05

  Uh huh. But get your car back.

• 34:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, get your car back. Don't leave it. Don't wait. Don't wait.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  We started with the question, "How is it that you can just park your car at a 7-Eleven? 15 minutes later, it's gone and you have to negotiate a ransom with some guy in a dark parking lot? And that is an actual business?"

• 35:15Speaker 05

  And we have a pretty good answer. The reality is that towing regulation varies state by state. But in many places, towing companies have contracts with private businesses to monitor and tow illegally parked cars in their lots. Some towers use "spotters." Those are people who keep an eye on parking lots and call the tow company as soon as they see someone park there illegally. Some tow companies don't post their fees and then bargain with people once they show up to try and reclaim their car. And in many states, there are few regulations governing how tow companies operate.

• 35:54Speaker 05

  With that, Kelly, consider your service request resolved.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  Today on the show, you heard Kelly Prime, an editor with 99% Invisible. You also heard Tom Berry, a retired police officer who's now an investigator for the insurance industry, and Shane Nation, a tow truck driver in Detroit. What infrastructure mystery keeps you up at night? Is there something in your life that you use every day, but you don't actually understand how it works? Submit your service request by recording a voicemail with your question and emailing it to [email protected]. And remember, if your car gets towed, try to negotiate the price down. Or better yet, don't get towed in the first place. I'm Delaney Hall. Infrastructure is everywhere,

• 36:49Speaker 05

  and we're here to help you decode it. Service Request is a production of 99% Invisible and Campside Media. The show is produced and fact-checked by Julia K. Levine and edited by Shoshi Shmulevitz. Mixed by Ewan Lai Trumewin. Theme song and music by Swan Rayal. Additional editing by Emmett Fitzgerald and Vivian Le. Show art by Erin Nester. Roman Mars is our boss at 99PI. Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Matt Share is the executive producer at Campside. We are a part of the SiriusXM Podcast family. You can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as our Discord server.

• 37:34Speaker 05

  There's a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org.