All Posts

There isn't one right answer. It depends on your cash, credit, and how much risk your business can handle. A new rollback in Canada runs $230,000–$280,000. That means a big down payment, a monthly truck payment, insurance, and eventually repairs — often for five years or more. Used trucks range anywhere from $25,000 to $150,000+, but the purchase price doesn't tell the whole story. Say you have $100,000 available: • 2011 Freightliner — $60,000, $20,000 down, $40,000 financed

Tow truck driver training is about far more than teaching someone how to load a car or complete an invoice. Many companies spend a few days—or perhaps a week—showing a new driver the basics of operating a wrecker or rollback. Then they hand over the keys and hope for the best. Even if a driver says they are ready to work independently, have you actually tested them? Have you confirmed that their knowledge goes beyond memorizing the steps they were shown? Can they safely make

I didn’t build The Towing Playbook because I had all the answers. I built it because I spent years learning what happens when you don’t have them. I’ve made pricing mistakes, hiring mistakes, and management mistakes. I’ve trusted the wrong people, tried to keep too much information in my head, and worked ridiculous hours because the businesses I helped build depended too heavily on me being there. I’ve fixed problems in the middle of the night that probably could have been pr

The Towing Playbook — Bob Cook When I started my first towing company, I had a theory. I only had one truck. I worked out of my driveway. I had no employees, no yard, no office. My overhead was basically nothing, so why would I charge the same as the established companies in the area? They had all that infrastructure to support. I didn't. So I set my rates accordingly. Fifty dollars a tow. Forty dollars for a boost, a lockout, a tire change, a fuel delivery. Whatever you need

I have hired a lot of people over 17 years in this industry. Some of them were excellent. Some of them were not. But the ones that stuck with me, the ones I think about when I think about what this industry can look like when it is working right, were not necessarily the most skilled dispatchers/ operators when they started. They were the ones who felt like the company they worked for gave a damn about them. And the ones who left, the good ones, the ones I wished had stayed,

I have been in this industry for 17 years. I have worked nights in January when it was 40 below and the calls did not stop. I have worked the aftermath of fatal accidents and driven home with things I could not unsee. I have managed operators who were burning out, made payroll decisions that kept me up at night, and dealt with customers who treated me like I was less than human because their car was in a ditch and they were having a bad day. Nobody warned me about any of that

Repairs and maintenance are one of the biggest expenses a towing company will ever face — especially if you're running used trucks. But here's the thing: most of that expense isn't inevitable. It's the cost of not catching problems early. Having a preventative maintenance schedule lets your mechanics, drivers, and operations managers catch problems before they become failures. Over my career, I've seen almost everything fail that wasn't caught in time — and almost every one o

I've been in the towing industry for about 17 years. I started as a driver, learning everything I could — how the trucks worked, how repairs and maintenance were done. I listened to the dispatchers when they talked to customers. I listened to managers when they talked to employees. I paid attention because I wasn't just interested in becoming a tow truck driver. I was interested in running the whole thing. I started my first towing company in 2017 because I wanted to do thing