Christian Science Monitor covers Asheville’s predatory towing controversy

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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The link to the Christian Science Monitor’s story on predatory towing around the USA, and here in Asheville is here. The Mountain Xpress has been all over the Asheville story.

Here’s a Monitor snippet:

And in late December, Asheville, N.C., police caught two drivers red-handed when they yanked a decoy vehicle from a pay-to-park lot as cameras rolled in a nearby police surveillance van.

Hitching onto the insular, cash-driven and lightly regulated tow truck industry, dozens of communities from Asheville to Davenport, Iowa to Fairview Ore., are exposing a shadowy and controversial front in the parking wars.

Taken together, recent headlines from around the country offer a glimpse into the nebulous underworld of “predatory towing” where risk-taking parking scofflaws share some of the blame with wildcatting tow truck drivers.

But the tension is building as downtown congestion grows, the troubled economy puts pressure on tow companies’ cash flow, and what drivers see as their rights increasingly conflict – all summed up by that sinking feeling of perusing a parking lot for a car that is no longer there.

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After largely deregulating the towing industry in 1996, Congress tried to address the excesses starting in 2005, when a clause in the federal highway bill gave states and municipalities greater authority to oversee local towing practices.

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Now, with some 30,000 nonconsensual tows taking place in the US each day – most legal, but many not – dozens of communities are also taking advantage of the 2005 law. New ordinances address the chief complaints from drivers: lack of reliable signage, egregious towing and impound fees, and cash-only policies.

“We know that there are some illegal and unethical practices going on,” says Captain Tim Splain of the Asheville Police Department. “If you can yank 12 or 14 cars a night at $150 a pop, that’s a pretty lucrative proposition.”