SMALL BIZ SERIES  l  While the recovery profession hasn’t changed dramatically with the information age beyond perhaps GPS dispatches, what has shifted significantly in recent years is the way customers now search for businesses.   

Fewer and fewer of us now turn to phonebooks or yellow page ads when hunting down a service company. An increasing number of people both young and old now turn to a web search engines or social media platforms for their initial leads.

If your shop has no presence whatsoever in the social media universe, experts say not to view it as an overly-difficult hassle.

Most popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter have free, basic set-ups that are remarkably-user friendly, even for the least savvy of surfers.

[ SEE THE VIDEOS BELOW FOR BASIC SETUP INSTRUCTIONS ]

The potential benefits to devoting an hour or two creating an online identity that local users can find is well worth the minor headaches it might bring. This proves especially true in terms of people now using their smartphones to conduct day-to-day business.

In a recent social media marketing analysis, author Michael Stelzner reported that nearly half of small business owners who engaged in social media reported direct results from their efforts. Nearly 60 percent also indicated saving revenue on other forms of media. 

Most shops now have a Facebook page, often set up with just the basics. Experts remind that businesses should not avoid developing a presence online because of lack of content. Your company profile doesn’t have to have eighty pictures or a bio for each staffer to serve a purpose.

What’s more crucial are the connections. Take the time to link your Facebook or Twitter accounts to other nearby businesses. This becomes mutually-beneficial in most cases, and can quickly begin spreading to more and more connections.

Growing a friends lists, or being liked by more and more users will link your business to those users accounts for the long run. Putting out a weekly or monthly message from your company can help refresh that memory for when customers later need a tow.

“While social media cannot replace traditional advertising in your marketing plan,” said Ashely Poland of Demand Media, “using social media websites to market your products and website helps expand your reach without increasing your cost.”

Your content can grow over time, right alongside the connections made. Many businesses now make it part of their regular routine to update their accounts to connect with new customers’ social media accounts.

Many shops now also link to local police departments, auto shops and other tow-related sites.

Another benefit for business owners is they can control the contact made with their social media sites. By setting your site preferences correctly, you can set each so others can not post without your approval. This can help you maintain a positive, focused online presence that services your customer base.

“Not only do social media sites like Facebook and Twitter serve as general hangouts,” Poland added, “but they also provide opportunities to spread your message as a business, to connect with your target audience better.”

RESOURCES

How To Setup Twitter in Minutes

How To Setup Facebook Page

For Social Media Guidance…

SocialMediaExaminer.com

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MIAMI, Flor. – Lock-outs can be a tricky matter, sometimes even in broad daylight. In poorly lit areas, or in the dead of night, they can become frustrating and time consuming.  A south Florida company that specializes in lock-out equipment has offered a great solution for towing professionals.

Access Tools developed their ‘Smart Light‘ after hearing feedback about needing more light inside the vehicle cabin.  The design uses four suction cups to attach the device directly to the windshield, flooding the interior by 24-LED lights enhanced by its mirrored dome. 

The device is ideal for lock-outs, repo work or any job located in a poorly lit area.  It’s more than powerful enough to penetrate even deeply tinted glass. 

At AccessTools, they build for durability knowing it will be needed out in the field. As part of their quality control testing, they found the Smart Light could survive a 25-ft. drop onto concrete.

The team at AccessTools has been innovating lock-out work since 1986, and have since grown into a 26,000-sq.-ft facility.  

The Smart Light is powered by four standard AA batteries, and lists for $34.95.  

Tow Squad is there when you need lock-out service.  Contact Tow Squad 24/7 and an expert car locksmith will unlock your car in no time.

 
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DURRANT, Okla.  l  An Oklahoma grandmother distressed about her car being towed turned to Facebook last week to share her troubles. After experiencing sudden mechanical difficulty, she had ditched her car in a shopping center lot, only to later discover it removed.

Turns out the right person wound up reading about her situation, specifically the owner of the shop that had handled her car’s transport.

In Durant, north of Dallas near the Texas-Oklahoma border, Glenna Willeby turned to social media after discovering her Ford Mustang removed from the lot. She wasn’t so much shocked, as it had been over four days since she’d been forced to abandon it where it conked out.

Frustrated, she visited the Bryan County’s community feedback page at Facebook, posting about how she struggled to make arrangements for a tow herself, even notifying the shop owners at the center of the situation.

When Nathan White read the story, he was caught off guard to see his own company’s name among the text. His shop, White’s Garage, had handled the dispatch and was awaiting contact from the owner.

Willeby used the car primarily to help care for her four grandchildren, something White decided was more important than standard operating procedure.

“We’re going to waive all the charges,” White told KTEN-News. “I read through the post and saw where we had been the ones to pick up their vehicle and just decided to help her out.”

“We’re actually going to see if we can repair her vehicle to get her back on the road,” he added.

The shop waived the entire bill, including the wrecker fee, processing and all storage costs. Understandly, Willeby is feeling very lucky, and grateful.

“He’s just an awesome, awesome person,” she said.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Global Positioning Systems, or GPS, have been around since the early 80’s, but only more recently became available to small businesses and everyday consumers.  In the industry of towing, the technology has practically revolutionized some facets of the work.  Like the hydraulic lift itself, GPS quickly became an industry standard. 

Naturally GPS helps pinpoint locations for faster service and easier routing, but many shop owners and fleet managers are now relying on the devices to improve efficiency.  Some systems can even help eliminate unauthorized use of equipment, those occasional ‘side jobs’ that often stay off the books.   

Even a small self-loader can represent a major investment for a business owner. For sake of insurance, or even liability, many owners have turned to tracking their fleets online.  It can mean greater safety for customer and crew alike, and helps reduce overall waste.

Many small shops still rely on individual GPS-units for their trucks, and maybe a similar system back at the dispatch desk.  Now more integrated systems are being made affordable, allowing smaller firms to connect their fleet and track the entire workload in real time.

Silver Cloud from Tracking Systems Direct in California, is a package of equipment and software currently used by several police departments, delivery companies and similar dispatched fleets.  Sometimes their results have proven virtually instantaneous, showing quick improvement in fuel usage and manpower.

Shop owners can also use such a system to reduce dangerous driving, as the system will notify if a driver exceeds a pre-set speed.  Having such systems in place has helped some owners reduce their insurance rates.  

“When we designed the Silver Cloud technology,” says company president Robert Wagner, “What we were thinking about was precision simplicity, and durability.”

He stresses the user-friendly interface, and its futuristic feel.  Users can track the software from any computer or mobile device. as well as interface with the drivers.

The technology of GPS has arrived, and it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.  Owners are finding more and more ways to use the data to improve their bottom line.
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SAN FRANCISCO  I  Drivers in the greater San Francisco Bay area can now warn vehicle owners about parking violations or even an impending tow via a text message. Using the car’s license plate number, an anonymous text can be sent directly to the owner’s phone.

CurbTXT kicked off in 2012, and is the brainchild of three friends who wanted a way to expand communication essentially between strangers.  The idea came to them one day in 2008 when they were unable to reach the owner of a vehicle before his car was needlessly towed away.

The program does require owners interested in participating to register through their website.  The company provides a small silver dollar-shaped decal for users to attach to their vehicles.

Co-founder Alex Maxa admits that currently the program is limited to a small but growing community, but hopes to one day integrate with the city’s parking management system.

“Without the city onboard,” Maza tells Co-Exist Magainze, “it’s just a neighbor-to-neighbor service that needs critical mass to be effective.”

CurbTXT would also make it possible for strangers to warn drivers who left there lights on, or other friendly connections.  Some might use it to simply complain about an owner’s parking skill.

Likewise, such a service could easily be misused by individuals or companies.  As such, it has an easy blocking protocol against those who would abuse the system.

CurbTXT’s website describes the service as “Neighbors helping neighbors avoid the pitfalls of city parking.” According to published reports, over 300 people had joined the service as of January 2013.

In September of 2009, San Francisco Board of Supervisors President David Chiu had suggested just such a local program, one that could warn drivers before they were towed using email, text or even robocalls.  The program never materialized.

Bump.com, a similar effort was launched nationwide in 2009.   Headquartered in San Diego, their plan involved using an email address that includes the stranger’s license plate number in order to send that person a message. 

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MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Anyone who spends a significant amount of time driving on the job knows how crucial finding the best deal on fuel can be.  Prices can fluctuate wildly, and vary drastically from one street corner to the next.  Towing professionals certainly know that. 

In April 2004, two men began to provide people with a way to share local gas prices online, but the idea wouldn’t truly take off until the rise of smart phones.

Jason Toews and Dustin Coupal were working as a computer programmer and an eye doctor, respectively, when they founded GasBuddy.  Working out of Minneapolis, their earliest efforts were for the web, where users could check prices before heading out to the pump.  

Users would report gasoline prices they spotted in their local communities, which in turn is shared with the network.  Most users only receive data, but those who help provide the details are entered for free gas give-aways.

Using a standard GPS mapping app, GusBuddy pinpoints your location and shows you the nearest fuel stations, along with their latest cost-per-gallon.

In the early days, sometimes just collecting the prices was difficult.

“I started calling around to gas stations,” Loews said. “They wouldn’t tell me. They think it’s one of their competitors.”

GasBuddy is now a suite of apps, in addition to the website.  They log over half a million unique visitors a daily, with thousands of new members registering each week.  

By last year, over seven million people had downloaded one of their apps.

This is also one that can literally start saving money in the first use, especially as it’s free to download. It is available on the Android, the Blackberry and the iPhone.

Next time you find yourself in between hook-ups, check out GasBuddy for fuel savings and Tow Squad Cash Calls for dispatches in your area.

The download is available at their main site, GasBuddy.com.

Software Solutions for Accounting Needs

TECH BEAT – Like any other business, large or small, a towing firm’s success depends largely on keeping track of the bottom line. Many in the field find paperwork more difficult to navigate than downslopes in winter.  Still, the job has to be wrangled, and come tax time – it can be a real lifesaver to have everything invoiced and accounted for in one handy location.

There are countless free and paid options for managing the books.  Here we’ll examine some of the better free choices that specialize in small businesses.  For shops running a fleet of less than five tow trucks, these provide a way to quickly organize your company finances.  Each of these services provide a secured network to protect your data.

 NUMIA.biz

This site offers the basics of invoicing customers, building contacts and maintaining vendor accounts.  The design is smooth and easy to follow, offering simple choices to move forward through each step. Numia even allows for scanning checks and storing them alongside transactions and payments. You can even text in a transaction to your account while out in the field.

Multiple users can be given access to certain elements of the account, allowing you to delegate some of the workload. Shops can train drivers to enter invoices directly, or leave it to a single bookkeeper. It also provides a user-friendly interface that is easily mastered in little time.

This can make weekly payroll a much faster endeavor, bringing greater efficiency to your time.

Numia has a great series of short video tutorials to help with each step of the process. They also use secure hypertext transfer protocol on each transaction.

WAVE ACCOUNTING

This widely-used system was specifically designed for businesses with fewer than ten employees.  By focusing on the needs of smaller firms, they provide a leaner, less-clogged option that lots of users love. That’s not to say they don’t hit all the basics, but does so with a more user-friendly approach then many providers.  

Wave requires a free registration, and they will send you the occasional email – but for the most part it operates with you, and on your timeframe.  

It’s there with all the standard features: invoicing, payroll, supplies and overhead. Working as a cloud system, it offers greater accessibility to multiple users.  As a tow shop owner who is also out in the field a lot, this option can allow greater control from virtually any location.

Just launched publicly in 2010, Wave is now used in over 200 countries.  

CARTBOOKS

While Cartbooks is fully integrated to function with a companion online shopping cart, many standard brick-and-mortar owners have been won over by its ease of use and interface.  

It has the capacity to handle small business, but can also manage companies as they begin to grow.     

Cartbooks can connect with your mobile devices, bringing your data into the tow truck if needed.  

They offer support in multiple languages, and there’s no trial period.   

As with each of these tools, Cartbooks provides a friendly interchange that doesn’t require a lot of accounting knowledge to navigate. 

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ANCHORAGE  –  A towing outfit in Anchorage is receiving backlash after an online campaign accused employees of installing ‘No Parking’ signs in new locations right before towing away supposed violation vehicles.

The initial incident that sparked the action was on March 9, a Saturday evening. Local resident Melissa Wolf had parked her black Jeep Liberty in an alley just up from the Brown Bag Sandwich Shop.

According to Wolf, no signs were in place in the alley at the time she and a friend left the vehicle.  Moments later they spotted a tow truck from Anchorage Towing hooking up the Jeep.

“I actually saw my car getting pulled from the spot,” Wolf told KTVA-News. “I went over to the driver and said, ‘That’s my car, can I have it?’ and he said, ‘Nope, it’s too late.’”

At first the online campaign just volleyed between friends and family.  As it spread, however, witnesses to similar practices got involved in the discussion, sharing their experiences with the local towing outfit.

Then a witness came forward who said she saw the employees in question installing the ‘No Parking’ signs just before hooking up Wolf’s Jeep.  The woman named Melissa, who asked her identity be protected, told the local CBS affiliate that she saw one of the men take a photograph of the so-called violation vehicle immediately after the sign was bolted up.

Wolf says one employee was carrying a stack of the same signs, convincing her this was predatory and premeditated.

According to her, the company refused on-the-spot payment, as it wasn’t in cash. With her purse locked in the car, Wolf says she was abandoned downtown just before midnight. She would recover the Jeep the next day, paying roughly $400.

That’s when she took to Facebook, creating a page that sought out others who’d been taken advantage of by the same company.

According to published reports, Anchorage Towing initially blamed the sandwich shop owners for requesting the removal of Wolf’s vehicle.  When contacted for response, shop owners denied ever requesting tows from that location and subsequently filed a police report.  

Wolf plans to seek justice in small claims court.

The sign has been removed.

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App Delivers Mobile Desktop

TECH BEAT – In towing, a lot of times it helps to have your information on-site, and phones and tablets can only bring so much out into the field. For shop owners especially, much of their contact information and filing systems are essentially hard-wired back at the office.

A thousand different things can delay a job or throw off your entire dispatch schedule. Many smaller shops aren’t connected on a shared network beyond the CB.

However, a new mobile app for the Android and iPad now allows users to access their entire desktop from out in the field. For professional towing, it can mean bringing your base of operations into the tow truck.

Splashtop Remote Desktop was designed to bring your full system to your smart phone or tablet. It condenses the images appropriately, and allows you to open files and conduct business, just as though you were sitting at the computer.

Designer Mark Lee indicated that he wanted to bring such devices a more hard-line connection with the user’s central computer. His apps are compatible with both PC and Mac systems.   

For those who don’t keep most things stored on their phone in the first place, the app offers a simple solution to accessing almost anything on your system.  

For towing professionals who have to juggle their schedule throughout the day, this convenience can actually save on fuel and wear-and-tear. It also provides a simple way to bring your entire music collection along for the recovery and transport. 

Early reviews for the app were very positive, which along with a retail of only $8.99 quickly made it one of the more popular apps among business owners and other consumers. 

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IN THE NEWS: Bringing Desktop To Dispatch Calls

HOUSTON, Tex – The growing trend of installing security cameras and microphones into first response vehicles has been gaining speed across the country. No longer are dashboard cams now just for police cruisers, as systems are being installed on fire and EMS vehicles, and now even tow trucks.

Safety Vision out of Houston was founded in 1993, and was one of the early enterprises to recognize the potential for mobile cameras.  Their equipment is now active inside city buses and fire engines worldwide, along with a growing number of a private vehicles.

The results can be dramatic, as demonstrated by CATS, the city bus system for Baton Rogue.  In the two years since the equipment was first installed, workmans comp cases have been reduced by 85%.  During that period, only one fight on a public bus was reported, compared with dozens a year before the technology.   Likewise, passenger complaints dropped 85%.

Notices are posted inside the bus, warning that audio and video is being recorded during service.  The system deployed in Baton Rogue utilizes 8 cameras for each bus, with a digital storage system onboard maintaining the data.

Microphones began being incorporated into such systems in recent years, increasing concerns over issues of privacy.  Many see such measures as furthering a police-state atmosphere where nothing remains private.  One particular unit available through Safety Vision is aimed squarely at the driver, monitoring for behavior like texting-while-driving or driver fatigue.   

In Baton Rogue, Brian Marshall is CEO of CATS.  He tells CBS News that the tapes are only ever reviewed when an incident occurs, and are usually only saved for two weeks.

“We don’t have that kind of time, nor interest” he said, referring to concerns of privacy.

For the towing industry, larger equipment can represent a sizable investment that needs protecting. More and more shops are installing units for insurance purposes. While they can certainly be used to make sure drivers follow proper company policy, they have also proved useful when crimes are committed against the driver or vehicle.

Last May in Texas, a Safety Vision system recorded a shooting that occurred during a repossession attempt. With cameras mounted at the wench, in the cab and on the side of the vehicle, both audio and video revealed the sequence of events.  The driver survived, and the security footage was presented in court as evidence against the suspect.

Camera systems can also provide an extra set of eyes to the operator, or in some cases, several sets of eyes.  These can aid with hook-up, and maneuvering both vehicles through traffic.

SEE THE VIDEO HERE…

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