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towPartners x January 2012 x 13 WANT TO BECOME A TOWPARTNERS MEMBER? Our members saved over 10 million dollars last year. Join now at www.towpartners.com. ta New and Improved Hardware Device and Activation only $150 with a monthly charge of $22.99. NOW INTEGRATES WITH TOPS DISPATCH SOFTWARE Fix: GPS (5 Satellites), Version: 1.14 Received: less than 1 min ago Position: 29.873168,-95.38504533334 Speed: 30 mph Heading: SouthEast (154 degrees) By: Paul Giese W In the last few years our company has completely eliminated all motor clubs. this means ESTIMATED time of arrival, but every motor club expected it to be an actual time of arrival. Don’t get me wrong, we always try to arrive before the time we tell our customers, but it always seemed that the motor clubs use “bar time” when it comes to ETA’s. Don’t forget the 10 minutes you lost on the original phone call just trying to get the information, but of course your ETA was based on the beginning of the phone call. This forced you to give lon-ger ETA’s than you would normally give just to be sure you could make it in that time frame so you could get paid in case of a GOA. In the last few months our company has been contacted by several motor clubs, all of which we have worked with in the past. I would speak with them hesitant-ly knowing the end result. I was curious why all of a sudden they were calling us about renewing our contracts. As usual, it was the same thing, in fact, some of them tried to renew the same contract with the same rates. We came very close to negotiating a new contract with several clubs, but then the inevitable would happen, “How many free miles will you give us?” This is when the conversation would usu-ally end with a feeling of my time being wasted. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know of too many things that are free anymore, including mileage. I will no longer give our services for free, these free miles cost a lot of money for any towing company. based on your contract. At five miles times 365 days in the year, that totals 1,825 miles. We will use a base mile-age of $3.50/mile (every club that we worked with averaged about 20% less than our standard rate on mileage, cur-rently $2.72/mile in the Midwest based on towPartners motor club statistics). Now take the $3.50/mile and multiple that by 1,825 miles and that would equate to a loss of revenue of $6,387.50/ year. Now add that extra 20% which is the difference that motor club rates pay vs. your regular rate and that adds up to another $1,916.25/year. The average 1 ton will get about 10 mpg. You are giving five free miles for every one of these calls. Our current price for diesel is $4.00/gallon. These free miles just cost you another $2.00 in fuel without even moving your truck. That equals another $730.00 per year in fuel costs. Finally let’s add up the loss of revenue for free miles, the 20% difference that motor clubs pay from your standard rates, and the actual cost of fuel for those five free miles. Based on the fig-ures from above, you get $9,033.75 per year divided into the 1 tow per day at 365 days and that equals a cost of $24.75 for every five free miles. The average base rate paid by a motor club, based on towPartners Midwest statistics, is $41.72 per tow. Now does this make any sense? It didn’t for me either! Every company’s costs and fees vary, bottom line is that you can adjust the numbers however you like, but the re-sult will still be the same, those five free miles are not free at all. 249-9048 249-9048 e have decided that the rates we were receiving, plus all the different re-quirements, made it no longer cost effective for us to continue working with them. Not to mention the confusion and complication of trying to figure out over a dozen rate schedules, free miles, discounts, etc. We did at-tempt to work with many of them to ad-just our rates and simplify our contracts. I am sure you can imagine how difficult that was, most of the motor clubs would not even return calls or if they did, we were told that they were already paying more than other providers in our area. Some of them had not given us a rate change in over 9 years. How long would you continue to work for that company? By 2010 we had eliminated every motor club we had been working with, some since the early 90’s. VI VEHICLE OPPED ST EW VIE VEHICLE W HIS TO RY Vehicle Mounted Hardware Simple Self-Installation Monitor Vehicle Location in Real-Time Track Vehicle History Web-Based State of the Art Mapping Speeding, Stops, and Mileage Reports Coupon Code: towPartners BUDGETGPS.COM The only way we would take a motor club call was if they paid by credit card or had the customer pay us directly so they could be reimbursed. I cannot begin to tell you how much of a relief this was. No more 10 minute phone calls ex-plaining tows with wrong locations, wrong towns, streets and street num-bers that did not exist, call back num-bers that were no good, and fighting for miles because their system said it was only 6 miles (of course the call came from a call center probably 1000 miles away or more, but they always seemed to know my home town better than I did). Lastly was the ETA, to you and me TOWPARTNERS MEMBERS RECEIVE PER TIRE DO THE MATH Let’s just take a closer look at “five free miles”. Let’s just say that you do one motor club call a day and every one of those you have to give five free miles REBATE on commercial tires Deatails and rebate information at Some conditions apply. See website for details. www.towtires.com Kyocera DuraCore New! The Kyocera DuraCore works as hard as you do. DuraCore keeps the pace as you take steps to improve productivity and grow your business. Grab the reigns with a low-cost/high-value solution built to suit a mobile workforce. • Sprint Direct Connect • Military Standard rugged design • 3G data capability • Comes with 1GB MicroSD card, supports up to 32GB Details about rebates can be found at www.towpartners.com Member Price: $69.99* *After rebates. New activation required. Retail Price: $269.99 memberphone store.com 877-401-2345 option 1 Military Standard 810G for Dust, Shock, Vibration, Blowing rain, Temp Extremes, Low Pressure, Solar radiation, Salt Fog, Humidity and Immersion
5 FREE MILES
Paul Giese
<br /> In the last few years our company has completely eliminated all motor clubs.<br /> <br /> We have decided that the rates we were receiving, plus all the different requirements, made it no longer cost effective for us to continue working with them. Not to mention the confusion and complication of trying to figure out over a dozen rate schedules, free miles, discounts, etc. We did attempt to work with many of them to adjust our rates and simplify our contracts. I am sure you can imagine how difficult that was, most of the motor clubs would not even return calls or if they did, we were told that they were already paying more than other providers in our area. Some of them had not given us a rate change in over 9 years. How long would you continue to work for that company?<br /> <br /> By 2010 we had eliminated every motor club we had been working with, some since the early 90’s.<br /> <br /> No more 10 minute phone calls explaining tows with wrong locations, wrong towns, streets and street numbers that did not exist, call back numbers that were no good, and fighting for miles because their system said it was only 6 miles (of course the call came from a call center probably 1000 miles away or more, but they always seemed to know my home town better than I did). Lastly was the ETA, to you and me this means ESTIMATED time of arrival, but every motor club expected it to be an actual time of arrival. Don’t get me wrong, we always try to arrive before the time we tell our customers, but it always seemed that the motor clubs use “bar time” when it comes to ETA’s. Don’t forget the 10 minutes you lost on the original phone call just trying to get the information, but of course your ETA was based on the beginning of the phone call. This forced you to give longer ETA’s than you would normally give just to be sure you could make it in that time frame so you could get paid in case of a GOA.<br /> <br /> In the last few months our company has been contacted by several motor clubs, all of which we have worked with in the past. I would speak with them hesitantly knowing the end result. I was curious why all of a sudden they were calling us about renewing our contracts. As usual, it was the same thing, in fact, some of them tried to renew the same contract with the same rates.<br /> <br /> We came very close to negotiating a new contract with several clubs, but then the inevitable would happen, “How many free miles will you give us?” This is when the conversation would usually end with a feeling of my time being wasted. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know of too many things that are free anymore, including mileage. I will no longer give our services for free, these free miles cost a lot of money for any towing company.<br /> <br /> DO THE MATH<br /> Let’s just take a closer look at “five free miles”. Let’s just say that you do one motor club call a day and every one of those you have to give five free miles based on your contract. At five miles times 365 days in the year, that totals 1,825 miles. We will use a base mileage of $3.50/mile (every club that we worked with averaged about 20% less than our standard rate on mileage, currently $2.72/mile in the Midwest based on towPartners motor club statistics). Now take the $3.50/mile and multiple that by 1,825 miles and that would equate to a loss of revenue of $6,387.50/ year. Now add that extra 20% which is the difference that motor club rates pay vs. your regular rate and that adds up to another $1,916.25/year.<br /> <br /> The average 1 ton will get about 10 mpg. You are giving five free miles for every one of these calls. Our current price for diesel is $4.00/gallon. These free miles just cost you another $2.00 in fuel without even moving your truck. That equals another $730.00 per year in fuel costs.<br /> <br /> Finally let’s add up the loss of revenue for free miles, the 20% difference that motor clubs pay from your standard rates, and the actual cost of fuel for those five free miles. Based on the figures from above, you get $9,033.75 per year divided into the 1 tow per day at 365 days and that equals a cost of $24.75 for every five free miles. The average base rate paid by a motor club, based on towPartners Midwest statistics, is $41.72 per tow. Now does this make any sense? It didn’t for me either!<br /> <br /> Every company’s costs and fees vary, bottom line is that you can adjust the numbers however you like, but the result will still be the same, those five free miles are not free at all.