Tow truck drivers vie for conquests on a rush-hour afternoon in L.A.

Shortly after 3:30 in the afternoon, Winston Wills made a quick U-turn in the middle of Olympic Boulevard, momentarily blocking traffic as he swung around his supercharged Ford F-150 with "eagle claws" to snap up a beat-up Chrysler Le Baron parked in front of Midway Hospital.

"That's considered a hot spot," said Wills, a tow truck driver for S&J Wilshire Tow. "Somebody could pull into the right-hand lane and hit the back of one of these parked cars and get hurt. The DOT likes to clear away lanes that are on curves because it's more dangerous, and you can't see the parked cars so well."

Wills, a 10-year towing veteran, is one of an army of truck operators who fan out across the city each rush hour to collect cars parked illegally on major thoroughfares.

If Steve Smith, owner of S&J, had his druthers, he'd tow every car sitting in Olympic Boulevard's right-hand lane from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

But S&J and other private garages contracted by the city can only pull cars off the street when an L.A. Department of Transportation parking enforcement officer gives them the green light, and Smith said those officers are far more likely to issue tickets than order cars towed.

Smith's drivers gather at S&J's Washington Avenue dispatch garage, waiting for tow orders that go from the officer on the street to the DOT's parking enforcement office to S&J in a matter of minutes. The DOT notifies the garages which streets will be targeted in advance, and the drivers are ready to go when the call comes in.

On a slow afternoon last week, Wills and his colleagues took in five cat's for their district, which includes heavily traveled roads like Wilshire, La Cienega, Olympic, Crescent Heights and Venice boulevards and La Brea Avenue. In September, S&J towed 473 cars at the DOT's request. In August it pulled in 355.

Aside from the inconvenience, being towed can be costly. There is a $65 ticket for parking illegally, a $93 towing fee charged by the towing firms under terms of their city contract and a $48 city release fee if the car is picked up within an hour of being towed. If the car sits, the tow operator charges $25 per day for storage, plus a $2.50 city parking tax. The longer the vehicle goes unclaimed, the higher the fees rise, leading eventually to an auction.

Out on Olympic, Wills maneuvered the levers on the back of the truck to clamp its claws around the Le Baron's tires, secured a safety chain, lifted the car, and drove off. It took the DOT officer about seven minutes to fill out the impound form, and it took Wills less than a minute to grab the car and go.

In the decade he has been driving a tow truck, Wills has seen his share of drivers lose their temper at the sight of their cars being towed.

"People will come out and stab the tires of the car, thinking we can't tow it then," Wills said. "It's their car, so if they want to beat it up, there's nothing we can do to stop them. If we feel threatened we'll call the LAPD. But until they get there, we have to watch out for each other."

With the Le Baron hooked to the tow truck without incident, Wills returned to deposit the car in the storage yard across the street from S&J's garage.

Not long after Wills' return, Harvey Meyer, another S&J driver, headed out to Washington Boulevard, where the no-parking tow lane starts at 4 p.m., an hour after Olympic's.

By 4:45, no DOT order was given, and Meyer returned empty handed.

"There were two cars in front of a liquor store, and another guy pulled over to try to pick up some girls, so we didn't tow anybody," he said. "It's over today."

It was a disappointing day for the drivers, who get a 27 percent commission for each $93 tow (a welcome supplement to their $10 to $13.50 hourly wage). On busy days, each driver can tow three or four cars, and night-time commissions rise to 37 percent.

Meyer speculated that people have learned to avoid the rush hour tow lanes, noting that five years ago, it wasn't uncommon to tow 10 cars from a single stretch of road like the 5900 block of Olympic.