Tow truck operators: The unsung heroes of clearing traffic and getting travelers back on the road
Tow truck operators don't get a lot of media attention. They show up at an accident scene and might get in a few news photos as they hook up disabled vehicles to haul away, but they never get credit for helping to clear the roadway so traffic can flow again.
During Winter Storm Elliott, the county's tow truck operators were as essential as anybody else in getting people back on the road, and for saving stranded motorists.
And it was hard, hazardous work, some of them told The Batavian during interviews the past couple of days.
"I'm only 27," said Chad Dickinson of Dickinson Auto and Towing in Batavia. "I've never seen anything like this before, these blizzard conditions. It was very treacherous at times, kind of scary at some points."
For Jacob Gross and Greg Lyons, who were joined in the effort by their boss, Cameron Selapack of L&L Transmission and Towing, there were aspects of the work that were just another day at the office. They found stuck cars and wenched them out and then either watched the owners drive off or brought the cars back to the shop or other safe location for storage.
"We're kind of used to it," Gross said. "But nobody should have been out on those roads. It was quite out of the ordinary."
It was bizarre at times, said Steve Grice, towing operations manager at Dan's Tire.
There were drivers in sandals, drivers with no phones, drivers who left the house with no charger and only a 20 percent charge on their phones, drivers low on gas, and drivers who put getting from one place to another a higher priority than themselves or their families, he said.
"I came across one guy, and I said, 'Sir, I'm gonna get you guys out because you are trapped in your vehicle, but why aren't you home with your family?" Grice recalled. "He said, 'Well, we need to get to the Christmas party.' I said, 'Your lives are at stake here. You need to get home.' And his wife leaned over, and she goes, 'thank you.' We pulled them out, and they went on their way."
Grice encountered a lot of people from Canada, such as the family in the story above, as well as other states. As has been noted by county officials, most of these people wound up on Genesee County's backcountry roads because the Thruway closed, and they were following GPS maps.
"You wouldn't believe the number of people who said, 'Well, Siri said to go this way,'" Grice said. "I don't think Siri knows what's going on inside your car, you know? I mean, it's like you've got to look at the weather. You've got to know where you're going."
Gross and Lyons said they were surprised by how many people were out on the roads in the midst of a travel ban.
"We're hooking somebody up, and people continue driving by trying to get from Point A to Point B or wherever they were going, even though there was a travel ban," Lyons said.
"We even saw people out walking," Gross added.
You know things are bad when tow truck operators got stuck, and that's what happened to Grice and a member of his team on Friday.
The Thruway Authority had asked Dan's to send a truck eastbound to check on some vehicles because they couldn't be reached from the west. When the driver was ready to return to Batavia, he got stuck, so Grice drove out to retrieve him. He became stuck. They were out there until 10 the next morning until a truck from the Thruway authority helped them get moving again.
Grice said he had a lot of sympathy for the people who got stranded in their vehicles, and there was no way for search and rescue teams to get to them for hours.
"It was mentally just exhausting," Grice said. "And just sitting there thinking about the other people that were trapped out there and how people couldn't get to them. It was just a feeling of helplessness that was just overwhelming, you know, and it just was terrible."
Dan's ran three trucks with five crew members on Friday night, and when things cleared a bit on Friday, they had five trucks out.
Dickinson had four flatbeds and two wreckers running.
L&L had three trucks out.
The Batavian didn't have time to reach out to the other tow truck companies in the county, but they were all involved in vehicle recovery efforts throughout the event.
Winter Storm Elliott is a couple of days of work Grice said he won't soon forget.
"It was amazing," he said. "Some of the cars we pulled out, you open the hood and the engine bays were just packed. They looked like big ice cubes in there. It was just amazing. With some of the cars, the snow had gotten in around the door jams and filled them with snow. It was quite a sight to be seen."
Gross and Lyons won't forget it, either.
"Nothing compares to this one," Gross said. "This one was kind of crazy."
All photos courtesy Steve Grice/Dan's Tire.
