Say Anything Blog

We had one heck of a nasty blizzard here in my hometown today. Even by North Dakota standards it was a doozy. Freezing rain, then lots and lots of snow with high winds. I went into the office, but pretty much most of the town was shut down. I've got some pictures of it in the extended entry.

I really shouldn't have bothered leaving my house at all. I had one heck of a day, as I'll explain below. Read the whole thing. You aren't going to believe it.

About ten o'clock my dad called me and said that his steering had locked up on his van and he was stuck in the middle of an intersection. He had called AAA but wanted me to come down and stay with the van as he had other things he needed to attend to. So I went down there to wait. Since there was a blizzard on it was, understandably, going to take a few hours for the tow truck to set up.

So I got down to where the van was and settled in to wait. Three hours later a tow truck from Ole Olson's towing showed up in a parking lot across the street. I watched it just sit there for about fifteen minutes, then I drove over to it (in my own vehicle which I'd been waiting in) to make sure they didn't miss me. When I got there they were eating lunch, so I told them I was sorry for bothering them and that I would stay over by the van until they were ready. When they were finished they drove over to where I was at. I got out to meet them but they stayed in the truck. I walked over to talk to them but the guy in the truck was busy talking to his dispatcher. So I waited. Then he rolled down the window and told me that he couldn't tow the van.

"Why?" I asked.

"My dispatcher said I couldn't," he replied. "We've got more important things to attend to."



I started to ask what was going on, but he dismissed me and drove off. So I called AAA again to get an explanation. After all, it wasn't like I could just leave the van in the middle of this relatively busy street. The AAA operator I spoke with was bewildered as well, so she contacted Ole Olson's Towing and asked for an explanation. Their story was that the Minot authorities had told them not to pull any more cars out because of the poor conditions. The reason for this, apparently, is that they didn't want the streets cluttered in the poor conditions. Which makes absolutely no sense. After all, the streets would be cluttered anyway if no two trucks were taking away the broken down and/or stuck vehicles.

Anyway, I hung up with AAA and got a hold of somebody at the Minot Police Department to see what they wanted me to do with the van since it was sitting in the middle of the street and I apparently wasn't going to get it towed. The jerk I talked to at first down there (he's a dispatcher who is also the husband of one of my girlfriend's friends) told me that I shouldn't have been out on the streets in the first place since there was a no travel advisory. I told him that the van had actually broken down five hours before, prior to the advisory. So he transfered me to an actual officer.

The officer told me that if the van was left in the street it would be impounded and towed. I told him that I'd been trying for five hours now to get the thing towed and asked who they would have do the towing should they decide to impound it. Turns out that Ole Olson's Towing, the same company that already told me that they wouldn't tow me, would be the one's towing our vehicle should it have been impounded. So I asked why the Minot PD would tell the towing companies not to tow me if they were just going to impound the vehicle and tow it anyway. He told me that he wasn't aware of any sort request like that made by their department.

So take a minute and think about this now. Ole Olson's Towing won't tow my van when I call AAA for service, but they will tow the vehicle to the impound lot. Why are they doing this? If I had to guess, I'd say its because they probably get more money per tow from the City of Minot then they do for AAA.

Which, really, is a pretty shitty way to run a business. Needless to say, I'll be urging the City of Minot to drop their contract with Ole's. Not sure if they will do it or not, but they should.

Eventually we did get the van out. My dad and I had to spend a couple of more hours shoveling and tugging at it with our SUV (which really wasn't made for that sort of thing) and I think we may have ended up doing some damage to the van. I hope not, as a concern about damage was why we didn't just pull the thing out ourselves to begin with.

After we got the van out we ended up putting another vehicle through our garage door at the office when it skidded on the ice, but I'm not too interested in talking about that right now.

Anyway, here are the pics we took: