Tow Times

A few months back Andrew became obsessed with a large recovery vehicle in a book at my parent's house. Upon closer inspection, it seems the vehicle was made in Chattanooga by Miller Industries, a leader in the towing world.

I called to see if they gave tours, and we went today with a friend, her 4 year old son and infant daughter. I was wise enough to wait until we were about to leave before telling them of the destination. They were ecstatic!

We were given a tour by a nice young man who didn't treat us like the ignorant females we were. He threw out terms like "boom" and "chassis" and "tow bar" which were fairly easily to comprehend (especially after my days at NAPA); others left us nodding our heads and smiling. The boys were simply satisfied seeing the numerous forklifts in operation around the buildings and looking at the wreckers in the various stages of assembly.

I was impressed with the fact that they use local suppliers for the most part. While there are others who construct towing equipment, we were told they do 45 times more business than the next competitor.

Other highlights:

• We saw an auto loader that is specially designed to snag repo cars, even while parallel parked.


• They have distributors all over the world and were currently working on vehicles to send to South Africa and England.


• They were also working on several tow trucks for the military that would be sent to either Iraq or Afghanistan (with an order for 107 or 170 to be made and shipped between August and January!).


• Last year they averaged 35-40 small tow trucks ("Heavy Duty Light Tow Trucks" as Andrew calls them) a week and 300 large tow trucks a month.

We were even given complimentary tickets to the Tow Truck Museum (I guess I'll be forced to go!). Since we didn't get any pictures, I'll include the faithful reader of Tow Times.