ITOW Talk Towing Forum :: Your Online Towing Industry Community :: Motor Club Forum

If you do get everything in writing and have a lawyer look at it before signing. Then make them stick to it. :help:

Quote (SupraMOB @ June 11 2004, 3:07 pm)

since i am new to the business, i would like to give them a try :beer:

but from all the experiance that you guys had with them, i will think twice before i do anything with them.
Nick

If you want to work for alot less than what you would do for a private/contract or rotational tow, by all means do sign their contract, however if your out in rural area, try and hold out & get your base rate and mileage $'s up. Always remember you have to give them some free miles (try for no more than 5 either direction) and all the free miles on back-track routes (this happened alot to us).
And if you want to get out of bed in the middle of the night for very little money, and when the weather is real crappy, miss out on a private/contract tow, that pays you what your worth. And if you turn them down too many times, you get put on back-up status (very little work for you).
You are just a number to AAA they don't care if you make it or not, and run the puddin out of your equipment, just a long as their members get serviced for a minimal fee.

Thank you for all of your great advices, i am glad i signed up with this forum.
I will keep you posted what i decide, but so far, i am just sticking with my private customers. (dealers, mechanic shops, and body shops) that is where most of my business comes from now.
Nick

After 8 years of busting our behinds and trying to keep enough drivers, and NO RAISES, we finally gave them up. Everytime they were going to "give" us something they ALWAYS took things away. Would always cost us money. Know your costs to run a call and then make your choice.

i just quit a CAA (canadian AAA) contractor that i worked for for 5+ years because i couldn't stand doing autoclub work anymore. $22 cdn for calls wasn't nearly enough especially when they promise their members the world and we have to try and deliver it for 22 bucks, get real.

it's been quite refreshing being with this new company. no customers that expect everything for nothing, no changing flat tires and dealing with people that dont know how to turn the key when their wheel's locked or their car wont start because the turned it off and left it in "drive", very few passengers and most important of all, much more $$$$$$$$.

haahahaha, i find it pretty funny that nobody voted for the "we love AAA" selection on the poll.

The company that I work for has nothing to do with AAA, and never will. We make more doing shop calls and other motor club calls. Around here AAA actually has their own fleet for the most part. I kinda wonder the quality of their drivers. I have seen a few at work.

we like to find broken down CAA members sitting on the side of the road waiting for the contractors and tell them we can tow them right now and they can submit their bill to the auto club. CAA hates it but they will pay it and if their contractors can't get there in time, too bad, they get paid for a GOA anyway.

I guess that we are the exception. We love AAA. We wish that our rates were higher, but on some service calls, we get more from AAA than we would get doing exactly the same job for CCMC or any other motor club. Maybe it is just that we have a good working relationship with Mountain West AAA, but we prefer AAA to all other motor clubs and never turn down their calls. Some of the things that Mountain West AAA does right for us:
1) They are the ONLY motor club that visits us and have seen our service area and our equipment. They usually come to see us 1-3 times per year and usually take us out for lunch or dinner at the nicest restaurant in Fairbanks. Our district rep has even gone on a job with us to see how we operate.
2) They always pay in full. No disputes about mileage.
3) Our rates are lower than we would like, but if there are extra services provided, we charge and they pay, so we are not always working at just base rate.
4) They have special dispatchers for Alaska. One has visited here and the others know the territory. If there is a better way to serve the member, I can work it out with the dispatcher and not feel that I am losing points by not accepting the call.
5) On damage claims, AAA always supports us and never starts out thinking that we might have goofed up. On the last one, they offered to pay us for the extra work of straightening up the mess that the customer created.
6) They send us copies of good surveys and give us awards and once a $1000 award.
7) They are always cheerful and friendly on the phone and return our calls.
8) They give us automatic fuel surcharge increases in our rates. It is not much, but it is a whole lot more than any other motor club did.
9) They have said that we need a rate increase and I am sure that we will do fine when we get our next contract.
10) The times that something might have hurt us, like adding another company in our area, they have listened to us and said that our good service counts, so after we wrote a letter, they did not sign up the other company and, I think, took some heat because of it.
11) They send us gifts and give us discounts with AW Direct, Ford, etc.
12) We get other jobs because people identify AAA with service, so customers call us for towing, even if they are not AAA members.

I just wanted to say that, though we might be different from most, not everyone hates AAA. This is just how it is for us. I am not saying that other regional clubs or even Mountain West AAA in other situations is always good to work with, but OUR experiences with AAA have been good.

Wow! I NEVER hear that! That's great. Now if I only lived in alaska....

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not AAA! No more! You will NOT make money with them. The only people who say they do, do NOT have any comprehension of their acutual costs of doing business. You MUST take money fro m the profit centers of your business (police accounts, commercial accounts, body shop, automotive, etc) and SUBSIDIZE AAA. There is no other way. But that's how AAA wants it. They have told us, straight up, "Our business performa is NOT set up so that a "stand-alone" towing company can exist". And they are NOT going to change that. The last year we did business with AAA, we gave them back ALL the money we took in from their calls, PLUS subsidized them $550K + out of our other side of our business! And when we have done surveys of other companies, we find the same thing! Never again. Why does it take all of us so long to figure this out? Hope springs eternal, I guess. Always hoping that with the volume AAA can produce, we would get enough of a raise to turn a profit. Always remember, you can never sell enough at a LOSS to make a profit! 0 times anything remains ZERO. Support and help the other motor clubs that are willing to get real with their pricing. Help to make them #1, and AAA just a bad memory for all to read about in some obscure history book. Find out what your TRUE Cost of Doing Business is. What does it REALLY take you to run a call? $45? $55? Then see how much AAA insists on paying you. $22? $32? How much do you want to SUBSIDIZE them? Think about that. :devil:

Next Page...