A DPW Trucking truck that got wedged underneath a viaduct in Chicago in early April was caught in a towing dispute that climbed from a few thousand dollars to $46,000 before the company got the truck back. Tim Smith said his first reaction to the quote was simple: “You have to be kidding me! How do you come up with $46,000!”
The bill had already ballooned by the time Smith went to pick up the truck, and Kristin Crawford said she started searching the internet for Official Towing after seeing the price. Crawford found that the company had been in the news before for charging excessive prices for semi truck towing and said calls to the lot went nowhere. “They don’t want to talk to you on the phone,” she said. “They literally hang up on you.” She also said, “it says on their email, they will not negotiate the rate.”
Crawford and Smith met with WGN News outside Official Towing’s lot in the 9200 block of South Kilpatrick in Oak Lawn, Illinois, and after that the company’s owner sent a message offering to release the truck for $5,000 instead of $46,000. Crawford said she also called another trucking company to ask how it got through a similar dispute and was told, “the only way that they got through was when you guys showed up.”
Oak Lawn Police then helped DPW Trucking get the truck back, and the rig was taken to Wisconsin. For DPW Trucking, the turnabout was immediate and blunt: “We wouldn’t have our truck if it wasn’t for you,” Crawford said. “We would not have it back. It would still be sitting there and we would still be fighting with them and losing sleep.”
The dispute fits a pattern that has followed Official Towing before. The company has faced complaints over excessive towing bills in the past, and the recorded owner, Ahmed Shalabi, has given conflicting information about whether Official Towing is licensed to operate within the city limits of Chicago. The company said it values its ability to serve the public in Chicago above its right to collect every penny it is owed on every tow. In practice, Crawford said, that meant pressure changed the outcome. “They’re like bugs,” she said. “They scurry when the police or the news to come.”
