How did you wind up in the Repo Industry?
I promised some new content, so here is the first. The topic is one of my favorites, but what I really would like to see is some of you respond in kind with your own entry story.
How did you get into this business?
I have the luxury of being able to tell on myself. After 35 years working in and owning a repossession agency, I am retired. It has been a nice 3 years – but that is for another article.
My working life began when I was 16. There was a lot I disliked about working. Having a paycheck was at the top of the list of ‘pros’ to working. I enjoyed having money, I dropped out of (day-time) high school to work full time.
I worked for my Uncle’s business and I consider him a super value mentor in my life. I learned to treat employees like family members, work just as hard as they do, ‘really’ care about customers and get hostile when the time came to renew insurance.
The biggest part of my job running the warehouse was driving a forklift. It is amazing how well that skill translates to later driving a snatch truck.
I worked in that job about 9 years. During most of that time I was a complete idiot in regard to my personal behavior. The money I so loved to make was just a vehicle to drink (+) too much, run around and basically just act the selfish fool and get into trouble. In January of 1984 God showed up in my life, the bad habits ceased, and I like to think I started making better decisions.
One of those better decisions was going back to church. It was there in May of 1985 that I asked a young lady out and 95 days later I became her partner in being a parent to her 3 year old daughter.
My wife’s job was working at a car lot. I had no idea that the car business was like a cult. People wind up in that life and they get stuck there. Most of them bleed 30 weight brown. Her uncle owned 5 buy here – pay here car lots. She was training collectors when she was 16 years old.
When we had been married about a year I stumbled upon her side job. I don’t know if there were hints to this, but I had no freaking clue.
I came home from work one afternoon and she was at the dining table making ‘prank’ phone calls. During this first call I overheard, she was disguising her voice. If you closed your eyes, you could envision the her voice coming from a 90 year old black woman.
Sitting in front of her was a stack of sets of paperwork. Each set had just a few pages and stapled at the top corner of most of them was a key tag and key(s).
She hung up the phone after a few more calls, (Note: She was in a zone – I did not interrupt!) and gathered up all the files. Obviously, preparing to leave.
I asked her what she had been doing?
She said: I was skip-tracing.
I said: (true story) What the hell is skip-tracing?
She went on to explain that each of those files was for a missing vehicle. Each vehicle had a ‘bounty’ on it. Over the last two hours she had found two and the customers were expecting her to come and pick them up. Plus she had a real strong indication where two more were for sure.
Oh, and she was leaving because her and her friend (another woman) were going out to repossess these autos.
Less than a year later we bought our first wrecker for $3000K on a signature loan from the credit union. It had a single line electric winch sling and a gulf eastern boom mounted on a ½ ton truck with a ¾ ton rear end.
-Dan Meeks
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