Tow Professional Podcast
Tow Professional Podcast
Live from Orlando: X-Insurance and Parking Management Solutions
From the bustling floor of the Florida Tow Show in Orlando comes a masterclass in diversifying and protecting your towing business. This eye-opening episode brings together two industry innovators who reveal strategies that could transform how you think about both insurance coverage and revenue streams.
Nick from X-Insurance pulls back the curtain on what truly comprehensive insurance looks like for towing professionals. Backed by Prime Insurance Company, they specialize in covering what other carriers won't touch – a crucial advantage in an industry filled with unique risks. DJ Harrington shares a sobering story about a 37-truck operation that saved a mere $16 monthly by not properly listing a driver, only to face thousands in uncovered expenses after an accident. His straight-shooting advice on properly scheduling all units, drivers, and operations could save listeners significant heartache and financial strain. Perhaps most fascinating is X-Insurance's remarkably diverse coverage options, from towing and commercial auto to recreational vehicles, aircraft, and even underwater mermaid shows.
The episode takes an unexpected turn when Jim Shellhaas of Ranger SST introduces a revolutionary business model that's disrupting the traditional private property impounding approach. His parking management solution transforms the towing professional's role from simply removing vehicles to managing entire parking systems for properties. The numbers are staggering – instead of focusing on incrementally increasing impounds, operators can tap into the much larger population of vehicles they monitor for passive, recurring revenue through paid permitting. Jim outlines how property managers are actively seeking these solutions as they increase asset values, and how separating your parking management services from impounding operations creates a more balanced approach that avoids the perception of predatory practices.
Ready to stop leaving money on the table? This episode delivers actionable insights for the entrepreneurial tower looking to both protect their business and discover untapped revenue streams. Whether you're looking for insurance that truly has your back or a way to generate income while you sleep, these industry experts offer the roadmap to get you there.
Welcome one and all to this is Tow Professional Podcast right here live in Florida, we're in Orlando and from X-Insurance we got a great guest for all of you to listen. To Remember, this podcast is for the pros that are on the go who have a need to know, and so X-Insurance is here just for that purpose. So, nick, welcome to the podcast. How's the show going for you?
Speaker 2:Thank you, dj. It's going great A lot of good people here, a lot of cool trucks, a lot of good experiences and definitely something we're coming back to next year.
Speaker 1:Fantastic and I know X-Insurance really is a key thing, so tell our listeners. Now we've got over 19,000 listeners, so tell our listeners what's the benefit of X-Insurance and what makes the difference.
Speaker 2:Of course. Yeah, all you ladies and gentlemen out there you know X-Insurance. We're truly an all-in-one solution. We are backed by Prime Insurance Company. That is our carrier, and we can cover pretty much anything you guys need to cover, from towing to commercial auto, general liability, any recreation stuff pretty much everything the other insurance companies won't touch. That's our market.
Speaker 1:Now, nick, if I was their toer guy? Of course we do the podcast for them in the magazine. But if a guy has insurance already, is it a good idea to get a second opinion? You know, like in the medical field since I'm a doctor in the medical field we ask for a second opinion. Is it good that someone should call you and say hey, nick, how about you guys review what I have now and tell me how X insurance could help us?
Speaker 2:Definitely, you always want a second opinion. I mean, when it comes to insurance, the biggest thing is exclusions and actually being covered on your policy and stuff, and that's one of our strongest markets. Customer service, our claims basis we're very aggressive. We don't let people take advantage of our insureds and we always have their back and that's what we do.
Speaker 1:And that's really a key. It's like when you get insurance and then have the person at least be on your side and not on the other person's side, or have you looked at it this way? And then I know a family who had 37 trucks. The son worked in the office and drove a truck periodically. The insurance guy says, well, you don't need to put him down as a driver. I'm telling all our listeners Nick is sitting here shaking his head with a beautiful cowboy hat on and he's going. No, it's a bad idea because, nick, guess what happened? Six months after they're enrolled, who gets in the first accident? That driver, that driver who goes home that night and he's the son of the owner. What? What an idiot. And I said I won't mention their name. I said so how much did you save monthly? You ready $16., oh yeah, and it cost thousands after the accident.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, it's stupidity. No, everything should be scheduled. All units, all drivers, scheduled operations.
Speaker 1:Yes, and should be scheduled. All units, all drivers, scheduled operations yes, and everybody's done so.
Speaker 2:You cover all types of vehicles snowmobile or we cover snowmobiles, recreation firearms, hunting liability policies for carrying your gun.
Speaker 1:We do pretty much everything in the book Aircraft, helicopters, planes, go baby. Oh yeah. So Nick going to a show like here in Florida and we're on the floor here at the Florida Toe Show and Nick's kind enough to be part of our guest here.
Speaker 2:What is some of the people? What's the most unusual thing you cover? That's a hard one. We do a lot of unusual stuff. One of the funny things we cover is like the mermaid shows. People get in tanks. They do all of that Up at.
Speaker 1:Weeki Wachee Uh-huh, I'm from Atlanta, but my family, my grandchildren, all want to go to Weeki Wachee. Oh, yeah, so we have to go there to see the mermaids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean we can cover anything. Since we're the carrier, we can underwrite it and do what we need to and write a policy. And you know our CEO, rick, he allows us to be able to do what we need to do.
Speaker 1:All right. So if our listeners want to contact you, what's the best way to get a hold of?
Speaker 2:you Yep, so my direct line is 801-304-3707.
Speaker 1:All right, Folks, we're going to take a fast break and when we come back we'll learn more about the Florida Tow Show.
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Speaker 1:Welcome back listeners. We're here on the showroom floor of the Florida Tow Show. We are in the Tow Professional Magazine and one of my dear friends just came by. He just finished doing a seminar upstairs which was really packed with a lot of people.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You had a fill room, jim, so we have 19,000 listeners. Do us a favor, introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about the company, and what would you like some of our listeners to know?
Speaker 6:Okay, so I'm Jim Schellhaus. I'm the founder and president of Ranger SST. We've been around since 2005 doing towing management software. Been around since 2005 doing towing management software. However, in the last two, two and a half years we've kind of switched our focus to do parking management software. So we had a customer in Indianapolis who was doing work as a private property impounding company and complained incessantly that we need a more complete offering for our customers that kind of manage these properties. And so we picked up that baton and ran with it, and so now we have what we think is the only complete parking management solution that's available for PPI companies to take, to transition from being just private property impounding but to being a one-stop full-source parking management service company for their customers. And it's more profitable than doing PPI, if you believe it.
Speaker 1:Oh, I could believe it and that way, if we could get more of these private property towers thinking about it. Yeah, but really, jim, I listened to the class. It's fantastic, it makes a lot of sense, but you need an entrepreneur business mentality to understand this, right?
Speaker 6:You do so to understand the economics. Just quickly, I'll give just a quick example. Yeah, if you had a company, a PPI company, that was doing 100 impounds per month, they're going to be surveying a population of vehicles that's 100 times that, so 10,000. Right, so you could have an aspiration of saying, gee, I'm doing 100 impounds per month, wouldn't it be great to do 105? Okay, that would be good. Or you could say there's 10,000 vehicles out there, we should be paying for parking. And so if you did paid parking for 10,000 vehicles, you pick the number 10, 15, 20. That number starts to be hundreds of thousands of dollars every month. Passive recurring, no tow trucks required. Some of that money clearly has to be shared with the property owner, who's going to expect to benefit from the paid permitting as well. Yes, but those numbers are typically 30% or 40%, which still leaves a whole lot of money left over for the PPI company, and hopefully they share a little bit with Patrol Works.
Speaker 1:Yes, I know one thing I've listened to you at the Ohio Toe Show Great presentation here. We had a whole lot more people at the Florida Toe Show in your class and they came from all over. So this is a program that, no matter what part of the United States you're in, this is a program that you can participate in.
Speaker 6:That's correct To your earlier point, though it does take an entrepreneurial mindset, somebody who's looking not just at how do I kind of continue on doing more of what I'm doing, but recognizes that what we believe is a trend that's spreading across all of the lease multifamily industry is permitting People, getting away from stickers to do permitting and doing permitting with license plates, and that's not going to go away. And once you start getting above the local apartment manager and start talking to regional managers, they are very attracted to paid permitting because it increases the asset value of their property. Just one quick anecdote we were in a conversation with a regional manager in Texas and he asked well, what do you think is a reasonable amount to be charging residents? So I was being kind of conservative and nervous and well you know, $10, $15 maybe. He said, well, could I charge $20?
Speaker 1:Holy moly. So he was already thinking that way, oh yeah.
Speaker 6:So he's thinking about $20. So you've got to get entrepreneurial enough to. I want to do something different with my business. You have to have skills, sales skills or relationships that can get you above the local apartment manager to regional managers who are interested in our experience with two things. They are attracted to the money because it increases the asset value of their properties, and these guys are deal guys. And then, secondly, they're interested in the community. What they're not interested in doing is figuring out how do they build your impounding business. They're worried more about kind of getting negative reviews on their websites by overly aggressive impounding.
Speaker 6:And so, if you're able then to go with them, a balanced program that we can do. Ticketing we can have different consequences. Ticketing weighting for different kinds of violations, we can have different protocols. We can have grace periods. You can kind of have approvals and have a more balanced program so that the community kind of sees this. As you know, nobody likes to have their vehicle impounded, but they see it as fair. This was the right approach and fair to the community in terms of what we're doing overall for parking management.
Speaker 1:This is a lot of good information. We're going to take a fast break and when we come back, listeners, we're going to tune in and I'm going to ask Jim a couple of the questions that was asked today in the class here at the Florida Tow Show, and I'll see you then. Okay, great, thank you.
Speaker 5:For over 50 years, jordan has defined towing and recovery industry standards for performance, reliability and service. Jordan offers an extensive range of light, medium and heavy-duty wreckers, carriers and rotators. Each truck offers superior engineering for strength and stability, reliability and versatility to exceed the expectations of a demanding industry.
Speaker 1:Welcome back folks If you're on the go and you have a need to know. That's why you're here at the Tow Professional Podcast. All right, jim, this is real important In today's class. I want to tell our listeners today's class was very informative. I was very impressed with the whole presentation. One of the people in the class they're towers and they got a good business, but she's looking to develop money while they're sleeping. This is an investment that really is good for them. It's not a whole lot of money to get into this business. And so can you explain a little bit about parking, like if you have a parking management company, that kind of?
Speaker 6:thing.
Speaker 6:So we think about it as that you want to have a separate parking management company that's separate from an impounding company and that has benefits, because then you kind of avoid the appearance of predatory towing and in the parking management company what you would do is that you would then develop and build the relationships with the regional managers of property management companies.
Speaker 6:You would do the design of the policies, the enforcement. You may have a patrolling company yourself or you may contract with the third party to do the patrolling, to do the enforcement again, just to make sure there's a separation from the impounding activity. And then you also would then have contracts with more than one impounding company by lot to do impounding when it's required, wow. But you may have again some of these violations may not go straight to impounding. You may first warn, you may then ticket for $10 and then ticket for $25, and then it's kind of a repeat offender and then eventually you impound it, and so the community then kind of sees that as a fair and balanced approach to impounding, not just somebody who's trying to get as many impounds as they can get. Yes, and you make money at that.
Speaker 1:You make money at ticketing and folks. Jim is a friend and I knew Jim when you were just doing the software program way back when when I was in the auto data booth and we became friends. But I told the lady this happens to be a person from Kentucky and I said the nice thing about Jim he shows you the program, he comes out and works with sincere people. If you're sincere about this, I want you to contact Jim and learn a little bit more about it and then see, because I'm going to tell you I put my reputation on it. This guy is a very, extremely reputable guy and he wants you to be successful, but he wants to make sure your really good intentions are to be doing this absolutely and you come out and actually work with them absolutely and a lot.
Speaker 6:I'm happy to be there in person, yes, and again, given in our day of the internet and web meetings, there's a tons of stuff that you can do over you can do over over online but we have information that they can use for marketing to regional managers.
Speaker 6:We have model contracts I'll say we're not lawyers, but contracts they could take to their lawyers and get tuned up at a fraction of the cost then that they could then use with their customers. So to help them be successful, so helping them make more money, uh, in in their business.
Speaker 1:Well, I sat in the audience and I thought I looked around the room. They were from all over the United States in the presence of a you. But then I thought some of these people have a relative that might be in the apartment business. Absolutely, that is working their way up and they don't have one or two apartments, they oversee 27 apartments, correct, or oversee 35 apartments. And if they make it a presentation to them, would you be available online, absolutely, absolutely, to do a Zoom?
Speaker 6:meeting? Absolutely do a Zoom meeting. I'm headed to Texas next week to meet with the three largest property management companies in Texas. There you go. That I will leave unnamed. Hello.
Speaker 1:Hello.
Speaker 6:But you know that industry is consolidating, yes, and right now we're focused on Texas, which is not the country, yeah, but some of these companies have 14,000 properties oh my, across the country, across the country, yes, not in Texas, but across the country, and we're determined that this has got to be perfect and successful in Texas, because it's just the word is not going to stay in Texas, as you're talking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a friend named Chuck Camp Yep and he has a relative.
Speaker 6:In property management.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, oh they should be interested in this. Yes, he should be interested. And then, all of a sudden, and I'm thinking to myself well, we got a chuck camp who's the producer of the podcast? And all of a sudden, when he starts listening to this podcast, he will be the one that says okay, what are we doing here now?
Speaker 6:what are we doing here? I what are we doing here? I'm happy to help. It'd be exciting.
Speaker 1:Oh, it'd be wonderful. It would be wonderful, all right, how do our listeners get a hold of you?
Speaker 6:So you can reach us on our website or you can call me directly at 440-498-1495. Or my email is jimrangersst, because we came out of the towing recovery business, but jimrangersst at gmail. All right, All of those ways work.
Speaker 1:I'll give you a phone number one more time, but slower, okay, all right 4-4-0-4-9-8-1-4-9-5.
Speaker 6:And you can find us on the web. If you just search for parking management solutions, you'll find Patrol Works.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Jim. I can't thank you enough for being on the Tow Professional Podcast program and you were a great presenter today and you're a dear friend.
Speaker 6:Thank you, doc. It's been a pleasure to know you over all these years and just wish you the best. Keep walking, keep walking.
Speaker 1:Keep on walking. And folks, I'm going to tell you I'll put my name behind Jim and the company tell you, I'll put my name behind Jim and the company. They're fine, fine people. We'll see you next time on Toe Professional Podcast.