American Towing and Recovery Institute onThe Go
American Towing and Recovery Institute onThe Go
Matt Gableson's Journey in Towing and Firefighting
What if the key to transforming the towing industry lies in the power of community and effective training? In this episode, we celebrate the recent successful training and recovery class in Rockford, Illinois, where 40 passionate students from all over the country came together to learn and network. We also reflect on the significance of surpassing 15,000 podcast listeners and the positive feedback we've been receiving at industry shows. Stay tuned for exciting updates on our upcoming training sessions in Rhode Island, Virginia, and Oregon, as we continue our unwavering commitment to education and safety.
This episode also shines a light on the often overlooked, yet critical, role of state towing associations and their tireless volunteers. Meet Matt Gableson, who shares his inspiring journey from inheriting Gabelson Truck Repair and Towing to becoming a key figure in the Missouri Tow Truck Association. Matt discusses the importance of TIMS (Traffic Incident Management Systems) training and his unique perspective as both a tower and volunteer firefighter. We explore the association's growth, overcoming initial rejections, embracing modern communication tools like Zoom, and legislative advocacy dedicated to the industry's interests. Join us and get an inside look at how dedicated individuals are working to shape a safer and more connected towing community.
Welcome one and all to the American Towing Recovery Institute podcast.
Speaker 1:Remember this is your podcast to promote safety, education, positive public relations and networking within the professional and business-minded towing and recovery industry. I'm your co-host, dj Harrington, better known as the Tow Doctor, and my other host is Wes Wilburn, over 40-year towing industry veteran, the founder of American Towing Recovery Institute of Fayetteville, north Carolina. He has produced and conducted training and certification programs for leading towing companies, equipment distributors, towing associations, dot, fire departments, rescue, as well as military installations across the United States. Wes has been published over 100 times in major towing publications published over 100 times in major towing publications. Wes has developed many courses, including the most recent awareness-level course for all responders that specialize in electric vehicles as well as hybrid, natural gas and hydrogen vehicles. Wes has provided insight as the main speaker for over 30 years at more than 900 training classes and has been recognized as one of America's greatest towing trainers. He is well known for his straightforward but down-to-earth teaching style. No-transcript. Without further ado, here's my dear friend and a great guy for our industry, wes Wilber.
Speaker 3:Well, DJ, as always, I appreciate your kind words and your thoughtfulness as you introduced me. I do appreciate that thoughtfulness as you introduced me. I do appreciate that. Well, we're kind of an exciting day today, DJ, in a couple different ways. One of them is we just got back from the train recovery class up in Rockford Illinois. Boy, that class went well. I mean there's a couple bumps, first time doing a class, but we had about 40 students from all over the country. It was a great networking event, Shared some information about trains.
Speaker 1:It was really a lot of fun, DJ 40 people in the class for that episode is really nice. That's a good turnout.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're real appreciative. Some real loyal supporters of my program were there, met a few new people as well. We had a good class really did. I can't thank the Maggio family enough, marty and Jay and David and the whole family and the team there. Billy, the trained recovery supervisor, helped out tremendously. So it was a good, good session and, like I said, it was the first one, so we saw some things went a bit different. You know how you always have visions when you're creating a new course or going to do a new something with a group of people, and some of the things that you have visions of work real well. Creating a new course, we're going to do a new something with a group of people, Some of the things that you have visions of work real well. Some of them sometimes don't work as well. Have you ever had that experience?
Speaker 1:CJ.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, that happened a little bit there, but that is what it is. So, yeah, it was exciting. As we're recording this today, this opening, we're recording right before this thing airs, so we got this hurricane coming up through here today. I want to pray for the people in Wilkes and North Carolina. I don't think the Boas had a tornado happen One casualty but boy, it was lucky in a way, dj. It hit a big school, oh my, in the middle of the night, so there's nobody in it. School sustained substantial damage to what I was seeing, but thank goodness it happened at night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no students or no janitorial people. Nobody was in the building. It was in the middle of the night. Yeah, no students or no janitorial people.
Speaker 3:Nobody was in the building. It was in the middle of the night. So you don't want something like that to happen, but if there was a time for it to happen, that would have been it. Yeah Well, thank God. So we do want to make sure we thank all of our listeners. We're officially over 15,000 now, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, you are you officially over 15,000.
Speaker 1:Now, if I'm not mistaken, you're over 15,000, we're also.
Speaker 3:I don't know if we don't have the most episodes maybe we don't but we got 150 episodes and doing a constant since February 2021 and DJ. I do want to go on record publicly thanking you for getting me involved with this. I don't know, if it wasn't someone like you that I wouldn't have done, and this ended up being a really good thing really appreciative of it.
Speaker 1:Wes, I cannot thank you enough. When we go to these shows the Ohio, the Midwest Regional Show, the Florida Show I love when people come over and say, yeah, you and Wes do a great job on the podcast. It's really a nice compliment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, at schools. I'm amazed at how many people are listeners as well, yes, so we're really thankful for that. We're still inching closer to that 10,000 feedback on eBay. I'll tell you, we don't give out feedback as we used to. We used to have a regular system for doing it and nobody else takes the time to do it either. I think feedback only happens anymore. When you don't like something, you get negative feedback. But anyway, we're inching towards that 10,000. I've done 26,000 transactions since we started, just before the turn of the century. No-transcript. So we've got Rhode Island coming up here in a couple weeks. First weekend of September Rhode Island Sewing Association is sponsoring light and medium duty class. You can contact Adam Branch with the association, 401-248-1600. Again, that's 401-248-1600. And then September 20th we'll be in Lynchburg, virginia Again that's 401-248-1600. And then September 20th we'll be in Lynchburg, virginia, friday night. On the 20th we're doing the electric vehicle class. On Saturday and Sunday, heavy duty towing and recovery with summer rotator. Then we'll be out in Oregon for private class October 18th electric vehicle, wachtoe Towing, lake Station.
Speaker 3:And 19th and 20th, heavy duty we have the first weekend of November we had something happen. We've had a date open up, so that's available. If anybody's interested, contact me. And then November 16th 17th we'll be Sumner, south Carolina, for a fire tow or frost train. So that's available. If anybody's interested, contact me. And then November 16th 17th, we'll be Sumner, south Carolina, for a fire tower for our training. So that's where we're going to be DJ, we've got a great guest lined up today.
Speaker 1:We're going to ask everybody to hang around until after the break. You got it. Let's take a break and we'll be right back folks.
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Speaker 1:Welcome back listeners. Of course you know you're listening to the number one show, the American Towing and Recovery Institute podcast with Wes Wilburn and DJ Harrington, and we got an exciting guest for you this week. Every week, we do our best to bring you informative episodes. Make sure you download and listen Now. Remember, this is your podcast. We're available on Spotify, itunes, pandora, stitcher, iheartmedia, amazon or wherever you get your podcasts. So, without further ado, this will be a good one. Wes, how are you doing?
Speaker 3:Thanks, DJ. I appreciate that we're doing good. We're excited about our guest today. As I think our listeners know, we like to put a spotlight on state associations and the volunteers that make them happen. We, as an organization, believe in state towing associations for many reasons. Number one is the lobbying that they provide.
Speaker 3:the towers in the state Super important Many other things networking they do. But I want to introduce our guest today, matt Gabelson. Gabelson's Auto and Truck. I think I got that right, matt. I will let you introduce that part. Make sure I got the name right.
Speaker 6:Gabelson Truck Repair and Towing.
Speaker 3:There you go, thank you, and I'm sorry I have my notes out in front of me but I don't. But anyway, matt, introduce yourself, tell us a little of your background, then we're going to talk about the association, but first let our listeners know who you are and how you're around in the industry.
Speaker 6:Sure, matt Gabrielson, up here in Chillicothe, missouri. We have three locations across northern Missouri. We specialize in heavy-duty towing recovery as well as truck repair. In the heavy-duty industry We've been in business since about 1975. I bought the business in 2014 from my father and I've been going gangbusters ever since.
Speaker 3:So you bought it from your father. Did your father start it, or your grandfather?
Speaker 6:My father started it. Yep.
Speaker 3:So you're second generation that's awesome, yep. And you're heavily involved in towing and recovery. That's correct, is that correct?
Speaker 6:Yes, yeah, we do. We have two rotators, we keep up here, and about four other heavies and then some light-duty stuff as well.
Speaker 3:You're a company that believes in training. We've definitely had a lot of your people in our classes over the years and we certainly appreciate that.
Speaker 6:Yeah, we try to train everybody that we get in in the door. Get them to a class of some kind. Um, definitely, get them through some tim's training, make sure they're safe out on the road. We we lose too many cowers in a year in this country, uh, to not be trained absolutely, and I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 3:but you are, uh, very enthusiastic about the Timmons program. I know you've provided me some help with a few years back, some help with some clarity on the Timmons issue. Yeah, absolutely, talk about that a little bit the Timmons program and how you're from a recovery standpoint, how you're involved in that, if you wouldn't mind.
Speaker 6:So I've been a TimmS trainer now maybe about five years, put on several classes around. I travel around the state of Missouri and teach the classes. They're free to anybody. I find that I have a little bit different perspective than most of the people that teach this class because most of them aren't towers. I'm also a volunteer firefighter so I get a lot of that side of the industry.
Speaker 6:So a lot of the TIMS training I feel is law enforcement-based and fire-based, about traffic control, and towing kind of gets the back seat of most of this. Traffic control and and towing kind of gets the back seat of most of this. But teaching the class from a toer's perspective to law enforcement and to fire departments and EMS definitely lets them see what we're thinking when we show up on scene versus what they're thinking then when you're. When you're in different parts of the recovery process, different people have different roles and everybody looks at an accident different. Ems is looking at the people, highway Patrol is looking at the traffic, poe is looking at the vehicle. It takes a broader view to look at the entire situation and really take in.
Speaker 3:Tims does a good job of really taking in all of the points of the recovery process. Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's the TIMS training I've been involved in. It takes the mindset of just how people have tunnel vision onto just their part and helps them see the big picture. So that's one of the things I found valuable about the TIMSS training. So you're involved with the Missouri Tow Truck Association.
Speaker 6:Tell us about that.
Speaker 6:The Missouri Tow Truck Association has been around for several decades. I just got really involved in it about four years ago and became the secretary of the association and have really just tried to push it forward. As times change, sometimes technology changes. Let me see what words I'm looking for here. The way in which we reach our potential customers or the towing group definitely changes over time. You know we used to be kind of a write a letter to everybody once a month and then we went to email and now we're doing email and Facebook and podcasts and, you know, zooming out our meetings and getting in guest speakers at each meeting to. You know, talk to the whole state where before we were, you know whoever showed up. So definitely trying to grow it with the e side of promotion.
Speaker 3:That's awesome to see, especially the meetings getting out on the Zoom format Missouri being a big state with the telling industry and being what it is normally a family business and very challenging just to get that done, much less get to a meeting. That's good to see that you all are looking at other technology on how to communicate with your members.
Speaker 6:Yeah, absolutely. I found, since I've been the secretary that I mean I started out much smaller than we are now that different members want different things from the association. We've got members that are you know one guy that answers the phone and drives the truck and does the billing and you know he wants a different thing from the association than the you know multi-city large tow company that wants a completely different thing. I mean they're wanting legislation to fight this and that. And the single tow guy you know hey, I want help writing my bill. You know how do I get paid for this. So I mean it runs the entire gamut of one guy to hundreds of employees.
Speaker 3:Right, right, that's always been one of the challenges of associations in the industry is different people in the industry have different perspectives and have different wants and needs, so to speak. I'm not sure if that's the right term, but I think you get what I'm saying, yeah, understood. So how often do you all do meetings?
Speaker 6:We meet once a month every third Tuesday of the month, and we have intermittent board meetings between there.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's a lot of commitment to make that happen, isn't it?
Speaker 6:It is. We've grown, since I've been, from maybe 10 people at a meeting, sometimes less than that, to where this last several months here of this year we've been upwards of 50 people at each meeting, and just trying to keep that ball rolling and keep new and interesting things happening at the meeting is difficult. I've been reaching out to insurance providers and trainers and people that sell equipment and just getting them in and say, hey, you know, put yourself in front of us, tell us something about you. What do we not know? How do what are we not getting from you that we need to know as a towing industry?
Speaker 3:wow, that's really looking after the members best interest by getting that kind of exposure out to you know form yeah, it takes immense amount of work to to uh coordinate all of that for certain absolutely, hey, we got to take a quick break after the break.
Speaker 3:get you to hang around after the break? Let us, uh, tell us a little bit more about what the association is doing and what their future plans are and, most importantly, how to get in contact with them. So can you hang around until after the break? Sounds good? I'll be here.
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Speaker 1:Welcome back listeners. You know you're listening to the American Towing Recovery Institute podcast, the fastest-growing podcast in the industry. Wes Wilburn, deidre Harrington, the tow doctor, here with a great guest, matt, is doing a phenomenal job explaining everything about the Missouri Tow Truck Association. Remember, folks? I can't thank you enough, wes, and I appreciate all of you. Please remember to like, review and share. The more you tell fellow tellers and recovery people. We appreciate it. If you want to hear another industry expert like Matt, by all means dial our hotline number right here at the podcast center 706-409-5603. Or if you have a state association, we are doing our best to get state associations on this podcast. So give us a holler and we'd love to have your state association on this podcast. All right, wes, go on back over there. Buddy, you're doing great. This whole podcast is excellent.
Speaker 3:Thanks, dj. I really appreciate that. Speaking of associations, I spoke with the new president of the TRA. As many of you know, bill Johnson stepped down from that position. I spoke to the new president. We're going to have him on probably two weeks from now before it airs, but we've got a podcast interview lined up for him and we're having him on to talk about his vision for the National Association. Back with Matt Matt, one of the questions that popped in my mind during the break was the different methods you're using to try to reach your members. Is that reaching a different group of towing operators? You know you're doing the Zoom meetings, facebook, the different things you talked about. Does that help reach a different group of operators?
Speaker 6:Absolutely. Has that helped reach a different group of operators? Absolutely. We, several months ago, sat down and just really just Google searched every city that we could think of big city, small town, and just kind of Google maps around the state, putting together a list of tow companies that weren't on our email list. We had for years just put out a monthly bulletin to just our members and then we pushed it out now to over 300 companies across the state with just our meeting notes. You know who's coming, what they're going to talk about. That has been one of the largest opportunities to meet new people that we have had.
Speaker 6:Um, we, we cold called most of these tow companies so it was, uh, an interesting experience. And listening to, uh, uh, no, I'm not interested, no, getting hung up on you know it's like, hey, I'm not charging anything, I'm just, you know, I'm missouri tow truck association just trying to send out some information, you know, and getting through the gate was part of the battle and then to see a few months later these same owners that I could just barely squeak out an email address from calling me and going hey, you know, I had this recovery, you know, last week. And how do you send that bill out. How are you doing this? How are you doing that? You know how do I get ahold of the association to join, so it, it was really a turn from no what I don't want, anything you're buying to seeing the information that we were putting out and being very interested in it.
Speaker 6:The, the Facebook, definitely hits another market. The, the younger group definitely is. I call that younger group the. The are probably on to the next thing already, but the young are still on Facebook and they still use that and we're using it to push out.
Speaker 6:You know our training calendar and you know information about our meetings. So that has really helped as far as getting new people in. And it's amazing the feedback we're getting, you know, in just six months of just really dialing down and going after new members. And this next month in September, we have our first meeting and we're going to move it to Columbia, missouri, as kind of an outreach to get to the middle of the state and you know invite towers from that area and have kind of a guest host. I-70 towing down there is kind of hosting our meeting for us and going to try to draw in some more of that part of the state. So hopefully it works out well and we can keep kind of expanding out from that, you know, and moving out of the greater Kansas City area to the rest of Missouri.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's one thing. It is a statewide organization. I guess a lot of folks tend to think of anything in y'all state as either St Louis-based or Kansas City-based. I mean, am I out of line with that?
Speaker 6:thought no, no, no, you're very, very much correct. We are a state divided between the Royals and Cardinals, and it's pretty well follows those lines. But we really have been trying hard to reach out to that side of the state and say, hey, man, this is what we've got going on, and they kind of have a little association of their own over there that does some stuff. In Jeff City A few tow companies have gotten together and kind of hired a lobbyist and doing some stuff that we're also doing. So it's kind of nice to have a couple fronts to take it from. But as long as you know, we're still united in what we're trying to get accomplished.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's good that y'all are looking to try to expand out, and there's the two front approach, like you said. We're going to work on maybe trying to get y'all talking a little bit more too, but that's a whole nother story.
Speaker 6:We don't have enough time in this podcast for that that's, I hear you, I can only imagine.
Speaker 3:Um. So let's talk about what, politically, legislatively uh, what is the association had had in the hands and what's the forward outlook.
Speaker 6:So we've actually had pretty good success in Jefferson City keeping bad legislation out. It seems like every year we are battling a large trucking organization you know that wants to regulate this part of towing or regulate that part of towing. I know this. Last year they tried to push through a bill on abandoned commercial vehicles, essentially setting a rate and not only setting a rate but allowing them to remove the vehicle at half of the bill. Trying to and then making us kind of fight it out to get to get the bill paid. It made it through a couple layers of Congress and then died out on the floor.
Speaker 6:We have had in the past to make it all the way to the governor. We've had a very, very good governor here in Missouri actually grew up running kind of running a tow truck gas station with his father, so he's very sympathetic to our needs and vetoed a bill that had came before him that was going to be very detrimental to the towing industry in Missouri, setting up a tow board, essentially to be able to review any and all bills that came forward. It was not well written and you know we kind of already have that the Missouri Insurance Commission that is already in place and you know they will review a tow bill or if they think find something excessive, they will write a recommendation for it. So we were lucky to have the governor veto that, I believe he vetoed it twice actually or veto that, I believe he vetoed it twice actually and so we really work hard.
Speaker 6:We go down and testify it seems like every year more than once sometimes in front of the legislation and try to make our views seen, because most of the time the legislators don't understand the cost of running these machines. You know, when they see a very large commercial recovery bill come across and they you know, well, this is outrageous, this is what they're charging, this is crazy, why would they charge this much? And then you go well, you know a new rotator's. You know $800,000 on the light end if you'd like one of those, and oh yeah, and it costs ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year to insure and you got to put a professional driver in it, you know. So once you start kind of breaking these numbers down to them and they go oh wow, you know that we really didn't realize what it costs to go out and do what you do Really, just getting in front of them and making yourself heard.
Speaker 3:And giving them facts. That's the important part of it, absolutely. That's good that y'all are doing that and doing that as volunteers. A lot of people don't realize everybody in your organization is a volunteer volunteering their time away from their business to do this correct.
Speaker 6:Absolutely. Yeah, we're all unpaid.
Speaker 3:So, looking forward, what's the association got going on and what's on their radar?
Speaker 6:So really what we've got going on for the rest of this year. We've got a big training coming in October that we are sponsoring. It's our first heavy-duty training that we're going to sponsor as an association, doing it as a fundraiser. So there's a lot going into that, uh, that we, you know, bringing casualties down there, getting records uh lined up, uh, getting the people uh to teach the class, getting the people that want to learn actually sign up and pay, um, so there's a lot going into that right now sign up and pay. So there's a lot going into that. Right now we're shooting for the end of October for that class.
Speaker 6:And another thing that we're doing just kind of as a fundraiser that we haven't done in the past this year we went out and sold sponsorships on our Missouri Tow Truck Association t-shirt. We just decided to make some t-shirts. I think we're going to end up with about $8,000 or $9,000 out of this deal for selling T-shirts. So it seems like it seems to be working. We've got a long way to go. It just takes a lot of moneypose Wrecker out of St Louis actually front us the deposit for the association to do this training and you know we'll pay them back when it's all done. But they were very gracious in allowing us to use their money to go out and get all of these things secured and start this training. So big thanks to them. Appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're great people at purpose. They really are, yes. So how do folks get in touch with the association?
Speaker 6:We are on Facebook, missouri Tow Truck Association. You can email us MissouriTowTruckAs truck association at gmailcom, and if you want to be put on our uh our mailing list or emailing list, you're more than welcome. Just email uh that and we'll get you on the list. Uh, we have a uh actually in the process. Uh just started this week of revamping our website, which which is mototruckcom Mototruckcom, and so hopefully we'll have a new e-store coming online there and a way to sign up for monthly minutes and become a member. So we're super excited about that, trying to take some of the pressure off the guys that are actually doing all the work and kind of more automating the system.
Speaker 3:So oh yeah, I bet. Uh, what does it cost to be a member for a towing company?
Speaker 6:uh towing company is 200 a year, uh, to be a member of the association, um, and, but it does come with some benefits. We're giving 10 off of all the classes that we're sponsoring, uh, this year. So, uh, I think the class in Columbia is going to be about $75 off per head. So if you send a couple people down, it's essentially a free membership and it gets you on our newsletter voting rights. Obviously, if you come to the meetings, definitely some more insight onto all the things we're doing and you know some valuable contacts. Uh, you wouldn't believe how much we learn from each other at these meetings, um, it's. It sometimes seems like just a bunch of guys sitting around having dinner and drinking a beer, um, but it's unbelievable the amount of information you take away from one of these meetings, just from each other.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. That networking that happens in an event like that is like this, is invaluable. Well, we definitely appreciate you taking your time away from your business today to talk to us and, uh, anything you'd like to share with us as a closing comment um, yeah, just if you guys have a chance to join an association, uh, there's people out there trying to make it all better for everybody.
Speaker 6:You know, um, go get some training, get yourself safe on the side of the road, spend a little bit of money and then upgrade. You know, I think west will probably sell you some lights and safety vests and and, uh, you know, get you out there where you can. You can really be seen by traveling public because it's it's getting worse, not better, for certain out there. Um, so, just be safe and take care of yourselves thank you, matt, certainly appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Thank you, oh, listeners. I want to thank you. If we haven't hit 15 000, we're right there at the brink of it. So for the 15,000 subscribers, I certainly appreciate it. Stay safe and we'll talk to you next week. You.