Every day in Gainesville, cars disappear.
Residents who park outside a shop, restaurant or a friend’s apartment return to their spaces to see their vehicles have vanished.
Those who have experienced this may have been victims of roam towing, and one Gainesville man is on a mission to end it once and for all.
Jeremiah Loper, the 36-year-old general manager and partner of Gainesville2Go, created a petition about a month ago to end roam towing in Gainesville.
Roam towing is legal but differs from standard towing, where property owners identify the illegally parked cars and then call tow companies to retrieve them, said City Commissioner Thomas Hawkins.
“(With roam towing) the tow company can identify the car first and then tow it without hearing from the property owner,” he said.
Loper said he was frustrated with his employees’ cars being preyed upon by towing companies when making food runs.
“One of my employees was picking up food … went inside for two to three minutes, grabbed the food, went outside and his car was gone,” Loper said. “The car had three Gainesville2Go signs on it. They literally had to be there watching him go in, run over and snatch his car in three minutes tops.”
The petition, hosted on change.org, is about 50 signatures away — as of press time — from Loper’s 1,000-signature goal and was designed specifically to attract local government officials’ attention, Loper said.
“When I created it, I put email addresses for all city commissioners and the mayor, so whenever anybody signs it, it sends them an email,” he said.
Loper said although he understands why certain towing practices must be enforced, he is still frustrated.
“They’re taking, especially, from students who don’t have a lot of money and are trying to go to school,” he said. “Granted, there are problems with parking, but it should be up to owners to make the call to tow.”
Hawkins said city officials recognize the issue’s importance among residents and have worked to highly regulate towing practices.
“We talk about roam towing endlessly, but we have lots of rules in place to make it less bad for people,” he said, referencing practices like requiring companies to place signs in targeted areas and enforcing maximum fees towing companies can charge.
Heather Brinn, a 20-year-old UF history junior, has never been towed but credits that to her careful parking habits.
“Parking is a pain here,” she said. “No one wants to get towed, so I’m fairly certain students would be supportive of it.”
Local roam towing companies Superior Towing, Ultimate Towing, Elite Towing and Advanced Towing could not be reached after repeated requests for comment.
A version of this story ran on page 1 on 1/13/2014 under the headline "Residents voice frustrations over roam towing"
