When a 6-foot-4-inch, 325-pound man lowered his shoulder, trying to force his way through the locked door, Justin Woodall stayed calm and collected.
“Don’t escalate the situation, and don’t play to people’s emotions,” Woodall said. “The best thing I can try to do is calm them down.”
Woodall simply told the man that he got towed, so he has to pay.
Woodall works as a dispatcher for Superior Towing LLC, and he deals with customers as they pick up their cars at night.
He said as more students become acclimated to their classes and schedules, he expects to see more of them on the other side of the glass window, arguing about why their car got towed.
“At the beginning of the semester, people try to get set in their ways, and [towing] doesn’t spike until people get comfortable after a while,” Woodall said.
After they get comfortable with their day-to-day schedule, he said, students start to make mistakes.
Adam Pages, a 21-year-old UF telecommunication junior, admits that he frequently takes risks, but he understands and takes the blame.
“Every time I have gotten towed, I knew there was a possibility of me getting towed,” he said.
But UF international studies freshman Kat Anthony, 19, got her car towed two weeks ago, and she’s still fuming.
“Everybody is not happy when they’ve been towed,” Woodall said. “Everybody shows up, and they are not in a very good mood.”
Anthony could vouch for this, as she is still under the process of disputing a ticket she got.
The frustrating part, she said, was dealing with the towing company workers that took her car.
Woodall said some towing services tend to act rudely to people, but his personal goal is to make it as easy as possible for the customer.
“I have them come up, understand what the rules are, get them paid out and get their vehicle out of here as quickly as possible, so they have less to get mad about,” he said.
Companies like Superior Towing LLC are contracted by separate individuals like apartment complexes or spots on UF’s campus that they tow out of. Essentially, the companies are told by what guidelines to tow someone’s car, which tends to be a student’s car.
“[Students] are the demographic that gets towed more than anybody because there are more of them here,” Woodall said.
