Towing Cars on the Graveyard Shift

Daniel Kaufman’s car sits in an alley at the mouth of his open garage. The engine? Running. Wiper blades? Swishing. Music? Blaring. Keys? Locked inside.

Dashing to open the garage in the rain, he slammed the car door shut.

Kaufman will be one of tow truck driver Ruben Mendoza’s first clients this evening in Burbank. Mendoza works the graveyard shift, one of an army of workers for whom the workday begins at dark and ends at dawn.

Mendoza, a driver for Girard & Peterson Inc., starts his shift at 7 p.m. and works all night rescuing drivers, impounding cars and towing others that have broken down or been wrecked in accidents.

This night, as a slightly chagrined Kaufman stands in the rain, Mendoza uses a set of master keys and a slim jim to pop open his lock. Within five minutes, Kaufman pulls into his garage.

The call is easy compared with what tow truck drivers working graveyard usually encounter.

“Sometimes the night brings out the worst people,” says Jesse Enriquez, a tow truck driver for more than 20 years and general manager of Girard & Peterson. “Most of the stuff at night is involving someone in trouble.”

Sometimes spouses try to enlist drivers to help them steal their ex-husbands’ or ex-wives’ cars. Other times, drunk drivers call for tows after accidents.

For Mendoza, the worst calls are those involving fatal freeway accidents. Girard & Peterson contracts with Burbank, the California Highway Patrol and Los Angeles County.

“I hate going on fatals,” he says. “It sticks in my mind. I try to avoid looking, but you know, human nature.”

After seven years of towing cars, Mendoza is haunted by his share of images. Unlike police officers or firefighters, tow truck drivers rarely have the benefit of on-the-job counseling. A week earlier, Mendoza had to tow a car in which a young child burned to death.

“You know what I do?” the 30-year-old says. “I go talk to my mom.”

The other thing Mendoza hates is putting cars in the “evidence shed” late at night, when no one is around. A yellow corrugated metal building prone to echoes and drafts, the shed houses cars in which people have died.

“You pull in and try to drop your car real quick and not look around,” says Mendoza, who has earned the nickname “Grim Reaper” among co-workers.

He spends most nights locked in an office across from the shed. Between calls, he watches reruns of “MASH” and dozes on a ratty couch in the lobby.

Another call comes about 11:15. A Channel 9 news van has broken down in Hollywood and needs a tow to the station. Mendoza pulls on his rain slicker and climbs into the cab of his truck.

Halfway there, he gets a call: The news crew got the van started. Driving back through the deserted streets of Burbank, the town where he now lives with his wife and daughter, he reflects on his life.

Mendoza grew up in a gang-ridden area of northeast Los Angeles and as a teenager watched his best friend gunned down in Mendoza’s driveway. But here, he said, “It’s quiet and peaceful.” Mendoza recently helped his parents buy a house in Burbank too.

He works the graveyard shift so he can coach his daughter’s soccer team and attend college during the day. He hopes to get a job with a city parks and recreation department so he can work with children. It’s a demanding schedule, and back at the office Mendoza struggles to stay awake.

“I only got an hour of sleep last night,” he says.

Still, it’s a good job, though it can be dangerous.

Mendoza describes the “three-second rule” used by drivers.

“You look up every three seconds to check for cars coming to hit you,” he says.

His next call comes a short time later. A heavy-duty tow truck driver has broken down and is blocking lanes.

That driver, from Brea, had just dropped off a man and his car at a Burbank apartment complex. Pulling out of the driveway, his own truck died.

Mendoza hooks the hulking truck up to his and pulls it off the street. As a professional courtesy, Mendoza does not charge. The Brea driver sits soaked in his cab and waits for a big rig from his company to arrive.

“It’s not the best night to be towing,” Mendoza says.