Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily
Those of us who commute spend a lot of time on Interstate 70. You don’t spend nearly as much time on the highway as Chris Anderson.
Anderson, a driver with West Vail Towing and Recovery, for the past few weeks has posted reports about road conditions, as well as sometimes hairy recovery jobs, on the Eagle County Classifieds Facebook page. Those reports will cite current conditions, from precipitation to temperature. You want one of those reports to contain the words “full send,” meaning normal conditions.
Anderson, a Wolcott resident, has driven and dispatched tow trucks since 2007, first for West Vail Shell, and for the past few days, West Vail Towing and Recovery, a spinoff from West Vail Shell.
West Vail Shell’s towing operation recently split off into its own company. The new firm is West Vail Towing and Recovery. It operates between Wolcott and the top of Vail Pass.
Anderson has recovered vehicles that have slid off icy roads, pulled cars trapped in Glenwood Canyon mud, and disabled vehicles on the road to Piney Lake. By his estimation, he’s been struck by vehicles 16 times in his time here.
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Most of those have been minor, he said. But he’s had a concussion, damage to his jaw and, in one case, a “busted-open” head suffered when diving into his truck in an attempt to dodge an out-of-control vehicle.
Anderson for some time has been posting information and other tidbits on his personal Facebook page. He started putting a few posts on Eagle County Classifieds as the holidays approached.
“There was a lot of stupid happening” at the time, he said. Friends recommended he post more frequently on the community page. But, he noted, “I can only do so much.”
Anderson began towing vehicles as a teen, but has had a varied career — much of it in Nevada — as an emergency medical technician, a police officer and for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
When he arrived in the Vail Valley in 2007 — a single dad looking for better schools for his kids — he quickly signed on with West Vail Shell.
“I can’t just sit” he said of his desire to keep moving. Towing vehicles keeps a person moving. Anderson has hauled countless vehicles back to the Denver area and elsewhere.
The farthest he’s hauled a vehicle is from Eagle County to Norman, Oklahoma, a trip of nearly 800 miles. The problem was a flat tire on the Land Rover he hauled. It turned out that the only replacement tire in the U.S. for that vehicle was in Norman. The good news was that the client was an Oklahoma resident.
Towing costs range from pricey to “yikes!”
Anderson noted that the state sets the rate for towing impounded vehicles, so there’s little he can do about that. Off-road recoveries start at $350 per hour as soon as his tires hit a forest road. The rate becomes $450 per hour in the winter.
But, he noted, the company’s equipment is expensive. A truck payment can easily hit $2,000 per month. Keeping a truck in fresh tires and running and operating properly is also expensive.
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And those trucks just about define “extreme duty.”
Anderson once pulled a tractor-trailer rig more than a mile to the top of Vail Pass — in a snowstorm, of course, and without tire change — to clear a roughly two-mile traffic jam.
Anderson and West Vail also pulled cars out of the highway-closing 2021 mudslides in Glenwood Canyon.
Over the years, Anderson has seen several changes in I-70 traffic. Perhaps the biggest change is a big increase in tractor-trailer traffic on the highway. And, he noted, summer is a busier season than winter.
But no matter the weather, Anderson and the rest of the valley’s tow drivers are on the road, saving drivers who end up in trouble.
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