Padre Island Auto towing

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX. - A Memorial Day weekend fishing trip turns frustrating and expensive after the fishermen return to find their trucks were towed! Randy Donato tells Action 10 they thought they were at the Bird Island Boat Ramp early, but plenty of other boaters beat them there.

"All the parking spaces were full. There was no one there from the park to direct traffic or tell traffic to do anything with the vehicles or the trailers," said Mr. Donato

Mr. Donato says they were forced to park on the side of the road because the parking lot was full. They didn't see the no parking sign, they know this is not an excuse, but they say the point is the outrageous price they have to pay.

"We were ready to pay the price for doing that until we learned that this guy wanted $2500 dollars...cash only," he said.

Another boater, who payed to get his truck back this afternoon, agrees with Mr. Donato. Matthew Yankee says he was ready to pay the price for parking in a "no parking zone", but he didn't expect the price to be so high! Then to make matters worse, he says he couldn't pull out $2500 dollars on the Saturday of a holiday weekend - so his costs were even higher.

"I think $2500 dollars is completely outrageous...it actually ended up being $2,864.... 4 days costs an extra $364 dollars," Mr. Yankee said.

Action 10 went to Sanford's Wrecker Service to talk to the owners about the high charge, but an employee said the owners were out of town. They later released a statement saying they have seen plenty of expensive tow bills from other tow companies and that it only seems to be their company, a "minority owned company," that gets the direct attention of the media. So, Action 10 asked the Padre Island National Seashore Superintendent what he thought about the bill.

"When I saw, I was surprised," Joe Escoto said.

Now Escoto says he is working to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else, and so are the boaters.

"I informed Mr. Sanford that, you know, I'm a lawyer and I plan to correct this obviously wrong situation," said Mr. Donato.

"I'm afraid the law actually permitted them to get away with this, so I'm trying to get a little bit of justice here," said Mr. Yankee.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• padre
• island
• towing
• hoe
• escoto
• national
• seashore
• corpus
• christi
• texas
• fishing
• bird

[wreckerman65]

I drive a tow-truck here in corpus christi tx,i wont say for who but let me just say that Sanfords is the reason we have such a bad reputation.On behalf of all wrecker drivers here in corpus let me assure you that we are all not like them.And it is not the first time they have pulled crap like this resulting in damaging any chances of people trusting anyb wrecker drivers!So please just remember we are all not crooks like them!

[TeamSurfinSapo]

I know not all wreckers in Corpus are corrupt. I had a few hard working friends that were wrecker drivers and were as honest as they get.

[alexrex20]

someone ought to go to Sanford's and slash all their tires.

[MOTOCOMPOUSA]

wow crazy stuff. hillbilly tow people "how much you got" haha

[roughneck10000]

@JamieDawn2 I pull every person I see stuck on the sand out due to the ass raping I've seen them pull for getting someone out on the beach. I've spent a couple hours digging out big trucks that buried themselves to the frame to help them avoid those kind of crazy expenses.

[roughneck10000]

Hopefully that lawyer ass raped Sanfords, and to use minority as a crutch. Fuck off you shiesty shitbag race baiting crooks.

[rustybones3115]

hell wit ya, payback for all them free days of work

[marktsheppard]

"minority owned"

fucken crack head niggers got greedy

[Badadl2ude]

Holy shit !! Even if they used a Heavy duty wrecker, which clearly they did'nt have to , Theres no way in hell that bill should be that High ! They should have guns and be wearing ski marks for that screw job. This is the shit that gives our whole industry a black eye

[JamieDawn2]

a couple of years ago i went on vacay to corpus/port a for the first time and i didn't know you SHOULD drive on the wet sand, thinking the wet sand would make me sink like mud (i'm from central texas, only mud here...) and needless to say, i got stuck. bad stuck. i called about 6 different towing businesses in the area and the CHEAPEST quote i got was $600 plus gas and mileage. if it weren't for the 2 nice guys that happened by helping to dig me out, i would still be stuck there.