December 6, 2024 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, commitment to serve others better is a hallmark of American life. Add a sensible new design, honest pricing, and the never-ending journey of mechanical engineering - and we now have another key player in the forces behind public safety. Here's the story of how the tow truck as we know it came to be.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories, and we tell stories about
just about everything here on the show. And this next story,
it's all about the tow truck. Here's Monty Montgomery.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
They get us out of ditches. They're on call twenty
four to seven to assist us on some of our
worst days. They can also be an unhappy site for
people who forget to pay their bills or how to park. I'm,
of course talking about the tow truck, a machine that
we often forget the importance of. But behind the wheel
of these trucks are men and women dedicated to what
(00:45):
they do.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
The tow truck industry is a twenty four to seven industry.
You know, if someone's broke down at three am, someone
needs to come out and get them. It's very similar
to the first responders. They kind of go hand in
hand with that. They're very close with that community also,
you know, because if you think if you see a
wreck on the highway, what are the three things you see?
You see the ambulance, you see a fire truck, and
(01:06):
then you see a tow truck. These guys are very
dedicated to the people that they serve. They want to
be out there and they sacrifice a lot. You know,
they sacrifice a lot of their personal life to do
it because you know, if they're on call twenty four
to seven, they're going to be getting calls twenty four
to seven. The nature of the industry is a Samaritan industry. Anyway.
You know, you break down the side of the road,
(01:28):
you're going to come out and you know, help the person.
They're very proud of what they do because they know
that their industry isn't super well known. It's not something
that people talk about on a regular basis.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
In the United States, the majority of tow trucks are
owned and operated by private, family enterprises, and that's always
been the case, even down to the very first tow
truck made by Chattanooga native Ernest Holme Senior.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
So Ernest Holme Senior he started the tow truck. He
invented it originally around nineteen seventeen, nineteen eighteen when he
got the patent for it. It had a friend of
his who had broken down and he was basically stuck
in a ditch out in the middle of nowhere, and
he called him and he said, hey, I need you
to come out and come get me. So he comes
out six guys from his garage and it took them
(02:12):
all day to get the car up out of the ditch,
and he said, well, I feel like there's a better
way to do this.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
So Holmes took his nineteen thirteen Cadillac and strapped several
pulls to the back, and thus the tow truck was born,
and he patented his design, which was not only functional
but relatively simple.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
So they came up with the first records, but it
was all hand cranked. There were no electric motors or
anything like that. But it was a what they call
a split boom design, where you would have one boom
would anchor the car to the ground or to a tree.
So you would have this cable attached to a tree
and then you would use the other one attached to
the vehicle and you would pull it up from wherever
(02:54):
it came from. So that's what was kind of a
revolutionary idea, and then that kind of just kind of
took hold as far as wreckers went. From there on out.
He was being the original inventor part.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Its tow truck was an almost immediate success due to
its simple solution to a problem which had previously played
early motorists and Ernest Holmes started receiving orders from all
over the United States. The Earnest Homes Company was quickly expanding.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
After he had come up with the idea of the
wrecker and it started selling, he knew he needed more space,
so he bought a large piece of property kind of
out in the middle of nowhere and built up a
company where they were solely building wreckers. By the nineteen thirties,
they were building a couple thousand a year and selling them. Now,
for that time period, that was a lot, you know that.
(03:42):
You got to remember that back then, you know, we
didn't have as many connections, so it was more of
a direct sale kind of thing where it was like
if someone in Louisiana needed a wrecord, they would have
to reach out to get one. So essentially he had
built that up from the ground up solely producing wreckers.
Interesting tidbit of information with any of the wreckers, they
(04:02):
were almost always named based on how much they cost.
So if it was a four to sixty, it cost
four hundred and sixty dollars. The four eighty five and
the one ten were the couple the first that were
massively produced, being that you know, one was four hundred
and eighty five dollars. One was one hundred and ten dollars.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Ernest Holmes Senior also contributed in a massive way to
the arsenal of democracy in World War Two.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
His assets were frozen for military use when the war began,
so they were dedicated to building solely military wreckers. Now
in the time time period between nineteen forty and nineteen
forty five, he built about seventy five hundred of them,
but most of them were used with what was called
the Red Ball Express after D Day, when they had
(04:46):
a supply chain set up to follow the front as
it went through Europe. These trucks were used to ferry
supplies back and forth from the coast, and the wreckers
were part of that. They were used to keep the
roads clear for the supply trucks, for the tanks for
the infantry. You know, if if something was broken down
or there was a destroyed tank in the road, or
(05:07):
a jeep or something like that, they were called in
to remove them from the road. They were used for
salvage even after the war effort, when they were cleaning
up from all the wreckage and everything. They would be
out there pulling these tanks up out of the ditches,
trying to clear these fields that were people's farms and homes.
But yeah, that was that's primarily what they were used for.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Ernest Holmes Senior continued to expand his business, building more
and more records and continuing to refine his invention to
be more efficient. Holmes was also active in his community.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Though he was extremely active in his Presbyterian church, he
was a huge proponent for a lot of youth programs
and that kind of thing. He was also extremely active
in the local country club, the Chattanooga Country Club. He
loved golf. He would spend pretty much all of his
extra time playing golf, which kind of ended up being
(05:58):
one of the reasons he in very good health for
a long time. Unfortunately for him, he had kind of
a tragic death. He was a young man when he
passed away. He had gone out and played golf that day.
He came home, played a game of bridge with some friends,
and by that evening he was just said to his wife,
(06:19):
I'm not feeling well, and in a few hours he
was dead.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
The innovative company that Ernest Holmes had started would be
passed on to his son, Ernest Holmes Junior, who would
continue to expand upon what his father had started.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
After his father passed away, the man that originally invented
the tow truck, he took over and he was responsible
for a lot of the growth of the Holmes company
because his father was only in business for about forty
years prior to that, and it was pre war era,
that kind of thing. He took it from that and
made it into a modern entity, and they developed probably
(06:57):
a good dozen more models worth of wreckers. They introduced
the rail crane, which is one of the first basically
a record for trains. So he was the leader of
the growth era for that brand.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
The company that Holmes Junior took over would eventually break
records too, records that still stand today.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
In the late seventies, they had gone through a time
period where they felt that they would They got very
involved with the Indianapolis Speedway for obvious reasons. I mean,
if there's rexs and whatnot on the course, you need
someone to come out and pick it up. Well, they
kind of got this wild hair to you know, let's
(07:38):
see how fast we can make this record go. So
working with some guys in NASCAR, and obviously, like I said,
they had been in Indianapolis. They ended up going down
to Talladay again Alabama and said let's see how we
can get how fast we can get it to go.
After they had built the engine in this and it
set the world speed record for a wrecker for of
(08:01):
one hundred and nine miles an hour.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
The Ernest Homes Corporation wasn't just making fast tow trucks, though,
they were also presenting a business model based on fast service,
just like the family run garages on Call twenty four
seven that they served.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
They had a very good reputation with the wrecking community,
the tow truck industry, the people on the ground, the
boots on the ground, because their priority was to make
sure that you kept your business going. You know these guys,
if your truck was broken down or your wrecker wasn't working,
you weren't making money. So the Holmes Company at the time,
(08:37):
their biggest focus was getting parts and service out to
their people as quickly as possible, as soon as order
came in, I mean it was going back out the
same day, and that that was a big priority for them,
and that's what really set them apart from the rest
of the competition at the time.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The Earnest Homes Company would eventually be sold to the
Dover Corporation in nineteen seventy three fifteen million dollars, But
that wasn't the end of the Holmes family being involved
and innovating in the record industry. Jerry Holmes, Ernest Holmes
junior son would be one of the first people to
invest in the hydraulic record. The Holmes family invested in
(09:15):
a new idea, pioneer their own industry. It's easy to
forget how important this oftentimes underappreciated invention is to millions
of Americans, but tow trucks are truly the unsung heroes
of the Highway.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And good job as always, Monty, and a special thanks
to Nile Vincent and the International Museum of Towing, And
go to our story on the Wright Brothers because you'll
find the same kind of spirit and David McCullough does
a beautiful job telling that story, the story of the
tow truck here on our American Stories
This is our American Stories, and we tell stories about
just about everything here on the show. And this next story,
it's all about the tow truck. Here's Monty Montgomery.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
They get us out of ditches. They're on call twenty
four to seven to assist us on some of our
worst days. They can also be an unhappy site for
people who forget to pay their bills or how to park. I'm,
of course talking about the tow truck, a machine that
we often forget the importance of. But behind the wheel
of these trucks are men and women dedicated to what
(00:45):
they do.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
The tow truck industry is a twenty four to seven industry.
You know, if someone's broke down at three am, someone
needs to come out and get them. It's very similar
to the first responders. They kind of go hand in
hand with that. They're very close with that community also,
you know, because if you think if you see a
wreck on the highway, what are the three things you see?
You see the ambulance, you see a fire truck, and
(01:06):
then you see a tow truck. These guys are very
dedicated to the people that they serve. They want to
be out there and they sacrifice a lot. You know,
they sacrifice a lot of their personal life to do
it because you know, if they're on call twenty four
to seven, they're going to be getting calls twenty four
to seven. The nature of the industry is a Samaritan industry. Anyway.
You know, you break down the side of the road,
(01:28):
you're going to come out and you know, help the person.
They're very proud of what they do because they know
that their industry isn't super well known. It's not something
that people talk about on a regular basis.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
In the United States, the majority of tow trucks are
owned and operated by private, family enterprises, and that's always
been the case, even down to the very first tow
truck made by Chattanooga native Ernest Holme Senior.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
So Ernest Holme Senior he started the tow truck. He
invented it originally around nineteen seventeen, nineteen eighteen when he
got the patent for it. It had a friend of
his who had broken down and he was basically stuck
in a ditch out in the middle of nowhere, and
he called him and he said, hey, I need you
to come out and come get me. So he comes
out six guys from his garage and it took them
(02:12):
all day to get the car up out of the ditch,
and he said, well, I feel like there's a better
way to do this.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
So Holmes took his nineteen thirteen Cadillac and strapped several
pulls to the back, and thus the tow truck was born,
and he patented his design, which was not only functional
but relatively simple.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
So they came up with the first records, but it
was all hand cranked. There were no electric motors or
anything like that. But it was a what they call
a split boom design, where you would have one boom
would anchor the car to the ground or to a tree.
So you would have this cable attached to a tree
and then you would use the other one attached to
the vehicle and you would pull it up from wherever
(02:54):
it came from. So that's what was kind of a
revolutionary idea, and then that kind of just kind of
took hold as far as wreckers went. From there on out.
He was being the original inventor part.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Its tow truck was an almost immediate success due to
its simple solution to a problem which had previously played
early motorists and Ernest Holmes started receiving orders from all
over the United States. The Earnest Homes Company was quickly expanding.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
After he had come up with the idea of the
wrecker and it started selling, he knew he needed more space,
so he bought a large piece of property kind of
out in the middle of nowhere and built up a
company where they were solely building wreckers. By the nineteen thirties,
they were building a couple thousand a year and selling them. Now,
for that time period, that was a lot, you know that.
(03:42):
You got to remember that back then, you know, we
didn't have as many connections, so it was more of
a direct sale kind of thing where it was like
if someone in Louisiana needed a wrecord, they would have
to reach out to get one. So essentially he had
built that up from the ground up solely producing wreckers.
Interesting tidbit of information with any of the wreckers, they
(04:02):
were almost always named based on how much they cost.
So if it was a four to sixty, it cost
four hundred and sixty dollars. The four eighty five and
the one ten were the couple the first that were
massively produced, being that you know, one was four hundred
and eighty five dollars. One was one hundred and ten dollars.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Ernest Holmes Senior also contributed in a massive way to
the arsenal of democracy in World War Two.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
His assets were frozen for military use when the war began,
so they were dedicated to building solely military wreckers. Now
in the time time period between nineteen forty and nineteen
forty five, he built about seventy five hundred of them,
but most of them were used with what was called
the Red Ball Express after D Day, when they had
(04:46):
a supply chain set up to follow the front as
it went through Europe. These trucks were used to ferry
supplies back and forth from the coast, and the wreckers
were part of that. They were used to keep the
roads clear for the supply trucks, for the tanks for
the infantry. You know, if if something was broken down
or there was a destroyed tank in the road, or
(05:07):
a jeep or something like that, they were called in
to remove them from the road. They were used for
salvage even after the war effort, when they were cleaning
up from all the wreckage and everything. They would be
out there pulling these tanks up out of the ditches,
trying to clear these fields that were people's farms and homes.
But yeah, that was that's primarily what they were used for.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Ernest Holmes Senior continued to expand his business, building more
and more records and continuing to refine his invention to
be more efficient. Holmes was also active in his community.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Though he was extremely active in his Presbyterian church, he
was a huge proponent for a lot of youth programs
and that kind of thing. He was also extremely active
in the local country club, the Chattanooga Country Club. He
loved golf. He would spend pretty much all of his
extra time playing golf, which kind of ended up being
(05:58):
one of the reasons he in very good health for
a long time. Unfortunately for him, he had kind of
a tragic death. He was a young man when he
passed away. He had gone out and played golf that day.
He came home, played a game of bridge with some friends,
and by that evening he was just said to his wife,
(06:19):
I'm not feeling well, and in a few hours he
was dead.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
The innovative company that Ernest Holmes had started would be
passed on to his son, Ernest Holmes Junior, who would
continue to expand upon what his father had started.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
After his father passed away, the man that originally invented
the tow truck, he took over and he was responsible
for a lot of the growth of the Holmes company
because his father was only in business for about forty
years prior to that, and it was pre war era,
that kind of thing. He took it from that and
made it into a modern entity, and they developed probably
(06:57):
a good dozen more models worth of wreckers. They introduced
the rail crane, which is one of the first basically
a record for trains. So he was the leader of
the growth era for that brand.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
The company that Holmes Junior took over would eventually break
records too, records that still stand today.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
In the late seventies, they had gone through a time
period where they felt that they would They got very
involved with the Indianapolis Speedway for obvious reasons. I mean,
if there's rexs and whatnot on the course, you need
someone to come out and pick it up. Well, they
kind of got this wild hair to you know, let's
(07:38):
see how fast we can make this record go. So
working with some guys in NASCAR, and obviously, like I said,
they had been in Indianapolis. They ended up going down
to Talladay again Alabama and said let's see how we
can get how fast we can get it to go.
After they had built the engine in this and it
set the world speed record for a wrecker for of
(08:01):
one hundred and nine miles an hour.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
The Ernest Homes Corporation wasn't just making fast tow trucks, though,
they were also presenting a business model based on fast service,
just like the family run garages on Call twenty four
seven that they served.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
They had a very good reputation with the wrecking community,
the tow truck industry, the people on the ground, the
boots on the ground, because their priority was to make
sure that you kept your business going. You know these guys,
if your truck was broken down or your wrecker wasn't working,
you weren't making money. So the Holmes Company at the time,
(08:37):
their biggest focus was getting parts and service out to
their people as quickly as possible, as soon as order
came in, I mean it was going back out the
same day, and that that was a big priority for them,
and that's what really set them apart from the rest
of the competition at the time.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The Earnest Homes Company would eventually be sold to the
Dover Corporation in nineteen seventy three fifteen million dollars, But
that wasn't the end of the Holmes family being involved
and innovating in the record industry. Jerry Holmes, Ernest Holmes
junior son would be one of the first people to
invest in the hydraulic record. The Holmes family invested in
(09:15):
a new idea, pioneer their own industry. It's easy to
forget how important this oftentimes underappreciated invention is to millions
of Americans, but tow trucks are truly the unsung heroes
of the Highway.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And good job as always, Monty, and a special thanks
to Nile Vincent and the International Museum of Towing, And
go to our story on the Wright Brothers because you'll
find the same kind of spirit and David McCullough does
a beautiful job telling that story, the story of the
tow truck here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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