The life of a repo man is always intense

Another story dug from the crates, this one is from 1990, and was published in the West Hernando News and Independent Press. Basically a single source story, backed up with some simple research, it was a pretty quick study. Still, I had a fun conversation with Mr. Taylor at a diner in Central Florida, where he poured out too many stories for me to recount. When he left, I challenged myself to see what his car looked like, but he disappeared into the parking lot. He was that good.

Joe Taylor's wrecker truck idled at an intersection in a small town in Marion County.

He spotted the car on the right of way down the street, and he knew from experience he needed backup. He radioed another agent, who arrived shortly thereafter.

The other agent pulled in to block the front of the car they were about to repossess, and Taylor pulled the wrecker in behind. He was hooking the car when the delinquent owner appeared at the front door of his mobile home, about 30 feet away.

"Hey, leave my car alone," he yelled. He cursed. He pulled out a long-barreled .38 and fired six rounds, sending Taylor and the other agent for cover behind the vehicles. Four bullets hit the wrecker, two whizzed by.

"I'm gonna get this damn car," Taylor thought as he lay on the ground. "I'm gonna get this car." He couldn't fire back -- state law prohibits him from carrying a gun.

The owner disappeared into the black of the trailer, apparently to reload. By then, Taylor was towing the car down the street. He had his car.

Taylor repossesses vehicles for banks or auto dealers. These financiers don't want to spend the time and money looking for a car and going through the courts, so they call Taylor's Ocala-based company, Chek-Mate, who can get the car back.

"There's an element of danger in each case," he later said. "You gotta know everything about a car, be able to get in it and start it, usually within 30 seconds.

"You have to know everything about the neighborhood you're going into -- how late the people stay up, how many neighbors there are, if there are dogs."

Situations are especially tough in drug-ridden areas, he said. "When you're on crack, you don't know what you're doing."

Taylor said Hernando County is relatively drug-free, so he doesn't have to worry about the things he encounters in poorer areas.

Most of his Hernando County business is conducted in Spring Hill, where there is an interesting cross section, he said, between elderly and itinerant. But the area, like any other, is unpredictable. 

He said he makes a list of all the variables in every situation, more to test himself than anything else, because that list always proves to be unnecessary. The only variable he cannot predict, he said, is the person -- and people are usually very protective of their cars, even if they don't pay for them.

Chek-Mate covers the 12 counties surrounding Marion, including Hernando. Taylor also knows repossessors, or skip tracers, around the country. Other area repossession agencies, with names like Falcon and Blackjack, compete with Taylor's outfit.

Joe Taylor began repossessing cars in 1961, and at 53, he's still at it. "You gotta love it. The money's good, but you gotta be in it for more than the money," he said. Taylor makes anywhere from $200 to $1,000 for each vehicle he repossesses, depending on how complex the case.

"A lot of my friends who are in the police see that it is good money," he said, "but they don't want any part of it." It's the dangers and benefits principle, only the dangers are unique to the field -- people still believe the stereotype of the repo man.

In the 60s, he said, repo men would do anything to get their cars. A repo man could have impersonated a police officer or carried a gun because no one would stop him. Today, the field is regulated.

"There is still a stigma of the guy who's not high in intellect, who wears a baseball cap and greasy clothes, and drives a beat-up tow truck and goes around harassing the public," he said. "He's not someone you wanted to deal with."

These characters, typified by the movie Repo Man, abounded 20 years ago. "There were no law covering the industry," he said. "It was really wild and unregulated. What it came down to, is that if you were tougher than the other guy, you got your car."

Today, "tough" would be replaced by "more clever" or "more professional." The Florida Legislature recognized repossession as a profession in 1971, and requires repossession agents to undergo rigorous training and be licensed, and take out a minimum of $300,000 in liability insurance.

Recovery agents must know how to break into all models of cars and start them.

Taylor said the Division of Licensing in Tallahassee has helped improve the image of the profession. There are many legitimate, professional repossessors, he said, but like any other field, there are crooks.

These people perpetuate the lawless repo man stereotype, he said.

Several months ago, a so-called repossessor was arrested in Orlando after he stole nearly 40 cars from a shopping center parking lot. A store manager called him in to tow a single car parked illegally on the lot, and he towed as many as he could. He ended up having a criminal record and no license to repossess.

"We're trying to improve the image of the industry," Taylor said. He is president of the Florida Association of Licensed Repossessors, who are working with the Secretary of State's office to reword repossession laws when the statutes are reviewed in 1991.

Sometimes the stereotype is unjust, Taylor said. Earlier this year, a recovery agent was killed in Texas. He attached his wrecker to a car at 2 a.m., and a neighbor came outside and murdered him with a high-powered rifle.

"The grand jury did not indict the man," Taylor said. "They said, 'This neighbor had done what any normal person would have done.'”

"We wrote letters to the state attorney," he said. "We tell them that we abhor that sort of thing. But there's not a lot more that you can do except put yourself on the record."

Agents shun cameras -- Taylor did not want his picture taken because he didn't want "evil people to know what I look like." And their only notoriety, he said, is within the field or among financiers.

There is satisfaction, though. Taylor's son Brian joined his father's business three years ago, when he was 23. "He's getting good," the elder Taylor said.

In one case, Brian went to speak to the delinquent owners of a mobile home. He had no way of breaking in, so he asked to see inside. When they pulled out the keys to open the door, he looked at the cut pattern, went back to the shop, and cut a key from memory. It worked, and he got his vehicle.

Taylor and his son sometimes work together. In July, they were contracted to repossess a pickup truck in Ocala. The people were moving out when they were told their truck was to be confiscated, but the Taylors caught them.

They followed the truck from Ocala to Dunnellon to Lecanto and then to Beverly Hills, where they pulled into a gas station. The Taylors pulled into a parking lot next door. While they payed for gas, the elder Taylor jumped into the loaded-down truck and drove back to Ocala.

Recovery agents are required to store in a warehouse everything they find in a repossessed vehicle, and must notify the law within six hours of recovery.

The angry couple came for their stuff, Taylor said, and ignored a sign posted at his office that says cursing will not be tolerated. His employees usually threaten to call the sheriff's department, he said. "It's a funny thing about human beings," Taylor said. "Basically a human being will blame an unfortunate situation on anything but themselves.”

"Maybe three of four people in my entire career came in and accepted responsibility for themselves. If we all took responsibility for our own action, maybe this world wouldn't be like it is."

But if that happened, Joe Taylor would be out of business.