Every day, hundreds of thousands of emergency responders and workers do critical life-saving work on roads and highways across the country. Our Fleet Focus series highlights just some of the day-to-day experiences of these workers and what they see and experience while working in the field. This Fleet Focus features Virgil White from South Charleston Fire Department in South Charleston, West Virginia.

About Shannon Towing

My name is John Lux. I am the owner of Shannon Towing. We’ve been around since 1975. I’ve been doing this for 50 years myself, I purchased the company from the original owner. She was a very high level person in the towing industry. At the time when I took over, we had two old internationals which were some real old beat up trucks and I had to focus on making equipment newer. 

We are a high volume traffic area with the I-5 and I-405 corridor, so it’s very fast moving and myself and my guys definitely have to work responsibly on the side of the road. We run 70-80% of highway calls. We’re on the side of the road every time of the day, whether it be 2 a.m. or 2 o’clock in the afternoon. We’re working the highways with the state patrol, with the county sheriffs, with the local police departments, or even just the mom and pop that broke down on the side of the road. 

The Dangers of the Side of the Road

Whenever you’re on the side of the highway, or anything like that, you always have this, well I call it an adrenaline rush but it’s more of a tower rush. You want to get the job done as quickly as you can but you also have it in the back of your mind that someone is going to come by and not slow down and move over. 

Installing Safety Cloud 

There’s one fear I have, I never get to sleep all the way because I know I’m not on the side of the road, I know my employees, my family are on the side of the road and they’re working and I always have that direct fear of getting that phone call at 1, 2 o’clock in the morning, your guy was hit, or your gal was hit. It’s not a good feeling and that’s why we chose to use the HAAS and Safety Cloud devices because it just adds a non, it doesn’t extend our working period, but it’s just a simple solution to where it does add that extra sense of awareness for that common person driving. 

I have personally lost 2 close friends in the last year in our state. Quite honestly it is getting really tiresome going to funeral processions for something that could have been avoided. 

Book a Demo

Interested in Safety Cloud and digital alerting for your fleet? Click below to see for yourself how Safety Cloud can lower the chances of a collision by up to 90%. 

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