For thirty years, Galen and Jane Weaver, now the owners of Weaver’s Towing & Recovery, have been rescuing drivers and their cars and trucks on bad days. Whether the customer needs a jump start or is part of a multi-vehicle collision, Weaver’s Towing has the skills and equipment to help, and if you’re near Lititz, Pennsylvania, they will come when you call.
“With towing, you never have off. Whether it’s Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Sunday, the phone rings at any time of the day or night. It’s not just a job, it’s a lifestyle,” Galen explains.
Ninety percent of Weaver’s Towing calls are emergencies that require a tow truck immediately, such as breakdowns, lockouts, tire changes, and accidents ranging from fender benders to fatal collisions, involving vehicles ranging from motorcycles to tractor-trailers.
“When I get up in the morning,” Galen says. “I have no idea what the day will bring. Some days we might get twelve to fourteen calls, and other days only a few. But we average six to eight calls a day.”
Galen always answers his phone, and if he can’t do the job himself, he dispatches one of his other drivers. Weaver’s Towing has ten part-time employees who respond to jobs as needed. Galen knows his drivers have different abilities and schedules, and he assigns the calls accordingly. For long-distance towing, Galen normally asks one of his employees to go so that he can stay available for local calls.
Jane does office work from home and occasionally drives a tow truck as well. If Galen is called to a two-car crash, he might drive one rollback to the scene and load up while Jane brings the second rollback and then drives the first one to the Weaver’s impound yard, where vehicles are stored in a fenced-in area.
Their son, Javen, often accompanies his mother to help her load vehicles. He is fifteen years old and has been going along to accident scenes for years and is looking forward to getting his own driver’s license.
If a crash involves more than two cars, Galen will dispatch as many trucks and drivers as needed. Once they were dispatched to a nine-car accident.
Like other towing companies, Weaver’s Towing is on the monthly rotational lists kept by the local police. When officers respond to an accident, they will ask the owners of any disabled vehicles whether they have a preferred towing company. Most drivers, still shaky from the crash, can’t think of who to ask the police to contact. “If a driver doesn’t request any particular company, whoever’s on call that month is going to get called to come get your car,” Galen says. “But if you’re in an accident and you request Weaver’s Towing, whether it’s our month or not, the police will call us.” Galen says most police departments he knows of have similar towing policies.
For years, Weaver’s Towing was part of Weaver’s Garage, owned by Galen’s cousin, Daryl Weaver. Galen, now 50, started working for Daryl in 1996. “I started out in the shop and helped with towing. Several years later I transferred to the office as a service writer and shop manager and continued towing. On nights and weekends all calls came to my phone, and I handled most of those calls. About six years ago, I was looking for a change and considered other jobs.”
Then Daryl gave Galen the opportunity to buy the towing part of the business, and Galen and Jane purchased Weaver’s Towing in March 2020. Today, Weaver’s Garage and Weaver’s Towing & Recovery share the same address at 533 East Newport Road in Lititz.
Weaver’s Towing tows for many local dealerships, businesses, and body shops.
Weaver’s Towing owns five rollback trucks, used for cars and light or medium trucks. To pick up a car with a rollback, the driver can roll back the truck bed, then tilt it until the rear of the bed is on the ground. The driver then winches the vehicle onto the rollback, using a cable and chain fastened to the car’s undercarriage.
Anyone with a regular driver’s license can drive a single-axle rollback. Jane and several of the Weaver’s drivers do not have a commercial driver’s license (CDL), so they use only the rollbacks.
For larger vehicles, Weaver’s Towing also owns four wreckers, the largest of which is a 50-ton wrecker. To tow a semi-truck, the driver lowers an under-reach from the back of the wrecker, then extends the under-reach underneath the disabled truck and lifts on the axle of the truck, then uses a chain to secure the axle to the under-reach. Weavers can use heavy-duty wreckers to tow tractor-trailers, buses, and garbage trucks. The only exception Galen can think of is large cranes.
Weaver’s has also recovered farm equipment such as combines, tractors, manure tanks, and forage wagons. A few times they were called to Lancaster Airport to recover aircraft.
Non-emergency work for Galen might mean towing antique cars or unlicensed vehicles to an auction. Galen works with several local trucking companies and garages that work on semi-trucks. He’s towed loaded garbage trucks for local disposal companies, which occasionally requires an extra stop at the transfer station to empty the truck’s contents before taking the truck back to their shop for repairs.
Another commercial customer is Kreider Farms, a dairy and poultry corporation with three thousand acres spread between Lancaster, Lebanon, and Dauphin counties, with a fleet of trucks hauling products like milk, eggs, and ice cream. Once, Galen recovered a Kreider truck from a muddy field after its driver had a medical emergency. He’s also towed the burned-out shell of a trolley that Kreider Farms had used for farm tours. (The fire started with visitors inside the trolley, but fortunately, no one was hurt.)
One sticky call came at 4:00 a.m. on a Tuesday. A truck trailer carrying 55-gallon drums of honey had rolled over. The sun rose as Galen, his crew, and the firefighters cleaned up the honey that spilled on the roadway and median. Leaving any substance, even honey, at an accident scene might cause concerned drivers to report an environmental incident. Six hours later, they finally finished.
Galen has recovered vehicles from anywhere that cars and trucks can go, and many places where they shouldn’t. He’s pulled cars out of buildings and ponds and winched out too-tall trucks jammed into covered bridges.
“Just when you think you’ve seen it all…” Galen shakes his head.
Once, he was called to the scene where the driver of a semi-truck without a trailer left the roadway, drove up over a bank, sideswiped a tree, plowed through a greenhouse, made a big circle in a field, and headed back toward the road. The driver jumped out of his still-moving truck. Someone who had been following the truck saw the whole scene and decided to try to stop it himself, but the driverless truck got hung up on the same embankment where he went in, negating the need for a heroic leap into the cab.
When Galen arrived to tow the tractor, which was still festooned with plastic from the greenhouse, the befuddled driver, who spoke little English, couldn’t explain to Galen why he hadn’t just braked and stopped.
The Weavers have seen the results of all kinds of careless driving. “We try to be self-aware [when we are driving ourselves],” Jane says. “But accidents can happen to anyone,” she adds, and her husband agrees.
Snow and ice bring more work for Weaver’s Towing. Galen was already called out to winch apart two tractor-trailers that were wedged together on an icy hill. The first truck had stalled, and the second trucker tried to pass him, but the two slid against each other and got stuck. Neither tractor-trailer suffered any damage, and after Galen pulled them apart, they continued with their routes.
Another snowy day, Galen pulled two vehicles belonging to a married couple out of the same ditch. A woman had run over a bank and then called her husband for help. The man came with a four-wheel-drive pickup, intending to rescue his wife, “But when all was said and done, they were both down over the bank.”
While the Weavers can tell funny stories, a car crash is usually not a laughing matter, especially not the fatal ones. Galen recovered a car whose driver apparently passed out at the wheel with his foot still on the gas pedal. The car went off the road at a sharp bend and grazed the roof of a house that sat below the road level and landed in the trees on the other side. The driver perished, possibly from the medical condition that caused him to black out.
Two of the hardest calls that Galen has ever been on were when he had to flip over cars with the deceased drivers still inside so police could recover the bodies.
Weaver’s Towing has never had an accident while recovering cars, but they have had close calls. “I wish all drivers would give us more room when we’re loading up vehicles. Slow down, move over! It’s the law in Pennsylvania,” Galen says firmly. “But these drivers just don’t move over! When we tow a truck, we often have to disconnect the drive shafts, and we’re there about half an hour with people flying by at seventy miles an hour and not moving over.”
Galen also urges every vehicle owner to carry collision insurance, regardless of the vehicle’s worth. “Put full insurance coverage on all vehicles. For example, a couple years ago, during winter when the roads were slick, a [Chevy] Blazer came down a hill and couldn’t stop. At the bottom of this hill, there was a 90-degree bend, and straight ahead, there were a bunch of trees and a stream that’s about fifteen feet deep and about forty feet wide. I’m not sure how he got through all the trees, but he ended up in the water. He didn’t have full insurance coverage. So not only was his vehicle totaled, he had to pay a substantial recovery bill out of pocket.”
Occasionally, a car owner without proper insurance refuses to pay the towing or recovery bill and tells Galen, “You can just get rid of the vehicle, and I’m just not paying anything.”
“But legally, we cannot sell or scrap a vehicle without a title, so if the owner refuses to give us the title (perhaps because he hasn’t paid off the car yet) and just leaves a car at our impound lot, we contact the police. They run abandoned papers on the vehicle, which gives the owner of the vehicle a $600 fine and a warrant, plus all other vehicles that are registered in their name get suspended,” Galen explains.
“People don’t understand that fees get a lot greater if they choose not to take care of their problems.”
There will always be a need for businesses like Weaver’s Towing & Recovery Service. Galen and his crew are there to help, but responsible decisions about driving and insurance before an accident happens can make a bad day on the road better.
If you live close to Lititz, PA, and find yourself with a breakdown or a car accident, call Weaver’s at 717.625.2124. Weaver’s Towing & Recovery also provides lockout services, jumpstarts, and tire changes. They offer long-distance towing and tractor swap services for trucking companies. Address: 533 E. Newport Rd., Lititz, PA, 17543. Email: [email protected] or visit weaverstowing.com online.
Susan Burkholder, a corporate buyer and freelance writer, lives in Leola, Pennsylvania, and has written for PCBE since 2023. A Lancaster County native, she did long-term volunteer work in Virginia and Ireland. Her favorite places include parks, libraries, and old houses. You can read more of her writing at pennyletters.com.