Ed’s Towing trucks — bright red with a winch on back) are a welcome sight to drivers marooned by collisions or car trouble. Driver Austin Skari is one of 12 employees on call to rescue stalled and sidelined vehicles. (Photo/Nancy Hanson.)
Nancy Edmonds Hanson
When you’re stuck in an Arctic-style drift in January, there’s no more welcome sight than the bright red truck from Ed’s Towing. When you’ve has gathered a whole handful of tickets for illegal parking – not so much. In either case – full of gratitude or dread – the sight of that winch raises more than your front bumper: What’s going to happen next?
Moypa Khan, who purchased Ed’s Towing three years ago, is trying out a new answer for the towed vehicles that no one shows up to claim. Starting later this summer, he plans to auction off the unclaimed jalopies that sink to the bottom when no owner pays for the claim and retrieves them: Instead of crushing and selling them as scrap metal or scavenging their usable parts himself, he intends to auction them off online.
“Most unclaimed cars are not in good shape,” he concedes. “They’re still here because their owners are not willing to pay to get them out. For someone with automotive skills, though, some do have value. Others could be ‘parted out’ by auto parts recyclers.”
The towing company, which Khan bought from Dan and Nick Grossman, works with the Moorhead Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to tow undrivable vehicles after highway accidents, as well as those abandoned on the sides of streets and highways. The officers determine which are brought to the police impound lot or channeled to the Ed’s lot at 2048 22nd Ave. S. in the Moorhead Industrial Park.
Owners can retrieve their cars and trucks by paying an impound fee or, if they called for the tow themselves, what the pros call the “winch-out” charge. The amounts vary, depending on the degree of mechanical muscle needed to haul the buggy back to town, as well as the distance plus administrative fees.
It’s not uncommon, though, for an owner to leave the vehicle wherever it stops running. Minnesota Statute 168b.035 dictates what happens next. “First we check the NICB (National Insurance Crime Bureau) database to see if it’s been reported stolen,” Khan says. “Letters are sent to the last registered owner. After 45 days on our lot, it’s basically like a mechanic’s lien. We own it. It’s up to us to crush it, sell it for parts … or auction it off. Our goal is to generate the greatest economic activity from it.”
Khan and a silent partner got into the towing business by a round-about route. He started his career as an economic advisor with New York Life and Prudential, primarily working with clients in retirement planning. “I quickly realized the advantages of being a business owner,” he reflects. “I’d gone to school for business administration” (in New Jersey, where he grew up) “and began looking for one to buy.”
He and his brother-in-law, his silent partner, found their first opportunity in a Dairy Queen in Hurley, Wisconsin. “I quickly learned I had to learn to do it myself – from cleaning fryers to working on the books at night,” the entrepreneur says. Honing his management skills, he turned the business around to the point that it won the regional district’s Pride Award in his second year, an honor that has continued for seven years. “For a short period, we ranked number one out of 36 stores,” he notes.
The partners next bought a pizza business in Madison, Wisconsin, where Moypa now lives with wife Kara and their 6-month-old daughter Mali. But in the meantime, a business impossibly far from ice cream and pizza captured his eye. The partners began looking for, of all things, a towing business. They found one in Moorhead, where the Grossmans were looking for a buyer after 20 successful years.
“When I was in high school, career testing suggested I should be a firefighter,” he comments. “You can’t buy a firehouse. Towing is the next best thing.”
But he knew nothing at all about the industry when he sealed the deal with the Grossmans. Instead, he and his new wife moved to Fargo right after their honeymoon in 2021. “My strengths are in the office, the administrative side,” he says. “I had a lot to learn.”
He spent the next year getting to know Ed’s Towing – the basics of the towing business, the staff of 12 drivers whom he calls “amazing,” and the nuts and bolts of how to winch vehicles out of snow-filled ditches in the dark when 50-mph winds chill the air to 40 below zero.
He recalls his first experience out on the road. “We got the call at 6:30. A box truck was stuck on one of those back roads 40 miles away. The crew handed me overalls, a jacket and gloves. I was pretty excited,” he recalls.
It should have been an easy recovery, but everything went wrong. “We were out there ’til midnight,” he says. “Believe it or not, I got a little hooked on the business that night.” He adds, “Tow companies get a bad rap about repossessing and so on. We don’t do that. We don’t patrol parking lots looking for cars; the lot owners have to call us.
“We’re in the recovery business. We help people. That’s way more exciting for me.”
After that first year, the Khans moved back to Madison. (“It was too cold for my wife up there,” he claims.) Today he manages Ed’s Towing, as well as his other businesses, from a home office, where he also cares for their infant daughter.
“I want to get into more towing businesses in the future,” he suggests. “It’s a fascinating business. At first it was a very big challenge, way outside my comfort zone, but I’ve enjoyed learning so many new things on the towing end.”
Khan plans to stage his first online vehicle auctions this summer. Watch for more information and details on upcoming dates at https://edstowing.com/.
