• Story alerts   • Letter to Editor   • Pin it  — If people
cannot retrieve their cars on the day they are towed, the towing
company adds an additional charge of $30 per day until they come
and get it. After a month of the car sitting unclaimed, the
company can auction it off. By that time, the bill is well over
$1000. Ruford wonders whether the initial charge for towing, as
well as the daily impound fees, are intended to make it so
financially difficult for some people to get their cars back
that they lose them to the auction. "Then the towing company
makes a whole lot of money," he says.  Ruford has paid special
attention to the way people's cars get towed at Longs Drugs.
"I've noticed a 55- to 60-year-old Caucasian man slouching down
in a sports car in the parking lot marking on a clipboard," he
says. A Longs employee told him that people who park there but
walk off the lot to another business are given 15 minutes until
the tow truck gets there to take their cars. "But the tow trucks
get there in one or tw