Need to outfit my tow truck

[Towtruckman]

Well I’m always losing money to people saying I damaged something on there car! I have seen three big companies that sell a dvr with 4 camera units but are very pricy and I have seen knock offs with the same cameras and bad reviews.

Ideally a dvr with with a front facing and in cab as well as 2 rear cameras (preferably the square bracket kind) seen on most reverse camera application (waterproof) would be best with 2 weeks to 30 day recording like 2TB of memory system so all of the cars we to we can go back to so that we can show people we didn’t hit the bumper when we backed up to the car.

If you have any idea or suggestion it would be greatly appreciated. Any feedback and thoughts that can help I know 30 days of driving recording is a lot so helping me think this through would be appreciated.

I would be putting this application in 3 different trucks.

 

[dash riposki]

Sounds like a massive headache. You can't do a walk around video of the cars before you hook up to them? document any existing damage?

 

[kamkar]

Walk around can save a lot of money.
When i worked on some ferries in the 90ties we moved a lot of new cars around, and the company got billed for 30 - 50.000 DKkr damages on them every month, so they hired someone on both sides of the line to inspect the cars before and after we touched them. ( we carried 20 - 40 new cars on each ferry on each run, and had 3 ferries operating the line though the one just did 1 round trip every day, the other two did 2 round trips )
And wouldn't you know the amount we got billed for every month dropped to 10.000 DKkr MAX
Turn out we had been paying for the land transporters dents and dings, and those guys also handled those brand new cars like they was stolen.

you will not find any dashcam in the consumer market that can do 2 Tb of footage, consumer dashcams only use micro SD cards and the max supported by some are 256 Gb

So i would equip the cars with each its own action camera or maybe company smart phone with a good camera, and then have the driver do a walk around while filming ( maybe take pics too ) and mention any dents and scratches at pickup and maybe offload too,,,,, the same are also a very good idea to do some places if you go on holiday and rent a car, those guys are well know for ripping people off.
And then have a stack of 128 Gb memory cards to keep supply, and you could backup those memory cards to a PC, using a good USB 3 card reader on a USB 3 port on the PC you can get the full read speeds of the memory cards which are often around 80 MB/s, so you can get the footage off fairly quick.

And just video documenting the car before it is picked up, should save you a lot of memory space, so i recon a 128 Gb card will be just fine for a week of service.
And the guys should be able to do a walk around in 5 minutes.

I assume what people most often try to wipe off on you guys are dents and scratches.

 

[Towtruckman]

We still have people that complain. Honestly I can get a good in cab and forward facing dash cam or a dash cam that supports forward facing and one rear view camera the square water proof kinds.

Do you know any set ups with a forward facing and rear view camera. I want to be able to record and view my stinger on the back of the tow truck while hooking up cars.

 

[kamkar]

There are not many models out yet with one or more cameras being waterproof, but some have it to go or optional for their existing line of cameras.
In general outside cameras are not that cool for dashcams, as you know there are a lot if dirt building up, and for a reversing camera that is not really a problem, but for a dashcam that also need to capture the small details a little dirt can ruin a lot.
But of course i have not seen a truck with a wiper on the cab rear window like i have on my small hatchback car, but otherwise it is good to install where you have wiper coverage on windscreen or elsewhere.

 

[SawMaster]

Based on what your rear cab window can 'see', if it's wide enough to cover both sides of the towed car that would take care of most of the problem. Due to limited memory space, you'd probably want to run thiose cams only when on a call and DL them to your laptop or PC before they were overwritten with new footage. But even with that, I would use your phone cam or a good 'point-and-shoot' cam and document every tow before the truck got close to it. If you do your "paperwork" on a laptop in the truck, you could attach each cam file to the specific tow to make finding them easier.

TBH, since the advent of roll-backs I've seen none of the wildness I once saw frequently in tow operators around here. The insurance premium for a roll-back here for liability coverage only starts at $5K per year, and goes up if you do police emergency calls or do a lot of tows. Even in my meager home-repair business I photo-document anything which I think may get wrongfully assigned to me, and I make sure the homeowner know I am doing it. Never a false claim in over 20 years since I started doing that. Extra work but worth it.

Cover your backside my friend- your business demands that!

Phil

 

[kamkar]

Tow trucks here in Denmark are usually the kind that pull the wreck all the way onto its back.

This little sucker are rare to see here, but as you can see above some of the larger ones also have the option to pull a second car like that.

Big and small.... is that a POS Ranger i see

These guys are freaked out if you have a automatic, not many Danes drive a auto, we are all stick drivers here.

 

[dash riposki]

'Somebody' on youtube who does mostly repos has a pretty extensive cam setup for his tow truck. I think he is in Utah somewhere. (will look to see if I can find him)
if you can live with sticking an action cam type thing on a magnetic mount or something on the back of the tow truck before you hook up, that may be a cheap solution.

 

[Towtruckman]

'Somebody' on youtube who does mostly repos has a pretty extensive cam setup for his tow truck. I think he is in Utah somewhere. (will look to see if I can find him)
if you can live with sticking an action cam type thing on a magnetic mount or something on the back of the tow truck before you hook up, that may be a cheap solution.

He uses GoPros!

 

[Towtruckman]

The closest thing I found to what I need that doesn't seem cheap Chinese or fake is the 2 Chanel from BlackVue with the in cab forward facing and the square rear facing waterproof camera. I would just like to have more memory than 128gb and they say they are making a 256gb SD card but I don't see the problem with putting a larger SD car in it that isn't a blackvue brand.

 

[SawMaster]

Plenty of good action cams other than GoPro whicg sell for less, but you're not going to find days of memory- only hours- with any of these cams. You can pop the card out of a cam, pop it into your laptop and copy it, then put the card back in the cam in about one minute. Your laptop will likely have the memory capacity you want already. If you really can't be troubled to do that then you're going to need a commercial-grade "truckers cam" system and the deep pockets it takes to buy it. Liking the mag-mounting suggested by @dash riposki which would make for an easy 'bed' mount which will certainly get you full side coverage along with whatever end of the car that goes on first.

Phil

 

[Towtruckman]

When I say pricey I am referring to people trying to charge 2-3,000 per system. I have found systems for around $600 which are within my price range but I don't trust the source or know anything about them.

http://www.topdawgelectronics.com/mdvr-multi-cam/
https://www.dashcam.co

If anyone knows a good company that sells these systems in that price range or have used this or something similar I would appreciate the help.

 

[jokiin]

a $600 four camera system isn't going to be great for resolution, typically these systems are lower frame rate and most often only the first channel has decent resolution, the rest are lower, they fill a need in the market but are probably not at the level you're needing

 

[dash riposki]

Motorcycle dash cam for the rear?

 

[Towtruckman]

a $600 four camera system isn't going to be great for resolution, typically these systems are lower frame rate and most often only the first channel has decent resolution, the rest are lower, they fill a need in the market but are probably not at the level you're needing

It seems that I can put a nice system together for around or under $1000 from rear
View safety

 

[Towtruckman]

Tow trucks here in Denmark are usually the kind that pull the wreck all the way onto its back.

This little sucker are rare to see here, but as you can see above some of the larger ones also have the option to pull a second car like that.

Big and small.... is that a POS Ranger i see

These guys are freaked out if you have a automatic, not many Danes drive a auto, we are all stick drivers here.

Those are sick trucks I watched that show on Netflix that shows this type of trucks. I found a dvr and camera system on rear view safety that will probably do 720p which should be fine and a cheaper end $1000 system will have about 256GB unless I break the bank and do a 2TB system!

 

[kamkar]

Danish school kids, in the last grades of school they go on week long visits to companies to get a feel for different kinds of work ( well they did when i was young at least )
One of the places i went to was Falck ( the red truck in the pics ) that back then was the only company for towing and roadside assistance. one of the first things i got to try was drive a Mustang MK1 up onto the truck

If i was you i would just outfit one truck for starters, and see how that work for you before you commit.
You really should look for 1080p, thats at least the minimum we would recommend in here.

 

[TonyM]

I would imagine that backing up to a car and preparing to tow or carry on a flatbed is hardly fast action stuff. Perhaps you can get away with time-lapse video at 5fps, or even slower at 1fps? That would vastly increase the recording duration on a 256GB card compared to recording at 30fps.