“One of the biggest blessings someone can have is if they can pass their business onto their children,” Joe said, fighting back his emotions. “I’ve had friends who had nobody and end up selling after 30 years for not very much money. If your kid wants to follow in your footsteps, what could be a better thing? You work seven days a week, 15 hours a day to put it all together, and you hope to keep everything intact.”

Joe said it was son’s “vision” to take over the business, even from an early age. Matt said he was pretty much raised in the shop, and like other family-owned towing companies, he was very hands-on, answering the phones, working on the trucks and eventually operating the equipment. With his father’s blessing, he is now poised to take the family business to the next level.

“Matt’s pretty much been an adult since he was two years old. He used to go with me on calls and got used to making money at an early age,” Joe said. “I’m just glad he picked up the ball and has really accelerated our business. For a 26-year-old to take on 80-90 employees, it’s really amazing to see.”

“I grew up in the family business, riding in the tow trucks day and night,” Matt recalled. “I love being around tow trucks. It was always my dream to be in towing. I just didn’t think it would be this many trucks."

27 years and counting

Joe started Val-U Auto and Towing as a used car lot in 1996. He purchased his first tow truck—an International car carrier—in 2000 and has strategically expanded the operation to 12 locations along the New York - Pennsylvania border. With a concentration in upstate New York, the company basically serves customers from Pittsburgh to Connecticut.

“I did a lot of retail repair work when I first got started, and it seemed as though every time I turned around, I was handing a tow truck guy $50 or $100, so I decided as part of what we were doing, towing would fit right in at that point in time,” Joe recalled.

Val-U Auto and Towing still sells cars, but their “primary focus” is towing. As a dedicated customer of Zip’s, their fleet now stands at 80 trucks and includes light-duty wreckers, car carriers, heavy-duty equipment and service vehicles. They even have road tractors and industrial trailers for custom hauling, but the bread-and-butter of the operation remains towing.

Interstate 86 runs right behind the main shop at Owego in southern New York and generates plenty of business for the company. Joe said they also partner with AAA and other local roadside service clubs for additional revenue. Getting on the police rotation for jobs also helped to get their business off the ground.

The Karpels said technology has really aided their company’s growth. Their trucks are now equipped with dash cams, GPS units and other advanced equipment, which really makes the life of a tow truck driver much easier than even five years ago, much less two decades earlier

“I don’t know how anyone would start out today in towing, quite frankly, with the insurance situation, the cost of equipment and everything else,” Joe said. “The technology we take for granted today was very expensive back in the day. Now, we can look at a screen and see where every truck is, how fast it is going and its fuel economy. It’s just unbelievable. A lot of what we can do today we couldn’t do five or six years ago.”