Wrecker driver says thanks.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I had intended to buy a pick gun, but i'm going to pass on it.

I am suprised to here that my success ratio with jiggle keys is high.

I am suprised that 60 bucks is a good price.

We're known as a "rotation company", which means we have a city contract, along with 7 other companies, to haul cars and trucks for the city. (Each towing company is called by the city in rotation from the list, hence the name.) We tow everything the city police need towed, and we charge the owner for the tow. This includes wrecks, as well as cars that are abandoned on city streets. Insurance companies will *usually* pick up the tab on the former, but no one pays for an abandoned car. And there are far, far more abandons than late model wrecks. The bottom line is that rotation contracts are barely profitable, because the business is bottom-heavy with junk. In my area of the US, small-wrecker companies DONT survive, unless they are coupled closely with some other business.

We dont do snatches from apartment houses, we dont do repos, we dont hide in the bushes. Most everything we do outside of rotation is done with a key. That makes life easy, 'cuz the transmission unlocks with a key, as does the steering wheel. When the customer gives you his key, its "load and go."

The business that I now find myself in is, as some of you have correctly insinuated, populated with shady characters operating in the "gray zone." Enuff said that many characters have realized there is more profit in stripping out the engine and trans from an insurance wreck, instead of screwing around with keys for junk cars (which is what *I* do.)

For the record, gentlemen, I'm just trying to cut costs for an operator who never asked me to cheat or steal.

Thanks again for everyones comments. Y'all certainly saved me time and expense on the pick gun idea, and prevented me from yet another faux-pas by opening my yap to our locksmith. lol.

But there's gotta be a cheaper way to do honest business in a storage lot, and maybe I *should* be shorting out the terminals on the starters instead of jerking jiggle keys around the ignition.

Thanks again. I'm returning to "lurk-mode" lol.