‘Grab the car by any means.’ Former staff claim Detroit tow company preyed on drivers to boost profits

In his WXYZ-TV investigation, reporter Ross Jones says some of the harshest critics of Detroit towing company Goch & Sons aren’t angry drivers.

They’re the people who used to tow the cars.

Former driver Shane Nation tells Jones that inside the company, there was an unofficial motto.

“Grab the car by any means was the motto,” Nation says. “They want as much money as they can get from every single car.”

Jones reports that Nation towed for Goch & Sons for five years.

He claims there were many times he would rather have just given a driver their car back, but if a driver was cut a break, “we lost our job.”

Goch & Sons, Jones explains, is one of the largest towing outfits in the Detroit area.

They have contracts with Michigan State Police, cities like Melvindale and Lincoln Park, and a long list of apartments and private businesses.

That kind of reach means their decisions hit a lot of ordinary people.

When you combine that reach with a “grab the car by any means” culture, the potential for abuse is obvious.

Hospital Visitors Turned Into Towing Targets

Jones focuses on one hot spot across from Detroit Receiving Hospital, where parking is already a nightmare.

Former drivers tell him Goch & Sons placed “spotters” at apartments near the hospital to watch who parked there.

Former tower David Lemaire explains how it worked.

He says spotters would watch someone park, then walk across the street to the hospital, and “cars could be there for two minutes” before getting towed.

Jones and his team say they watched this play out repeatedly over several weeks.

A spotter would see a car, call a nearby tow truck, and within minutes the vehicle was hooked and gone.

Lemaire tells Jones that many of those drivers weren’t careless freeloaders.

“People are going through maybe some of the worst that they could go through,” he says. “They’re literally just trying to see a loved one.”

That’s exactly what Pavielle DeRamus was doing.

Jones reports she was visiting her uncle, who was on life support after a heart attack.

When DeRamus came out of the hospital hours later, her car had vanished.

The price to get it back, she tells Jones, was $700.

On paper, it’s “private property enforcement.”

In reality, it looks like a system that quietly feeds off people who are stressed, distracted, and focused on sick family members instead of fine-print parking rules.

Apartment Residents Caught In The Net

Jones also documents what happened to Michelle Fonville, who actually lived at the Medical Center Courts apartments across from the hospital.

She tells him she’d parked her 2017 Chevy Cruze in the same spot since February.

One morning in September, she walked out to head to work and found only an empty space.

“I thought my car was stolen,” she says. “I called the police immediately.”

It wasn’t thieves who took it. Jones reports that a Goch & Sons spotter had her car towed because he said he couldn’t see her parking permit in the window.

Fonville insists her permit was there. Even so, she tells Jones she brought her lease to Goch & Sons’ yard to prove she lived there and had every right to park.

According to Fonville, the employee didn’t care.

The bill to get the car back was $750, more than she could afford.

Jones reports that Fonville stopped paying her car note because it no longer made sense to keep paying on a car she couldn’t access.

Earlier this month, the vehicle was repossessed.

Now, Fonville says she has to rely on friends to reach the grocery store, medical appointments, and work.

“It’s a burden to call people to do everything for you,” she tells Jones, “when I had a car and it was parked at my house.”

Owner Mike Goch defends the practice in his interview with Ross Jones.

“I don’t find it sleazy at all,” he says. “It’s a service that we offer to apartment complexes.”

Goch says he understands why drivers are upset, but claims the company is protecting residents who struggle to find parking.

On Fonville’s case, he points to her alleged failure to display a permit where it could be seen.

But as retired Detroit Police Lieutenant Tom Berry tells Jones, the pattern looks very different from the outside.

“They’re predatory,” Berry says. “They prey on people. They prey on people that can’t afford the tow.”

Berry, who now works as an insurance investigator in the towing industry, notes another detail.

“They’re not out in Birmingham or West Bloomfield or Grosse Pointe towing cars out there,” he says. “They get away with it here.”

That’s the kind of line that lands hard. It suggests this isn’t just about rules – it’s about where people are least likely to fight back and most likely to be ignored.

How A Tow Becomes A $1,600 Bill

Beyond the aggressive parking enforcement, Ross Jones reports that former employees accuse Goch & Sons of inflating bills using a clever routing trick.

When a vehicle is in a crash, the owner might ask that their car be taken straight to a collision shop.

Former driver Dion Cook says that’s not always what happened.

“Even though it’s going right to the body shop, they would have us pull into the impound and sit there a few minutes,” Cook tells Jones.

In Michigan, Jones explains, police-ordered tows are regulated and capped.

But once a vehicle passes through the company’s private impound lot, a new, unregulated bill kicks in.

Former driver Shane Nation says they were sometimes told to drop the car and “just sit there for 15 minutes with the winch still hooked up.”

His brother, former employee Dustin Nation, tells Jones he was instructed to bring cars through the impound as well, even if they weren’t staying.

“So you’re not ever leaving the car at the impound lot?” Jones asks.

“No,” Dustin replies.

“But because you drove through it, you could charge an impound fee?” Jones presses.

“That’s… yeah,” Dustin admits.

Jones walks viewers through one recent tow that started with Michigan State Police.

The initial bill was about $360 to remove a car from a freeway.

Instead of going directly to the collision shop, Jones says, the Goch & Sons driver detoured to their Detroit impound.

There, they added charges for storage, a fuel surcharge, an administration fee, a release fee, yard labor, and more – bringing the total over $650.

Then came a second tow to the collision shop.

That trip added a $250 towing fee, $150 mileage fee, $150 flatbed fee, $200 for labor, and $200 for winching.

The grand total, Jones reports, was $1,614.50, billed to the insurance company.

Those higher insurance costs don’t just vanish; they get spread across every policyholder in the state.

When Jones asks Goch about this, the owner insists he’s just following guidance.

“I’m not a lawyer,” Goch says. “I’ve been told this is the proper way to do it… and that’s why we’re doing it.”

Jones then asks the obvious follow-up: do they do it because it’s a way to inflate bills?

“No,” Goch responds. “But I can see why someone might think that.”

At one point, Jones reports, Goch even claimed the law requires police tows to go to an impound lot first.

But WXYZ-TV says no police department they spoke to backed that up – and Goch’s own attorney later admitted there is no such requirement.

Berry, the retired lieutenant, sums up the bigger picture for Jones.

“Everybody in Michigan wonders why are our rates so high,” he says. “This is one of the reasons our rates are so high.”

Racing Police To Accident Scenes

Jones also reports that a lawsuit accuses Goch & Sons of illegally soliciting business at accident scenes, which Michigan law restricts.

The company denies that.

But former driver Shane Nation tells Jones this was a regular strategy.

“The number one goal was to beat the police there,” he says.

Why?

“So we can be hooked up when they got there and make it seem like we were already here and ready to flip over this truck,” Nation explains.

That’s what employees say happened when a moving truck got stuck under an overpass in Detroit.

Former driver David Lemaire says he was dispatched, then told the customer they’d been called out by Detroit police and that it was “our area” to handle the job.

“Was any of that true?” Jones asks.

“No,” Lemaire replies. “But that is what we were told to tell them.”

When Goch & Sons later presented a $2,000 bill, the moving company said they’d never agreed to that price.

Detroit Police were then called out to the scene.

Body camera video, described by Jones, captures Sergeant Rodney Ballinger telling the tow drivers he’s tired of seeing them show up first.

“You guys show up before anybody else calls you all the time,” Sgt. Ballinger says. “All the time… you beat us here nine times out of ten.”

The sergeant orders that the moving truck be returned to the company.

Jones reports that the drivers refused and were eventually handcuffed and cited for disorderly conduct. Their case is still pending.

In another July incident at the same bridge, Jones says Mike Goch himself was suspected of soliciting a tow.

According to a police report reviewed by WXYZ-TV, Goch & Sons arrived even though no one had called for a truck.

The report accuses Goch of phoning a company directly, claiming he was “on the scene” and that their truck needed to be towed.

The company declined and chose another tower.

Jones reports that Goch was cited for soliciting a tow, and Detroit Police say the citation was sent to his home by certified mail.

Goch tells Jones he knows nothing about it and says he’s never received a ticket.

Court records checked by the station showed no active case under his name.

That leaves one more question hanging in the air: if the citation exists and was mailed, what happened to it?

Company Pushes Back, But Questions Remain

Throughout his interview with Ross Jones, Mike Goch insists the accusations are false or exaggerated.

He repeatedly says the people talking are “disgruntled former employees” now working for a competitor, J&T Crova Towing.

Goch tells Jones they’re not soliciting tows and they’re not running a predatory racket.

“It’s simply not true,” he says.

Jones pushes back, pointing out that it isn’t just ex-employees complaining.

Crash victims, apartment residents, and even Detroit police officers have raised concerns on camera and in reports.

“The companies aren’t disgruntled former employees,” Jones says to Goch. “They had their vehicle in an accident. The police aren’t disgruntled former employees, they’re here to try to enforce the law. They’re saying you’re soliciting tows.”

Goch doesn’t budge.

“It’s not true, we’re not soliciting tows,” he answers again.

Taken together, the picture Jones paints is troubling.

Aggressive lot patrols targeting hospital visitors, residents losing cars over technicalities, creative billing routes that explode costs, and tow trucks racing police to crash scenes.

There is always a legitimate role for towing—keeping lanes clear, enforcing rules, protecting residents from truly abusive parkers.

But as Ross Jones’ reporting shows, when profit becomes the dominant motive and real oversight is thin, the line between “service” and “prey on people” can disappear fast.

And for drivers like Michelle Fonville and Pavielle DeRamus, it’s not a policy debate or a legal theory.

It’s lost cars, massive bills, and the quiet feeling that the system is designed to grab the car first and ask questions later.

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The article ‘Grab the car by any means.’ Former staff claim Detroit tow company preyed on drivers to boost profits first appeared on Survival World.