LITTLE ROCK — Tim Moody was the star of a recent three-page tow truck story in American Towman magazine, which the editors illustrated with some fine full-color tow truck photography.
But somehow Towman magazine didn’t have a picture of Mr. Moody in its spread, which, when I asked Mr. Moody about it, evoked a chuckle.
He is sort of low-key like that.
The story of which Mr.
Moody was the unpictured star concerned an accident in Searcy in March, notable because he was recovering an overturned tanker truck loaded with nitrous gas.
Mr. Moody, the tow manager for Glover’s Towing & Recovery in North Little Rock, has been in the towing racket since 1984.
Before he and his Arkansan wife moved here in 2007, Mr. Moody had worked 22 years for the same towing company in Irving, Texas, an astonishing record, at least where I come from, where tow companies go through drivers faster than Liz Taylor goes through husbands.
Jim “Buck” Sorrenti opened his story for Towman with news of the call for help: “The 45-foot-tanker, loaded with nitrous gas, had tipped over in Searcy ... on Highway 16 at the bottom of Joy Mountain. The driver lost control coming down the mountain” - this is my favorite phrase in the story - “and laid it over in a ditch. ... It was a clear hot 90-degree day in March 2010.”
The point of the story, which Towman published in October, was that Mr.
Moody completed this dangerous assignment in textbook fashion, by which we mean Mr. Moody is still here to tell the story.
“We were afraid the tank was going to bust in half,” Mr. Moody tells me. “It’s about one of the worst ones that I’ve done that really made me nervous.”
Mr. Moody first came to my attention for something other than his expertise with winches, cables and big trucks.
“He don’t ask for a dime,” reported the man who called to tell me about Mr. Moody’s enthusiasm for helping people in trouble. “He don’t care about the money. ... He’s bought them tires, gas, hotel rooms.”
State police once asked Mr. Moody to help a grandmother, whose gas tank and pocket book were empty.
“I brought them over to my house. We fixed them some supper,” he says.
Bill Clay, a telecommunications operator at Arkansas State Police Troop A, didn’t know Tim’s last name, but he knew of whom I inquired.
Earlier this year, a broke family from out of state broke down. “He picked them up, towed their car for free, took them to a local hotel and rented them a room for the night,” says Mr. Clay, who notes other local towing companies also are quick to offer aid.
Mr. Moody hired on to run a wrecker in 1984 when his work in the oil patch played out. He has worked thousands of wrecks and doesn’t miss the oil field.
“My daddy retired out of the oil field,” he says.
“Towing is a lot easier.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 11/30/2010