A surprise, data-driven return of the repo man
CLEVELAND» The computer in the spotter car shouted “Hide!” and repo agent Derek Lewis knew that meant to keep driving like nothing happened. He’d just found another wanted vehicle. He was about to ruin someone’s day. Best not to draw attention.
It helped that he wasn’t in a tow truck, the stereotypical image of a repo man. Lewis drove a beat-up Ford Crown Victoria sedan. It had four small cameras mounted on the trunk and a laptop bolted to the dash. The high-speed cameras captured every passing license plate. The computer contained a growing list of hundreds of thousands of vehicles with seriously late loans. The system could spot a repossession in an instant. Even better, it could keep tabs on a car long before the loan went bad.
Now, Lewis had a live hit in a parking lot. He glanced at his laptop. The plate matched a blue 2006 BMW 325xi. He twisted in his seat. “It’s right there,” he said.
Technology has made the repo man ruthlessly efficient, allowing this familiar angel of financial calamity to capitalize on a dark corner of the United States’ strong economy: the soaring number of people falling behind on their car payments.
No longer tethered to a tow truck and able to use big data to find targets, the repossession industry is booming at an unexpected time. Although the U.S. economy recently entered its second-longest-ever period of expansion, the auto loan delinquency rate last year reached its highest point since 2012, driven by souring subprime auto loans. It’s evidence of how the economic recovery has not been evenly felt, with some of Americans’ biggest purchases — automobiles — being fueled by unsustainable borrowing rather than rising wages.
And the repo man has noticed
the change.
“So much of America is just a heartbeat away from a repossession — even good people, decent people who aren’t deadbeats,” said Patrick Altes, a veteran agent in Daytona Beach, Fla. “It seems like a different environment than it’s ever been.”
Repo agents are the unpopular foot soldiers in the nation’s $1.2 trillion auto loan market. They don’t make the loans or issue the repossession orders that, for some high-risk customers, can come as soon as a single payment is days late. But they are the closest most people come to a faceless, sophisticated financial system that can upend their lives.
Waiting for the tow
Lewis rolled to a far corner of the parking lot, next to an apartment building overlooking Lake Erie, and called the BMW’S lender.
“I’m sitting on a live hit for you,” he said.
He texted for a company tow truck. It was seven minutes away. This was the hard part. He had to just hope the vehicle’s driver didn’t come out and drive away. It would be like watching a fish wiggle free of the hook.
He sat in silence, one of the few times his spotter car wasn’t logging new plates, each one trumpeted by a video-game-like bing. The system picked up passing cars. Parked cars. Cars stashed in driveways. As many as 10,000 every eighthour shift.
Lewis compared each scan to planting a seed.
“Is it going to grow into a repo?” he said. “Or are they going to pay their bills?”
Lewis works for Relentless Recovery, the largest repo company in Ohio and its busiest collector of license plate scans. Last year, the company repossessed more than 25,500 vehicles — including tractor trailers and riding lawn mowers.
Business has more than doubled since 2014, the company said. Even with the rising deployment of remote engine cutoffs and GPS locators in cars, repo agencies remain dominant.
Relentless scanned 28 million license plates last year, a demonstration of its recent, heavy push into technology. It now has more than 40 cameraequipped vehicles, mostly spotter cars. Agents are finding repos they never would have a few years ago.
The company’s goal is to capture every plate in Ohio and use that information to reveal patterns. A plate shot outside an apartment at 5 a.m. tells you that’s probably where the driver spends the night, no matter their listed home address. So when a repo order comes in for a car, the agent already knows where to look.
“It’s kind of scary, but it’s amazing,” said Alana Ferrante, chief executive of Relentless.
Lewis, 33, got his start repossessing cars when he was 14, helping his dad tow vehicles in the dead of night. His dad moved on to construction. But Lewis kept at it, eventually getting burned out on chasing cars. He went to work as a firefighter and paramedic — which provoked very different reactions from people — before returning a few years ago to the job he knew best. And for a while, the job remained mostly the same. He’d prowl around in a tow truck, armed with paper orders and a map, just praying the target vehicle was parked where it was supposed to be.
That all changed in recent years.
Lewis, who as operations director still regularly does repos, tries to follow one main rule: “Don’t make someone’s bad situation worse.” So he avoided hospital parking lots. But he loved shopping malls, especially the last row of lots, where the employees park. Discount stores were another target.
It could feel like he was preying on the poor. Lewis said he just went where the repos were. Even then, repos clustered in unexpected ways. Lewis pointed to one apartment complex so stocked with repos it became his honey hole. Yet similar buildings nearby were repo deserts.
Nationwide, repo agents described a broadening base of people struggling to stay current on their auto loans. In the old days, agents picked up mostly entry-level cars — Chevy Chevettes and Dodge Neons.
Now, Lewis kept his eye on the blue BMW, a vehicle that might cost $37,000 new but after more than a decade was worth less than $8,000. The tow truck rolled up. Lewis slipped on a pair of work gloves.
“You ready?” he shouted at the tow truck driver.
The best repo is a quick “hook and roll.” This wasn’t one of them. The BMW had all-wheel drive. All four wheels needed to be off the ground. The tow truck swung its lift under the rear tires of the backed-in BMW. Lewis and the tow driver jumped out to assemble a metal dolly to raise the front tires. Time crawled. Lewis scanned the lot. A woman walked toward them. He watched with relief as she climbed into a different car.
“See you, guys,” the tow truck driver shouted, pulling away with the bounty worth about $400 to Relentless.
First repo of the day. Thousands of seeds planted.