Utah: One State Under Booting

By | March 27, 2010

**A rare, personal rant/appeal from Chad Waite, founder of The Daily Derbi**

Last night I was booted. Two red mechanisms on the front and rear driver side wheels prevent my car from moving from the parking spot in which it sat. The spot labeled “GUEST.”

Was my car in someone’s reserved spot? No. Was I taking valuable space in an apartment complex with too little spots for too many people? No. Instead, my car was booted in the empty guest parking stalls of Oak Meadows, an empty townhouse complex on the outskirts of Logan, Utah. This incident is a perfect example of a frustrating yet all to typical situation that occurs daily nightly all over the state.

Honestly, what has Utah come to? Parking enforcement here is nothing short of rampant, a brutal punishment for often honest and harmless mistakes.

What was the most irritating part of this whole experience, you ask? It wasn’t that I had to pay a stunning $70 to the less than friendly folks at Cache Auto Booting Services for the boot’s removal. It wasn’t that I was 30 minutes late to the Utah Regional PR Conference I was supposed to be at. It was the fact that if any sort of emergency had occurred I would be rendered  completely and totally incapable of going to where I was needed.

Let me get something straight- not all parking enforcement is evil, I get that. Apartment complexes and businesses that suffer from a lack of sufficient  parking to suit their customer’s needs are completely justified in some sort of regulation. But completely taking a person’s transportation away? Locking two red boots on that one lone car in a sea of empty guest parking spaces by a farm in Logan (and scratching up my rims incidentally)?

Is this not extreme?

To the property managers in Utah, I implore you! Please sit down and ask yourself if hiring your own personal Cache Auto Booting Service is really necessary to your operations. If it isn’t, the next time some harmless stranger is booted for parking in your guest spot (as they were a guest of a resident) without a small sticker for one night, your reputations in their eyes will be that of a greedy bastard who hires booting companies of the same nature for their own, personal gain.

Is that worth $70?

[Chad Waite]

  • FB_1234097888

    Bastards. Only when booted have I contemplated murder. And the other day when I got a spam text.

    If I ever get a spam text from a booting company, it’s over.

  • Anonymous

    I have been booted twice in the last month, once at my own house. I think there must be another option.

  • http://www.vegorpedersen.com Vegor

    What a lot of Utah County residents don’t realize is that the aggresive towing and booting companies were originally put in place to help enforce the Honor Code at BYU-approved housing complexes (same goes for cleaning checks btw). You can’t have naughty night time rendevous if you can’t park past 12AM. Once these methods of control were put in place the local towing-booting industry reached an economy of scale that allowed them to offer free service to other apartment complexes. They sign contracts to police lots and they make big money to do it. Next time you get booted (at least in Utah County) you can thank BYU’s draconian attempts at regulating morality.

  • Morgan

    So wait… what was the reason they gave for booting your car?

  • http://dailyderbi.com Chad Waite

    I was in the wrong- I forgot to get a guest sticker from the property manager. But that was the last thing I was thinking about when I pulled in at midnight.

    I am not saying that the boot wasn’t technically unjustified. I am just saying that there is a much better way to “have me pay” than by booting my vehicle. A ticket maybe…?

  • Brandon

    It really has become a very “mafia” like state here in Utah County when it comes to parking enforcement. I know of someone who cut 3 boots one night, kind of a Robin Hood type of act, which saved some strangers a few bucks and gave the proverbial middle finger to the towing companies. They are the bottom of the barrel when it comes to honest business practices.

  • http://www.0-to-60.com WilcoxAJ

    Greedy bastards, knifing vultures. A ticket would do great. They better bloody well be expected to fix your rim that they scratched while being retards. I love the idea of cutting boots. Any towing company reading this? nn||nn

  • http://www.vegorpedersen.com Vegor

    An even more delicious revenge than cutting boots? Buying a boot of your own, then booting a booter whilst he is booting another car. I must admit, I have fantasized about this exact scenario several times.

  • Steve M.

    Dude…I am so sorry about that. What a nuissance some parking contractors can be.

  • http://www.fallinginlikeblog.com Bailey

    This happened to my boyfriend and I on the same night! They changed all of the guest stalls to apartment tenants only, without telling anyone!! Over the next few nights we saw almost every other car booted. I think it was in poor taste to not at least notify the tenants of the complex that the change was being implemented. Awful awful people.