The Chattanooga Tow Tow
Pardon Me, Boy, Is That the International Towing and Recovery Museum?
Chattanooga, a town of a 180,000 people, punches well above its weight in terms of goofy tourist attractions. There’s the Chattanooga Choo Choo, the Tennessee Aquarium (catfish!), the National Model Railroad Association Museum in Soddy Daisy, and, of course, the granddaddy of them all, Rock City. For my money, however, the one that stands atop the heap of unexpected goofiness is the International Towing and Recovery Museum. Located close by the foot of Lookout Mountain, it’s the perfect short stop for any car-mad boy of six or sixty.
Three weeks ago, on an early spring morning, I had a couple of hours to kill while my daughter went to a tryout for the Under-19 national rowing team. A couple of hours that started with a plate of biscuits and gravy next to the Incline Railway and ended at the International Towing and Recovery Museum.
It was, even before the biscuits and gravy, a beautiful day. Chattanooga in the spring is vastly underrated. The morning was cool and overcast, but the eastern redbuds were in full bloom, a splash of pink on gray and green. Everything seemed sufficiently lovely in the St. Elmo neighborhood, with it’s well-preserved homes and brick buildings. All of it further confirmation of something I’ve come to believe over the past year, that Chattanooga is now much more fun than Nashville.
And what could be more fun than a museum devoted to the art and science of towing?
But first, a moment of seriousness. Out front, we encounter the “Wall of The Fallen”, a memorial dedicated to all of the tow-truck drivers who’ve lost their lives in service to others. Which, when you look at the statistics, is a horrifyingly large number, an average of 60 per year according to AAA. Meaning, tow-truck drivers are more likely to get killed or injured in the line of duty than cops or firefighters.
With that sobering thought behind us, it was into the museum, where a $10 admission bought me all of the tow-truck-abilia I could possibly stand.
The first thing I learned was that the tow truck was invented in Chattanooga by Ernest Holmes, Sr., an auto mechanic who, in 1916, attached a couple of booms and a hoist to his 1913 Cadillac and used it to drag cars out of ditches and back to his shop. Holmes took a drafting course from Georgia Tech, patented his invention in 1918 and then built the tow-truck industry from scratch. It’s a real American story, one of those ones where an Alabama poor boy with a grammar-school education gets rich on a good idea.
The Ernest Holmes Corporation quickly became the largest manufacturer of tow trucks in the world, and Ernest Holmes, Sr., ran the company until his death in 1945, prospering even during the Great Depression. His son, Ernest Holmes, Jr., with an engineering degree from Georgia Tech, was then president until it was sold in 1973.
But that was not the end of Holmes family ingenuity, as Earnest Junior’s sons, Jerry and Bill Holmes, also Georgia Tech engineers, started a new company in 1974, where they developed the first hydraulic wreckers, the current industry standard. (Oddly, the Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech predates the Holmes family’s association with the institution.) Eventually, the Holmes brothers’ Century Wrecking was acquired by Miller Industries, which still sells wreckers under both the Holmes and Century brands, produced in its manufacturing plant just outside Chattanooga.
This exciting industrial history, of inventions, manufacturing, mergers and acquisitions, is what the International Towing and Recovery Museum specializes in, telling the story of the men (and the few women) who pioneered the towing industry.
As I tell my historiography students, industrial history is really difficult to do, because corporations toss out their records all the time, especially when they go out of business. But, thanks to the Holmes family, the history of the tow truck industry in Chattanooga seems to be remarkably well documented. The museum even has a tow-truck research library!
Of course, you really came to see the trucks, of which there are many. My favorite was a 1929 Packard mounted with a 3-ton Manley crane, just a beautiful machine.
A less exciting part of the museum is the Hall of Fame, where the great men of towing are given their due.
And, yes, the great men of towing look pretty much as you would expect…
Taken all together, the International Towing and Recovery Museum is good for about 90 minutes of solid entertainment and towing industry enlightenment. It’s a thoroughly American sort of place, where the history of cars, innovation and humble people boot-strapping themselves into wealth is well told. It’s not terribly sophisticated, but neither is the story it’s telling. It’s worth a visit if you’re in Chattanooga and have some time to kill before visiting Rock City.
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As a former employee of Holmes in the late sixties , I too have visited the museum and it is indeed a treat. But the significance that you placed on the memorial is well placed. If you could see what a cable snapping under pressure can do to a piece of metal , it is indescribable what it can do to a human. Giving these brave souls a mention is commendable. I see this memorial a couple of times a week as I go about my semi busy life. It is sobering to see the annual gathering of these families as they offer prayers to those lost in the line of their duty to society
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