Wyoming Tow Truck Crews Respond To All Calls On TV’s ‘Rocky Mountain Wreckers’

On a late winter night, traveling down a county highway near Crook, Colorado, a semi-trailer carrying 85,000 pounds of cow manure hit a patch of ice and went hurtling into a ditch. The driver survived, but the truck was totaled, and the load was tipped.

Now what?

Enter Cheyenne-based Big Al’s Towing & Recovery, one of two Wyoming crews featured on a new USA Network Canada show called “Rocky Mountain Wreckers.” The program puts a spotlight on the high-stakes and often harrowing work of tow truck drivers and wrecking crews in the Intermountain West.

The show got its start last year as a production of The Weather Channel, and now has a new home on the larger cable network.

The manure truck incident is among a handful of the wrecks Wyoming crews tackle on the show, which offers examples of how tricky it is to pluck from a ditch an 18-wheeler whose total wreckage amounts to more than 120,000 pounds, along with other crashes.

“I knew it was gonna be a long day and a lot of work,” Cory Bouchard, driver’s manager at Big Al’s, told Cowboy State Daily. “We're dealing with a hundred-plus-thousand pounds in a ditch, all mangled. The truck was mangled, the trailer was mangled. And we had to deal with it while keeping the road open.”

They solved the problem using a 35-ton Peterbilt, but not before the truck’s stabilizing spades cracked the highway asphalt like a droughted riverbed.

Wyoming, with extreme weather and precarious roadways streaked across the state, makes an obvious choice for a program focused on highway wrecks – an unsettling reminder of the dangers faced every day in the Cowboy State, where tragic incidents like the fatal Green River Tunnel pileup loom large.

“Rocky Mountain Wreckers,” though, isn’t a spectacle of suffering. Instead, it emphasizes the challenges in a world in which no one day and no one wreck is ever the same. It’s a world where ingenuity and teamwork save the day. 

Puts Real in Reality

“Rocky Mountain Wreckers” is the latest in a growing genre of tow truck television. It airs against a backdrop of YouTube channels and social media accounts focused on the towing industry and follows on the heels of popular shows like “Lizard Lick Towing” and “Highway Thru Hell.”

Although different from a show like “Lizard Lick,” which was based around humorous Southern personalities and over-the-top scenes widely believed to be staged, the drama here is real, Bouchard said.

The tension doesn’t come by way of bickering personalities. It stems from the real difficulty of handling major wrecks. Big Al’s faithfulness to reality, in fact, could frustrate producers as they scrambled to get film crews to the scene.

“Usually the [producers] would ask, ‘Can you guys delay this?’ And we’d say no. Once we get a phone call, our trucks are gone, our guys are gone,” Bouchard said. “We need to get out there and clear up the highway. Sometimes it could be life or death. We’re not gonna wait around for a film crew.”

Not Junkyard Greaseballs

Bouchard says shows like this help battle outdated stereotypes of the tow driver, which he described as a grumpy, junkyard greaseball. 

“Based on every TV show you’ve probably ever seen, people imagine their driver’s gonna show up in dirty jeans and a wifebeater. The stereotypical grumpy old fart with a dog. That’s not us,” he said, praising his own feet and their uniformed drivers as blamelessly clean.

Also featured on the show is a Wyoming crew with Utah-based Stauffer’s Towing.

In one episode, that team winches up a rolled semi on the side of Wyoming highway amidst sweeps of winter weather and enveloping fog. 

Here, an industry newbie named Brendan gets his first experience helping with a major wreck under the tutelage of the no-nonsense veteran named Art.

They are both non-locals who’ve come to Wyoming for opportunity in the trade. 

“I don’t know how a California boy is gonna survive out here, but we’re going to try,” Brendan, 25, who’d moved to Rawlins from Oakland, California, said during one episode while referring to Wyoming’s severe winter weather.

Their personalities are different, but their chemistry in the field makes for good television.

“Art is a crazy Alaskan with experience doing all these crazy different things…and he’s definitely a one man show because he knows how to do more with less," Brendan says in the show. “He’s a gruff guy but I like working with him because he knows what he’s doing.

Show Misses The Emotional Wreck

While the show is focused on big and sensational incidents, there’s much more to towers’ experience — including the unseen cleanup of emotional wrecks.

Following recovery, towers and clients typically travel out together. In a spread-apart state like Wyoming, this can mean hours of time in close quarters with a stranger. They don’t always feel like strangers by the time the ride ends.

At first, there’s almost always some emotional blowback, Bouchard said.

“Everyone you’re dealing with is upset,” he said. “Their car broke down, it’s an accident, so no one's ever really happy to see a tow truck driver because it's usually something life changing.”

Sometimes it's the pain of wrecking something with much more than monetary value, an heirloom muscle car passed down from a father who is no longer here, for instance. Towers must also confront death directly when cleaning up fatal accidents, which factors in hiring decisions. 

“When they sign up to work here, we have to ask if they're okay seeing a dead body. This work isn’t for everyone,” he said “Sometimes it’s more than we want to see, but the work is necessary.”

Bouchard described one instance in which he picked up an older truck driver whose rig had broken down. On the ride together the man learned over the phone that his wife had passed.

“That kind of stuff hits you. This guy was 800 miles away from his home and his truck broke down so we can't just go home,” he said, adding that he’d given the man money for dinner and gave out his personal number in case he needed additional support.

The troubles featured on television are no different from those that occur off camera around Wyoming, according to other tow truck operators.

Zac Beardall, owner of Zac’s Towing & Recovery in Park County, told Cowboy State Daily many of his clients are tourists, who are often experiencing extreme swings of feeling. 

“You get folks who were in Yellowstone, and they just paid however many thousands of dollars they've saved up to get there, and now their car is totaled and there without any idea what to do next,” Beardall said.

Beardall reflected on a recent pickup that was emotionally tough on himself. He rescued an 80-year-old man up Wyoming's Beartooth Pass. For decades the man had made that same trip with his wife and family, Beardall later learned. But this year, for the first time, his wife wasn’t with him.

“I got there and he was just staring out at the mountains watching the sunset, silent. He told me some stories coming down the mountain and it got pretty emotional. When he got down I gave him a significant discount on the service just to help him with what he had to do next,” Beardall said.

“I think a key personality trait you need in this profession is compassion,” he said, before recalling the many times he’s dealt with drunk, angry and obstreperous clients. “You also gotta be nuts to do this.” 

"Rocky Mountain Wreckers" airs at 8 p.m. Tuesdays on the USA Network CA and also can be viewed on numerous streaming platforms.