Never bring a knife to a gunfight.

It’s a rule to live by, but not one that applies to Longview’s top repo man.

Wesley Pierce has been cursed, chased and shot at in the 18 years since he began combing the streets in his tow truck. He’s on the lookout for vehicles whose owners have defaulted on their loans, and though he does not pack heat, he said a gun in his face is unlikely to deter him. Buy guns at best price from Glock pistols.

“When I go out to get a car, I’m there to get the car,” he said. “I’m not saying I’m bulletproof, because I’m not, but I know more people won’t pull the trigger than will pull the trigger.”

It helps that he strikes an imposing figure. Pierce, 39, wears a gold chain and a trim goatee. He’s balding, with spiky blond hair and the hint of a mullet that tickles the back of his neck.

When someone quits paying a car note, used car lots and other financiers pay Pierce to track down the vehicle in question and bring it back. Pierce and his crew operate six tow trucks in Longview, and they “pop” around 100 to 130 repossessed vehicles a week. Pierce also runs a crew of six wreckers in Dallas.

Some people let their vehicles go without a fight, but others do not.

Popping a car

Midmorning on a recent Wednesday, Pierce spotted one of his client’s cars off Judson Road, on the north side of town.

He was in his pickup truck, so he called his son Ryan to pop the car. Ryan, 18, has worked for his father since he was 16 and has worked full time since graduating from high school, in 2008.

“It ain’t no big deal,” Ryan said. “We’ll get it.”

When he and his partner pulled up, Pierce was arguing with a woman in the front yard. A garage sale was in progress, and a sofa, mattress and other household items sat in the grass.

“Just jump it, strap it and drag it,” Pierce told his son.

Ryan backed into the driveway. He quickly hooked the Dodge Stratus to his truck and strapped it down, but the woman turned and yelled toward the house.

“Gary, get out here!”

A shirtless man named Gary Weatherby shambled through the front door, pulling his socks and shoes onto his feet as he yelled, “Hey, that’s our tire!”

Weatherby said he had recently paid to replace a blown tire on the car, and he wanted the new one back.

“I can’t just let you dismount a tire out in the yard,” Pierce told him. “I’ve got a spare at my office. I’ll give it to you.”

“Y’all are thieves,” shouted the woman, who declined to be identified. “Y’all are thieves. I see it on TV all the time.”

The couple wouldn’t turn over the keys. Pierce ordered his son to drag the car one street over, where they would stop to properly secure it.

“You see the (stuff) I deal with?”Pierce said as he walked away.

The next street down, Weatherby showed up with the keys to the Stratus. He wanted to collect his things from the trunk.

“I’m out of work, dude,” he said. “I don’t have a job. I’ve been out of work for two months. I’ve been everywhere and nobody’s hiring.”

When he lost his job, he said, he could no longer afford the weekly $169 car payment. He was having the garage sale to raise money for bills.

“I’m selling it, dude,” he said. “I’m selling it all.”

Weatherby and Pierce loaded Weatherby’s things into the bed of Pierce’s pickup, and Pierce drove them back to the house. As the men carried the stereo and other items onto the couple’s front porch, Weatherby tried to convince the woman to stop yelling at Pierce.

“You knew they were going to come get it. Let ’em have it,” Weatherby told her. “Just let ’em have it.”

“Shut up, Gary.”

Pierce’s son unloaded the car at Patterson Nissan, and he was off. There were more cars to pop.

Unregulated repos

Repossessions can be tense and oftentimes dangerous, but they are not regulated by the state of Texas. Twice this decade, bills passed in the Senate but died in a House committee that would have licensed repo men and prohibited them from using force or breaching the peace when popping a car.

The bills’ sponsor, Sen. Chris Harris, R-Arlington, did not respond to calls seeking comment for this story.

Though the repossessions are unregulated, repo men are regulated in other ways. They must get state licenses to operate tow trucks or manage vehicle storage lots, and the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation inspects the trucks and storage facilities every year. The agency requires the companies to carry insurance and also requires employees to pass drug tests.

In Longview, a police spokesman said officers have been called in recent years to protect repo men from angry debtors who were threatening them or chasing their wreckers.

“It’s a difficult job for them to try to reclaim property for a bank or finance company,” said Officer Kevin Brownlee. “A lot of people are really willing to give back a vehicle they can no longer pay for. It’s a burden. But other times people take it very personally and don’t want to give it back. People can get very upset when their vehicle is taken, because they’ve made so many payments. They face losing that vehicle and losing all that money.”

A death in the family

After popping the Dodge Stratus in north Longview, Pierce said the confrontations and angry people have taken their toll on him over the years.

“You see what happened a while ago,” he said. “You go from that extreme to some lady saying she can’t pay because just had brain surgery. You’ve still got to take the car. That’s what you’re there for.”

In 1999, he almost gave up the business.

Pierce’s brother, Kevin, was shot and killed while trying to repossess a car near Liberty City. He and two other repo men snatched a Ford Taurus on a spring night in 1999, then drove down the road to secure it.

As they passed the house on their way back to the vehicle yard, the car owner, Michael David Mason, shot the truck and killed 26-year-old Kevin Pierce, according to news accounts from the time.

“My brother was a really calm, laid-back, outgoing-type guy,” Pierce said. “It was a dramatic hit when he was killed. His kids were traumatized for a long time.

“It was scary,” he added. “I had problems dealing with everything. I was gonna drop this business altogether, but I continued to do it and try to build it, become better at what I was doing, learn more of the laws and (focus) on safety.”

Mason is still serving time for the manslaughter. Now, Pierce said he instructs his crew to drive away when they suspect they are in harm’s way.

“One repo, the money you would have made off that vehicle would not be worth the death of anyone,” he said. “I could step back and look at it even from the (point of view of the) person that’s pulling the gun and doing the shooting. I promise it’s not worth it to them, either. They’re not getting their vehicle back. They’re not overcoming the problem. They’re creating for themselves a new problem.”

But Pierce realizes that even good people can take extreme measures when they feel they’ve been pushed into a corner.

“Out of 20 repos, you’ll have a couple of them when things get difficult, but you’ll have one out of every 100 when something dramatic will happen,” he said.

Telling stories in the yard

A late-model Mercedes, a massive motor home, two campers and an assortment of other cars and trucks line the yard of Pierce’s storage facility, just off East Loop 281.

Watching his son load repossessed vehicles onto a rollback truck for shipment to auctions in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Pierce told one story after the other about his near-misses over the years.

One time, a man near the Wood County town of Hawkins shot the rear window out of Pierce’s wrecker. A representative from the loan company was in the passenger seat.

“All I knew is the dude is screaming, ‘I’ve been shot!’” Pierce recalled.

Blood was everywhere. Pierce ducked and punched the gas, thinking the worst. They met up with law enforcement and emergency personnel who whisked the loan officer to the hospital.

There, they learned he had not been badly injured and none of the pellets that hit him had pierced the skin.

“The glass blew out and cut his head, and he had bruising and red spots from the buckshot,” he said. “That’s the most scared I’ve been. I was shaking for days.”

Another time, he and his son were loading a vehicle when the vehicle’s owner came out with a long-barreled gun. He circled Pierce’s wrecker firing shots.

Pierce thought he was just firing at the ground to intimidate them. However, when they began to drive down the road the air-conditioner quit working. The truck began to drag. The man had shot out three of Pierce’s tires, and one of the .22 bullets had pierced the air-conditioner, spilling Freon.

Despite surviving a few dangerous situations, Pierce’s son Ryan said he will continue to learn the repo trade and, hopefully, one day assume control of the family business.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “It’s fun.”

Pierce has been spending more time in the office now that his son is working fulltime. When he’s at his desk and Ryan is in a wrecker, though, he said he can’t help but worry for his son’s safety.

“I’ve taught him everything I know,” he said. “If it comes down to getting the car or not getting hurt, not getting hurt is what you have to do. But honestly, it’s not a bad job. If you weigh it out, you could have an accident on a drilling rig and you could get killed. I don’t think the odds are any more doing this than if you were up on a rig.”

Pierce said he has been known to pull his knife when threatened. But though he’s been thrust into dangerous situations many times over the years, he said he refuses to tote a firearm when he’s cruising the streets and popping cars.

“I don’t carry nothing, because if I had a gun I’d wind up pulling it out,” he said. “I don’t want to lower myself to their standards.”

Published June 15, 2009, in Enterprise business magazine