Joe Wagner.
In a room of 100 people, you couldn’t miss him. A big burly guy, grizzled, gravelly, and tattooed, with hands the size of pot roasts.
What you can’t see—but spend just 10 minutes with Joe and you’ll surely get an inkling of it—is his heart. It’s both bottomless and full of kindness, and were you in need of the shirt off his back he’d give it to you gladly, then start rifling his closet for sweaters, trousers, and anything else he might think you need.
Joe’s a former public servant, a humanitarian, and a philanthropist. In 2017 he and a couple of other truckers transported two flatbeds’ worth of bottled water to flood victims in Houston, Texas. On Tuesday, Nov. 12, he’ll leave Chesterton on another mission of mercy, this one to the Carolinas, where he’ll be transporting vital winter supplies to the folks who lost everything in Hurricane Helene.
So yeah, Joe’s a good egg who only looks hard boiled.
He’s something else, though, too. A thriving entrepreneur, the owner of Joe’s Towing Inc., who 40 years ago TODAY—on Halloween, Oct. 31, 1984—started his company with a single truck.
He was 19 and just out of high school.
“It was difficult being a startup business and not being able to get a loan and it only made me work hard to make this little company of mine work,” Joe recalls.
And Joe does work hard. So do his crews. Towing’s not just a physically demanding job, it’s a perilous one as well. “Tow drivers have a life that puts them in danger quite often. Understand that a tow driver is killed on average every six days. We’re working on I-94 and trucks and cars are flying by. Have we had close calls? Most definitely. When my guys are out there and I get the call of 10-24, that’s when I know they’re safe.”
There’s no job too tricky or too dirty for Joe. Early in 2024, Joe’s Towing, assisted by Waffco Towing, mustered multiple wreckers to extract a 153,000 pound crane—nearly 77 tons worth of steel—from the ditch into which it had slipped on 1100N.
And then there’s the time in South County when a vehicle busted through a foot of ice before sinking to the bottom of a river. In windchills of -40, forced to maneuver the apparatus from the only point of access—a narrow bridge fully 150 feet as the crow flies from the hole in the ice—and operating beneath power lines, Joe, his crew, and a diver whom he recruited managed to salvage the vehicle safely. “I still think of that recovery with pride,” Joe says.
If you happen to run into Joe around town, shake his brisket of a hand, congratulate him on his success, and wish him well. Spare a thought also for his crews, first-responders who put their backs into it every day (and many nights). “I want to thank all of our Joe’s Towing families,” Joe says. “Our drivers are on call 24/7 and this makes for time away and missed family events. The wives and children of our team deserve a big Thank You for their understanding.”
Hey Joe! You’re the man!
