{"id":624,"date":"2026-06-22T10:37:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T10:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=624"},"modified":"2026-06-22T10:37:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T10:37:15","slug":"the-repo-man-coming-for-your-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=624","title":{"rendered":"The Repo Man Coming for Your Ride"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Matthew Pitman started in the automobile-repossession industry as a teen-ager, coiling cables at a tow lot in his home town, Phoenix. This was the eighties. His boss went by Joker and wore a \u201cbadge\u201d around his neck, like a cop. Law-enforcement officers are sworn to serve the public; repossessors work for banks. Pitman justifies conflating the two by saying that a lot of repo guys are \u201cex-law enforcement, ex-military,\u201d which is true, and that all repossessors \u201chave to have complete balls of brass.\u201d He became a repo man in his early twenties and called himself the Ninja. The license plate on his first work truck read \u201cGOTCHA<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Happy-Go-Lucky<\/a><\/p>\n

Pitman moved to Orem, Utah, to repo there and across the state. He had been in the business for well over a decade when, in the fall of 2006, the Spanish-language scripted series \u201cOperaci\u00f3n Repo\u201d became the No. 1 program on Telemundo. A reviewer described the show as \u201ca telenovela on Red Bull\u201d and \u201cJudge Judy with a choke hold\u201d; it depicted a family repo business in the San Fernando Valley whose employees brawled with debtors, and with one another. An English-language version, \u201cOperation Repo,\u201d d\u00e9buted a couple of years later, teeing up a glut of derivative content. Pitman decided that he could do better than what the popular culture had to offer. He already filmed his repos, for liability purposes, a defensive protocol that was becoming industry standard. In January, 2008, he started a YouTube channel. He applied for a new vanity license plate that read \u201cREPO N UT,<\/em>\u201d for \u201cRepo in Utah.\u201d The plate came back in error, sans spaces\u2014\u201cREPONUT<\/em>.\u201d Pitman kept both the plate and the nickname, reluctantly. \u201cI hated the \u2018nut,\u2019 because I\u2019m not nuts,\u201d he told me. \u201cI\u2019m a very grounded, not-crazy person.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Pitman is six feet tall, with hazel eyes and blond hair, which he keeps buzzed on the sides and floppy on top, or slicked into a stubby pony. He wears wraparound sunglasses with a bandanna or a backward baseball cap, or both. His land speed is a consistent half sprint. He speaks in complete, fluid sentences but, at times, jackhammer fast. No topic escapes his enthusiasm (\u201cI love<\/em> festivals!\u201d) or his powers of observation (the \u201clittle lobster-claw hands\u201d of the Starbucks mermaid, the absence of residential surveillance cameras). His autodidactic impulses may lead him to the history of clock towers or to the interplanetary rarity of wood. Absolute is his opinion on the superiority of Dobermans (\u201cDobies\u201d), which, he believes, don\u2019t shed as much as other breeds. \u201cDog hair? Forget it,\u201d he said the other day. \u201cIf I got a car bad enough, I\u2019ll put a garbage bag over the seat before I\u2019ll sit in it, it\u2019s so gross. After a day of working, you go home, and you literally have a separate hamper for your work clothes. We get grease, we get solvents, we get grime.\u201d Repo, he declared, \u201cis not quite<\/em> as manly as underwater welding, but it\u2019s a pretty manly job.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Pitman called his YouTube channel RepoNut. GoPro was his camera of choice. He would clamp one to the windshield trim of his rig, point it at himself, and just talk. Each \u201cINSTANT SEIZURE ORDER<\/em>,\u201d issued by a lender, gave him cause to monologue about the endless variables of his trade. Repoing a BMW X series (all-wheel drive) is different from repoing a Honda Civic (front-wheel drive). A good repo agent adjusts for terrain, weather, angle, blockage, flat tires, dead batteries, locked doors, and human interference. Repo agents have been shot, stabbed, hit by cars. They\u2019ve been beaten with tire irons, bottles, planks, chains. During the COVID<\/em>-19 pandemic, some states temporarily banned repos; when orders resumed, there was a spike in violence against repossessors. In 2023, at least seven were killed\u2014the highest number on record. This spring, the North American Repossessors Summit (NARS<\/em>), a convention put on by the industry\u2019s leading trade group, the American Recovery Association (A.R.A.), opened with a harrowing video montage of wounded, terrified repo agents steering out of the line of fire, shrieking, \u201cOh, my God!\u201d and \u201cMotherfucker!\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m shot, I\u2019m shot, I\u2019m shot, I\u2019m shot, I\u2019m shot! I need help!\u201d One driver, visibly shaking after having narrowly avoided a bullet, screamed, \u201cI can\u2019t do<\/em> this shit no more!\u201d People in the audience were crying. The lights came up, and NARS<\/em> awarded medals to two drivers who had sustained gunshot wounds, one in the head. Their peers gave them a standing ovation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Pitman operated on a core belief that \u201cwhen people like you, they won\u2019t harm you.\u201d He disarmed debtors with friendly banter. \u201cBeautiful Jeep!\u201d he\u2019d say. \u201cDid you build that out yourself?\u201d On RepoNut, he once explained, \u201cBy the time a repo man shows up at someone\u2019s house to take their vehicle, they\u2019re oftentimes in bankruptcy, divorce, fighting with their spouse constantly. Financial ruin sometimes, even. Their life\u2019s<\/em> falling apart.\u201d He recorded and posted anyway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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RepoNut started during the Great Recession. Nearly nine million jobs were lost between December of 2007 and early 2010. Forced to make tough spending choices, many Americans prioritized their car payment over the mortgage, weighing the urgent need for personal transportation\u2014work and groceries, church and medical appointments\u2014against the relatively slow-moving process of home foreclosure. Even so, at the recession\u2019s peak, in 2009, 1.8 million cars were repossessed, according to Cox Automotive, an unprecedented number. Pitman\u2019s was the face that thousands of consumers saw, or didn\u2019t, when the financial system came for them.<\/p>\n

Repossessors and tow-truck drivers work different jobs but use the same equipment. The tow truck was patented in 1918 by Ernest Holmes, Sr., the owner of an auto-repair shop in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who pulled vehicles out of ditches using a modified Cadillac and chains. Today\u2019s tow trucks, also known as wreckers, are computerized work stations with integrated digital dashboards, camera systems, blind-spot monitoring, and hydraulic rotators. Pitman eventually switched from a wrecker to a \u201csneaker\u201d unit, a heavy-duty Ford F-series pickup equipped with a steel boom, shaped like a cross, that can be maneuvered with joysticks from inside the cab. He could extend the boom, like a stinger, to \u201chook\u201d and lift a vehicle\u2019s front or back wheels within seconds.<\/p>\n

The tactical aspects of repo interested him more than the mechanical. Pitman liked finding cars that drivers didn\u2019t want found. He got his taste for \u201cinvestigating\u201d in childhood, after smelling Burger King on his parents\u2019 clothes and watching them lie about where they\u2019d been. Their deception \u201cdidn\u2019t hurt<\/em> me,\u201d he said. \u201cI just found it interesting.\u201d He began to figure out, ahead of time, what everyone was getting for Christmas, and followed his older brother when he sneaked out at night, learning that there was power in discovering information, and in withholding it.<\/p>\n

When Pitman started in repo, orders arrived by fax; agents used foldout maps. He got ahead by working dead paper. Fresh eyes on an unfulfilled assignment generated leads that lesser repo guys never saw. A target vehicle that went missing from the address listed on a loan account might be parked down the block, or in a friend\u2019s driveway or a cousin\u2019s garage, or in a storage unit, a church parking lot, a barn. Pitman once tracked a vehicle to a shipping container headed for Hawaii. A debtor\u2019s grandparents\u2019 house was often a good place to look: older people don\u2019t move around that much. Pitman observed that you could tell a lot about a family by how close together everybody lived\u2014data, potentially, for later. Hard-core hiders are called skips, as in skipped town. A skip could maintain spotless op sec and still be undone by an associate\u2019s social-media incontinence; Pitman once noticed a license plate in the background of a photo on the Facebook feed of a target\u2019s relative, traced the plate to an unchecked address, and drove by the house. There sat his repo.<\/p>\n

Once a vehicle is hooked, a repossessor may still need the key\u2014sometimes the emergency brake is on or the car needs to be put in neutral, and an inventory of the car\u2019s contents must be taken, too. Having the key is easier and cheaper than cutting a new one. Asking for it required Pitman to \u201cmake contact\u201d with the debtor, which usually started with knocking on a door. If a debtor refused to co\u00f6perate, Pitman might ingratiate himself, explaining, truthfully, that having the key sure would help him out, or that, without it, the lienholder would bundle the cost of making a new one into the price of getting the vehicle out of hock. Most people were reasonable. Most repos go smoothly. If the vibe soured, Pitman explained that his job was simply to transport collateral for the lender. One of his rigs had a large decal on the back window: \u201cWhy are you pissed at ME? I didn\u2019t miss YOUR<\/em> payment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside the truck, Pitman wore the GoPro on his forehead, making it clear that he was recording. It is unlikely that the people losing their cars knew that their interactions with him would live forever on the internet, with some of their private information exposed and the repo man getting the final word. In one video, a debtor, wearing a \u201cRidin\u2019 on Faith\u201d T-shirt, stands in her driveway and denies the true whereabouts of a Land Rover that Pitman knew perfectly well was sitting out back. Pitman floated in text: \u201cLie #1\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d When that same debtor then says, \u201cYou\u2019ve been in my back yard why?,\u201d Pitman replies, \u201cWhen you signed the contract for the title loan, you gave them the right, if the loan goes into default, for us to come out and pick up the vehicle.\u201d That frame read \u201cDid that answer you snootie question?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Less well-off people handle repossession better than \u201crich people,\u201d Pitman told me, because they \u201cknow what to expect.\u201d The \u201cnightmare\u201d is the guy who\u2019s \u201cgot a Hummer, and his business is tanking, and he\u2019s got a boat, a motor home, Jet Skis, four-wheelers. Those people don\u2019t react well. They\u2019re very entitled. They\u2019re very \u2018How dare you?\u2019 and \u2018I\u2019m calling my lawyer,\u2019 \u2018My brother\u2019s a cop.\u2019 You don\u2019t get any of that from people that are living in a single-wide trailer.\u201d In a video titled \u201cDealing With People Who Think The Rest Of Us Owe Them Something,\u201d a youngish mom wearing fur-lined boots and a leather motorcycle jacket emerges from a large home, stands at the bumper of her repossessed Jeep Wrangler, and, fists balled in frustration, cries, \u201cOh!\u201d and \u201cThis is what happens when I leave the payments up to my frickin\u2019 husband!\u201d The husband later confronts Pitman in a parking lot. Pitman calls the police. He tends to be obsequious with law-enforcement officers, as if to advance his notion of professional alignment. The responding officer tells him, \u201cYou\u2019re both<\/em> guilty of disorderly conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

RepoNut titles became nesting narratives: \u201cFireman Returns From Call To Find Repoman In Action,\u201d \u201cAlmost Lost This One To A Closed Garage,\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s Pouring Repos In This Never Ending Recession,\u201d \u201cAnother Fun Day Dealing With Upset People,\u201d \u201cYou Never Know What You\u2019ll Find Or Where You\u2019ll Find It,\u201d \u201cLoad And Go At The Local Horse Park.\u201d A sharky tension hangs over the second most popular installment, wherein Pitman hustles to tow a faded 2001 G.M.C. Yukon from a parking lot before security sees him. As he clears the property boundary, he sighs like a fighter pilot crossing into international airspace. The video was viewed more than 3.2 million times. Pitman suspected that gearhead teen-age boys were a big part of the RepoNut audience. Other repossessors definitely watched, too, to see how Pitman handled the assignments\u2014and himself.<\/p>\n

One night, Pitman had a repo order for a certain BMW, which he spotted at a Chevron station. A young guy was about to get behind the wheel. Pitman, who works alone yet often speaks in the first-person plural, rolled up and informed him, \u201cWe have an order of repossession for this vehicle. You guys want to clean some stuff out of it before we take it?\u201d<\/p>\n

The kid wanted to drive the BMW home. Pitman clamped a G.P.S. tracking device to its undercarriage and followed him. At an apartment complex, a distraught woman came to Pitman\u2019s window with a phone and tried to get him to speak with a man on the other end of the line. She said, \u201cHe has the money for me to pay two payments!\u201d The repo man\u2019s job is not to accept the handoff of a phone, or to engage explanations. Joker used to say to debtors, \u201cTell your story on the bus.\u201d Pitman told the woman that there was nothing he could do. \u201cWe don\u2019t deal with the money,\u201d he said. \u201cYou need to call your bank.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYeah, but can you give me till tomorrow morning? I swear to God, I can\u2019t get to work, and I promise you\u2019ll have it!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t give you till tomorrow morning,\u201d Pitman said. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna pick the vehicle up right now. You need to understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease. Please! I am a single mom. I\u2019m doing everything I can. Please! I\u2019ll be there first thing in the morning!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMa\u2019am,\u201d Pitman said. \u201cYou\u2019ll be able to get your vehicle back, but we are picking it up tonight, O.K.?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease? For God\u2019s sake!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMa\u2019am. You need to get to the point where you understand that we\u2019re picking the vehicle up tonight, O.K.?\u201d<\/p>\n

The woman wailed, \u201cWhat do I do?\u201d<\/p>\n

Before long, she was apologizing to Pitman and saying, \u201cI have never had this happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see a lot of people trip out,\u201d he told her. She handed over her key. Afterward, Pitman told RepoNut followers, \u201cThrough very trained and controlled verbal skills, we were able to calm her down and deal with the situation. That\u2019s how we want all our repos to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

RepoNut amassed nearly two hundred thousand subscribers. Pitman allowed advertising and ultimately banked a quarter of a million dollars, supplementing his repo income. Lenders pay recovery agents, on average, three hundred and fifty dollars per completed repossession. That rate hasn\u2019t changed much in decades, a fact that repossessors constantly point out. \u201cThe cost of doing this business has skyrocketed, but the price that\u2019s paid has been stagnant,\u201d Vaughn Clemmons, a former president of the A.R.A., told me at the NARS<\/em> conference, in Orlando. \u201cI got a hundred-and-twenty-thousand-dollar tow truck. I have a forty-thousand-dollar camera system and drivers that are sent out to Nashville or Memphis to get hands-on training. Forget the gas\u2014it\u2019s the other<\/em> variables that really hurt, when you can\u2019t draw a line and say, \u2018How am I making this money back?\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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One increasingly dominant player in the field is the forwarder, a middleman between lenders and repo agents. If a lender in Maryland needs a car repossessed in Seattle and doesn\u2019t know any agents there, a forwarder with a national repo database may manage the job, from assignment to resolution. (At NARS,<\/em> repo agents would have had a chance to express their opinion of this arrangement at a charity Dunk-a-Forwarder booth, but the dunking was cancelled, because of rain.) Forwarders can increase competition among repossessors and squeeze their margins, forcing them to rely on volume to stay in business. A saying in the trade is \u201cNo metal, no money.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was just starting to look into forwarders when President Donald Trump, during his second term, began to dismantle the agency. (The C.F.P.B. has reported that borrowers pay more in repo charges when a forwarder is involved.) The A.R.A., meanwhile, has been arguing for a fee structure that takes the pressure off hooking at all costs. Payment only upon completion can lead to haste, which can generate confusion and mistakes. In some cases, a repo driver has taken a vehicle without realizing that a child was inside. At least one was an infant, asleep in the back seat.<\/p>\n

Americans currently owe a staggering $1.7 trillion in automobile debt\u2014only two in ten new cars, and four in ten used cars, are purchased outright. Last year, repossessions reached levels not seen since the Great Recession. The repos were concentrated among lower-income borrowers, who, on average, pay higher interest rates. Insurance, car parts, maintenance, parking, housing, food\u2014the cost of daily life has been rising. Because of Trump\u2019s war with Iran, the price of fuel recently spiked to nearly five dollars a gallon (and more, for diesel). Wages aren\u2019t keeping up.<\/p>\n

In January, I had to sell my own car, because it was too expensive and illogical to keep in Manhattan. I cried as I drove to a CarMax on Long Island, feeling as distraught as I\u2019d been on another morning, many years ago, in another city, when I took an acutely ill pet to the veterinarian to be euthanized. I am aware that comparing the two is ridiculous. CarMax gives you a free Lyft home after the sale. That poor driver had to listen to me sniffle in shameful despair all the way back to the city. A wealthy friend in another part of the country cheerily insisted that I wasn\u2019t stranded\u2014I could always travel by bus! It took me days to realize why this well-intended suggestion was so devastating. Owning a car is not just a logistical issue; it is an identity issue. I have been an obsessively self-sufficient, licensed driver since age fifteen, no matter where in the world I\u2019ve lived. Giving that up felt like a sort of death. Imagine the anxiety, then, for the overwhelming number of Americans who rely on a private vehicle to get to work. The National Consumer Law Center, a watchdog group, has reported that, \u201cfor those living on low incomes or in rural or other areas not well served by public transportation, survival often depends upon the availability of a car.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As in American politics and homeownership, the middle has fallen out. Last September, the average price for a new car surpassed fifty thousand dollars for the first time. Electronics account for nearly half of that cost; each vehicle contains as many as three thousand individual microchips. (These chips, most of which come from Taiwan, are manufactured in semiconductor plants that cost billions of dollars to build and operate. Car and Driver<\/em> has reported that microprocessors and chips have become \u201cpractically a commodity in the same vein as steel and aluminum.\u201d) In May, the personal-finance guru Ramit Sethi told the Times<\/em>, \u201cAmericans love<\/em> to buy gargantuan eighty-five-thousand-dollar trucks. Then they also discover that they don\u2019t have a lot in savings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since 2019, the average monthly payment for a new car has risen by about three hundred dollars. One in five new-car buyers is paying more than a thousand dollars a month, and lenders are writing loans for astonishing ninety-six-month terms. \u201cThey\u2019ll get you in, whether you can afford it or not,\u201d one repo-industry veteran told me at NARS<\/em>. Overhearing this, another said, \u201cThat\u2019s why I buy used<\/em> cars\u2014with cash.\u201d<\/p>\n

Banks and credit unions tend to serve prime borrowers, those with high credit scores; subprime borrowers have fewer options, such as independent finance companies and buy-here-pay-here lots, which typically require weekly or twice-monthly payments, charge higher interest rates, and are quick to repossess. (Subprime delinquencies have reached their highest levels since 2010.) A lender may wait until a borrower misses multiple payments to reclaim the collateral\u2014it is more cost-efficient to keep a driver in a car (and a loan) than it is to repossess, remarket, and resell the vehicle. Yet even a single missed payment can trigger a repo order.<\/p>\n

There is little federal oversight of the repo industry, only adjacent laws on fair lending and privacy. The Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.) permits repossessors to take vehicles without a court order, as long as they avoid any \u201cbreach of the peace,\u201d a term so broad that even the A.R.A. is pushing for a standardized definition. Early repo guys were known to intimidate debtors, and sometimes to resort to violence. The history of repo is littered with \u201call kinds of trickery,\u201d Art Christensen, a New Jersey repo man for the past sixty-six years and a co-founder of the NARS<\/em> conference, told me. I\u2019ve heard about schemes involving pizza delivery, or luring debtors into the open with the promise of free concert tickets. Pitman used to plant spy cams and spoof phone numbers. In \u201cRepo Blood: A Century of Auto Repossession History,\u201d Kevin W. Armstrong, a former repossessor, writes, \u201cLiving the credo that \u2018nothing is illegal unless you get caught,\u2019 garage doors and gates were only minor barriers.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. We got away with murder.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.C.C. is not federal law; it is a legal framework, established in 1952, intended to streamline interstate business practices\u2014a contract signed in New Mexico should hold up in Maine. States use the U.C.C. to draft laws that govern repossession, but, as with guns and cannabis, regulations vary from place to place. That is why it is legal in Utah, but not in Massachusetts, to repossess a vehicle in a driveway, and why California and Florida require state licensing for repo agents but other states overwhelmingly don\u2019t, and why debtors in Kansas, and almost nowhere else, have a grace period of twenty days to resolve an account delinquency before a repo man shows up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Pitman, who called himself a \u201csecurity enforcer,\u201d worked in a state with few restrictions and where no special licensing is required. In Utah, it is legal to peaceably repossess a vehicle anytime on public or private property, as long as the repossessor doesn\u2019t cut a lock or enter an enclosed area. When I asked Pitman who, really, was looking over a repo agent\u2019s shoulder, he said, \u201cThe finance company\u2014the ones that send you the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before RepoNut came into being, Pitman, who was divorced with children, met a grocery-store clerk named Shanda, who was also divorced with children. He tried to impress her by breaking into her car (\u201cI can open up any lock in seconds\u201d) and leaving flowers and a CD, by System of a Down, on her steering wheel. They got married in the autumn of 2007. Shanda had misgivings about Pitman working nights\u2014which is when debtors, and their cars, tend to be home\u2014and in sketchy circumstances. Yet his income allowed her to quit her job. They lived in a two-story house with a two-car garage, which Pitman turned into a workshop where he parked his Kawasaki motorcycle and liked to fabricate sound systems maximized for the bone-rattling bass of E.D.M. and metal. Shanda, who had dark hair and eyes and a gentle demeanor, kept windowsills filled with plants. She did woodworking and drove a 2008 Ford Mustang painted in grabber orange, with black racing stripes. She occasionally rode along on repos, videoing Pitman. She did not watch RepoNut, though. She told her husband that seeing him manipulate others made it hard for her to trust him.<\/p>\n

Pitman had been episodically surveilling a house for a delinquent luxury S.U.V. when, one August weekend, the vehicle turned up, parked askew at the curb and hitched to a trailer that held a ski boat. \u201cIt\u2019s been at the lake,\u201d he told the camera. He went home to get his rig and pick up Shanda. Riding shotgun, she asked, \u201cAre they rich people?\u201d Pitman replied, \u201cI don\u2019t know about rich<\/em>, but they\u2019re in a nicer neighborhood.\u201d By \u201cnicer,\u201d he meant an area with sidewalks, and tidy homes and lawns, with no automobiles in states of visible disrepair.<\/p>\n

No one was outside when they arrived. Pitman quickly hooked and lifted the S.U.V. by the nose, and unhitched the boat trailer. He rang the doorbell. A woman answered. When Pitman told her what he\u2019d come for, she said, \u201cWell, it\u2019s attached to a boat.\u201d Pitman, who has a talent for sounding like a bystander, said, \u201cThe boat\u2019s disconnected now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several people came out of the house. A shirtless man in swim trunks demanded that Pitman drop the car. When he refused, the man lunged at the heavy-duty straps that Pitman had just ratcheted to the hoisted wheels. Pitman went off: \u201cPlease don\u2019t touch my straps!\u201d His speech was an unnatural blur. Panting in fury, he jumped into his rig and drove off, towing the S.U.V. \u201cStop, stop, stop, stop!\u201d Shanda said. \u201cStop! Stop! Baby, stop!\u201d The debtor was running alongside the rig.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Pitman rounded a corner and stopped in the middle of the street. He jumped out to put dollies beneath the S.U.V.\u2019s rear wheels, to make it easier and safer to tow. Dragging a vehicle can wreck the transmission and any number of other things. As the debtor caught up, Pitman yelled, \u201cI\u2019ll drag this fucker all the way to my yard!,\u201d to which the debtor replied, \u201cDude.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitman grew even more agitated. \u201cYou start touching my truck, I get pissed,\u201d he screamed. \u201cThat\u2019s my livelihood<\/em>.\u201d He kept telling the debtor to go get his key: \u201cGogetyourkey, gogetyourkey, gogetyourkey<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t cause a scene,\u201d the debtor said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou wanna see a scene? You wanna see a scene?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll go and get my key.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFuckin\u2019 ass<\/em>munch!\u201d Pitman shrieked. \u201cTouch my truck again!\u201d<\/p>\n

The man returned with a woman, presumably his wife, who calmly told Pitman, \u201cI need to get the car seat out.\u201d Her husband jumped behind the wheel of the S.U.V., the front end of which was still raised a couple of feet off the pavement. Pitman later told me, \u201cI took him down to the ground in a choke hold, until he stopped fighting me,\u201d but that never happened. After Pitman yelled some more, the debtor got out. Pitman fast-backed the repo rig down the street with the S.U.V. attached and the man, once again, following on foot. \u201cWhere\u2019s he at?\u201d Pitman asked Shanda.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s on your truck<\/em>,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The debtor had jumped onto the running board of Pitman\u2019s moving rig and was clinging to the driver\u2019s door.<\/p>\n

Just then, the police showed up. The man\u2019s family had called 911, apparently to report a theft. \u201cIt\u2019s a repossession,\u201d Pitman explained to the responding officers. He rambled about the Fourteenth Amendment and also said, \u201cI was trying to get clear of the scene because the guy was going psycho<\/em>.\u201d Shanda was scared. The debtor\u2019s wife looked embarrassed. The police eventually found Pitman\u2019s paperwork to be in order and let him leave. Driving away, Pitman announced to the camera, \u201cThat, my friends, is rich people being stupid!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Later, his mind clearer, he titled the video \u201cDrunk Debtor Gets Stupid And I Get Stupider How NOT To Be.\u201d In the description, he wrote, \u201cI messed up period.\u201d He attributed his frenzied behavior to fatigue. \u201cDrunk Debtor\u201d became, by far, the most popular video on RepoNut, with more than 4.2 million views.<\/p>\n

Not long after the swimsuit repo, Shanda was given a diagnosis of terminal colorectal cancer. She died on April 15, 2016, at the age of thirty-eight. Two days later, Pitman posted a photo montage of their life together, with wistful captions about a boy who met a girl whose cancer \u201ccost him everything.\u201d He went on living in their home, with Shanda\u2019s daughter, Aysia, who was sixteen. Aysia liked to change her hair color and wear a classic cat eye. Pitman called her his daughter, and he referred to Shanda\u2019s father, Paul Pace, as his father, though his own biological father was alive and well, in Arizona. Pace told me, \u201cWhen Shanda first got sick, Matt would stay home with her and was probably better than any doctor or nurse. We\u2019d go over there after her death, and he\u2019d be curled up in a ball on the bed, with Shanda\u2019s picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitman all but stopped repoing. RepoNut became a repository for his musings about loss, juxtaposed with pronouncements about goals\u2014a hundred thousand Facebook friends, a Kickstarter for a \u201crepo academy.\u201d He had already written twelve pages of a curriculum, which would include a primer on repo lingo such as \u201cdisco\u201d (a disconnected phone) and \u201cP.O.E.\u201d (place of employment), as well as \u201cboring stuff,\u201d such as \u201capplicable laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Clearing Out Dad\u2019s Room<\/a><\/p>\n

Shanda was four months gone when, that August, Pitman posted a video of himself jamming out in his garage. He had dark circles beneath his eyes and sores on his face. A RepoNut follower commented, \u201cI am a parole officer and deal with Meth addict daily. This is a perfect example of what this drug can do to the best of people.\u201d Pitman suggested that he\u2019d been \u201cacting.\u201d Another commenter wrote, on a subsequent video, \u201cMatt, bro two words Drug Rehab.\u201d Under yet another comment, Pitman replied, \u201cHydrate hydrate hydrate snort repeat lol j\/k put down the pitchforks folks,\u201d signing it \u201cMethhew Health Druggy Pitman.\u201d<\/p>\n

By October, he was openly wishing for the \u201ckarma gods\u201d to give him a \u201ckick in the ass with good luck.\u201d He needed money. His bedroom, where Shanda had died, was missing \u201ca woman\u2019s touch.\u201d When RepoNut followers criticized his handling of a repossession where he had incorrectly told a debtor that it was \u201cillegal\u201d not to carry identification, Pitman retorted that only \u201ca trained professional\u201d could understand his tactics: \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of mind-ninja stuff going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Viewers watched his home become cluttered, then trashed. The power and the water got cut off. Aysia went to live somewhere else. A woman whom Pitman called \u201csweetie\u201d came over with a young girl, seemingly her daughter, to help clean up. The little girl, gamely wielding a garbage bag, saw urine everywhere and cried, \u201cIt\u2019s all over your floor? Your walls<\/em>?\u201d Pitman plunged a toilet full of dark liquid and called it mud. The Sheetrock had holes in it. He alleged \u201csabotage,\u201d adding, \u201cThis is just about how everybody pictured it going, with my implosion.\u201d Walking into Aysia\u2019s bedroom one day, he said, \u201cSmells like something died down here.\u201d Then, \u201cIs that a snake<\/em>skin?\u201d He\u2019d come across the remains of Aysia\u2019s pet python.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Pitman moved out. Soon, RepoNut followers saw him in a tidy bedroom, backdropped by a framed poster with an inspirational message. (\u201cYou are braver than you believe.\u201d) Leaning into his repo-academy idea, he showed a montage of TV news stories about bad repossessions and declared, \u201cFraud, violence, wrongful repossession, untrained agents.\u201d He now planned to \u201cexpose\u201d the repo industry, calling it \u201cplagued with problems,\u201d which he was \u201cworking feverishly<\/em> to correct.\u201d In 2018, RepoNut content tapered off. Followers assumed that Pitman had died.<\/p>\n

Early this year, Pitman resurfaced on YouTube. I called him up. He\u2019d been in prison. His life choices had culminated in \u201ca complete state of self-denial and self-sabotage,\u201d he told me. He had stolen, to support an addiction\u2014the RepoNut commenters had been right. He had also been cited for numerous traffic violations: speeding, running a stop sign, driving with an expired registration, using faulty equipment, improperly changing lanes, driving under the influence. The day before the \u201cDrunk Debtor\u201d incident, he had been charged with driving on a suspended license. Shanda, after her diagnosis, had been prescribed oxycodone, which Pitman had been taking. \u201cOnce I was on the drugs, it was a downward spiral,\u201d he told me. \u201cIt\u2019s like a big magic trick. Everything you own disappears\u2014the people, the things, your credibility. It seemed like every corner I turned I was just getting the crap kicked out of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitman had been to prison once before, in Arizona, for theft and fencing: when he was nineteen, he got caught operating a motorcycle chop shop. It was after that incarceration that he became a repo agent. \u201cHaving felonies doesn\u2019t keep you from being able to be in this industry,\u201d he said. The National Consumer Law Center has noted that the \u201cranks of the repossession army are wide open to individuals without the resources, qualifications or ability to pass criminal records checks needed for more attractive jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

That study, published in 2010, highlighted the industry\u2019s lack of oversight, calling repossession \u201ca crude, unregulated and naked exercise of force and guile.\u201d What was true then is largely true today: most states require no special licensing, registration, training, or screening for repossessors, who work a sensitive job that puts them in direct contact with the public. In the United States, manicurists are better regulated than repo agents.<\/p>\n

After his recent incarceration, Pitman lived at a men\u2019s residential facility just north of Salt Lake City called Red Barn Academy, which promoted itself as a therapeutic community where \u201ccriminals, the homeless, and substance abusers can come and reinvent their lives free of charge!\u201d Pitman told me that he had \u201crelearned honesty, integrity, accountability\u201d at Red Barn, calling these \u201ca trifecta\u201d of essentials for \u201cany person that wants to live a good life and be a good, functional, supporting part of society.\u201d He had got back his driver\u2019s license and had fixed up a cobalt-blue F-150 pickup, whose vanity license plate read \u201cITHERTZ<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He had also returned to the repo industry\u2014to a desk job, issuing seizure orders for a company that deals in industrial equipment for small businesses that do not qualify for traditional loans. Now, though, he was getting back into a repo rig, to drive full time. He had accepted a job and was moving to St. George, a city of about a hundred thousand, several hours south, in the upper Mojave Desert. Aysia, now in her late twenties, lived there, and she was about to have a baby. Pitman, who already had grandkids he did not see, was excited to be \u201ca grandpa.\u201d I flew to Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n

Pitman had told me that he\u2019d be packing up his house. This turned out to be a bedroom in a house that he had found on Facebook Marketplace. Strangers lived in the other bedrooms. One Sunday afternoon, I watched him dismantle a curtain rod, remove decorative burlap from the ceiling, and wrap stackable clothing bins in plastic. His bed was made. On the comforter lay a key chain outfitted with kitty knuckles, a plastic, hand-worn weapon with two super-sharp points.<\/p>\n

A few weeks earlier, someone had broken into his truck and stolen his things, including a device that fires nonlethal projectiles. Wearing a tactical vest, Pitman had confronted the person he thought was responsible. When I asked who was behind the burglary, he nodded silently at his bedroom wall, implicating the tenant in the next room. I was standing in the hallway, in front of that guy\u2019s closed door, where there was a handwritten sign: \u201cYOUR ON CAMERA<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Summer is summer to you and me; to a repo agent, it is a season of scorching metal. Pitman always finds the upside. What the universe delivered in desert heat it tempered with fewer frozen gas caps, and with \u201cyear-round motorcycle weather.\u201d Even during his free fall, he had told RepoNut followers, \u201cChange is good, guys!\u201d and \u201cLife happens to every<\/em>body!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A few days after I saw Pitman in Salt Lake City, I met him in St. George\u2014red-rock buttes, electric-blue sky. Roses bloomed in creamy peaches and pinks, rattled, in their buds, by an unusual wind. Pitman drove to an industrial part of town, punched in a key code at an electronic gate, and pulled into a gravel tow lot that was partly ringed with abandoned R.V.s, tractor-trailer cabs, and other crusted wrecks. Inside a sublot secured by padlocks and chains sat two rows of recently repossessed vehicles. A semi arrived and deposited an intact tow camper\u2014a 2005 Keystone Montana Mountaineer that Pitman had just bought, on Facebook Marketplace, for six thousand dollars, cash. His new boss was letting him live on the lot, rent-free, as a perk. The Mountaineer had no hookups, but Pitman had worked out a \u201cmodular\u201d life plan. He already owned a generator and a microwave. He would join a twenty-four-hour gym, for the showers. He would do laundry at Aysia\u2019s apartment. The repo job came with a gas card. Pitman showed me through the Mountaineer, which was about thirty feet long, with a bed on one end and a kitchen on the other, and said, \u201cIf life goes to shit, I\u2019m not homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tow lot was surrounded by chain-link fencing threaded with strips of plastic and topped by barbed wire. Pitman, pleased with the new setup, decreed it \u201csecurity by obscurity.\u201d How great it would be, he said, to put out the Mountaineer\u2019s awning and sit, unbothered, beneath the deep night sky. On one of the fenceposts, someone had stuck a fake head on a pike. A Darth Vader mask hung on the inside of the electronic gate. Pitman decided that it meant either \u201cwe\u2019re on the dark side\u201d or \u201cmay the Force be with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitman had been hired to cover the whole of southern Utah, from Nevada to Colorado. On his first day of work, he wore colorful patchwork pants, red Adidas high-tops, a backward San Francisco Giants baseball cap, and a hoodie that read \u201cREPO LIFE<\/em>\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m addicted to my work. But I\u2019m in recovery so it\u2019s OK.\u201d (His design.) He hadn\u2019t operated a repo truck in years. His work rig was a Ford F-350 sneaker\u2014the kind with the stinger. He mounted his Motorola phone on a vent and placed a mobile router on the dashboard. He set one laptop on the center console and a second laptop on an attached platform that reminded me of a cat tree. \u201cI got a thousand passwords to remember again,\u201d he said. \u201cHaving a really good memory makes all that easier.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The cat tree took up most of the passenger seat, so, for days, I rode nauseously in the back, looking over Pitman\u2019s shoulder and trying to avoid the exhalations of his watermelon-flavored vape. One of the laptops ran a digital map; icons, shaped like inverted teardrops, marked addresses that lenders were paying Pitman\u2019s company to pay Pitman to check, for collateral. Driving by the teardrops is called running addresses. Southern Utah was covered in teardrops.<\/p>\n

Each corner of Pitman\u2019s rig held an infrared camera whose beams of light bounced off the reflective surface of all visible license plates, reading them. The cameras, not so much hunting as scavenging, fed the numbers and their corresponding locations into a national database owned by a company that sells the information. If one of the scanned vehicles came up for repo later, the software could indicate where and when the plate had been seen. \u201cWe\u2019re doing all the work,\u201d Pitman observed. \u201cWe\u2019re making their<\/em> database stronger.\u201d The camera system is called an advanced license-plate reader, commonly known as an L.P.R. (Law enforcement and toll roads use the same technology, which has prompted debates about mass surveillance.) Each time one of Pitman\u2019s cameras read a plate, his laptop went ding<\/em>. Driving around St. George, we heard ding<\/em> .\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0 ding<\/em> .\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0 ding<\/em>. In crowded parking lots, dingding<\/em> .\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0 dingdingdingdingdingdingding<\/em>. Plate numbers scrolled on his screen, with state abbreviations: UT, FL, MN, MT, NV, TN, DE.<\/p>\n

Repossessors themselves are sometimes surveilled. At the NARS<\/em> conference, I met a vender selling a camera-and-software system that monitors distracted driving, fatigue, and acceleration and braking patterns\u2014a better \u201csafety score\u201d can lead to lower insurance premiums. A company called GridShark was demoing a \u201cfleet intelligence\u201d program: on a huge L.E.D. screen, I watched the real-time movements of agents and \u201cspotters,\u201d who drive camera cars, being traced, Pac-Man style, on a digital map of San Antonio. Bosses could see who was doing what, to deploy their drivers more efficiently. A repo-company owner named Paul Howard, thinking of the fuel savings alone, said, \u201cI need this by Sunday night!\u201d He couldn\u2019t wait to use GridShark secretly for a week and then spring its existence on his drivers. Slackers would be outed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Anytime Pitman\u2019s laptop went wrrrrRRRR<\/em>, it meant that the cameras had found a plate wanted on an active repo order. Those vehicles were to be hooked. On the map, a pink \u201cV\u201d inside a pink circle indicated a volly, or a voluntary repossession. This is when the debtor, aware that his vehicle is in jeopardy, makes an appointment, through the lender, to have a repossessor pick it up. Vollies happen about a quarter of the time. A subset of the volly demographic is the debtor who, per Pitman, \u201cfucks with\u201d the repo agent\u2014glass in the driver\u2019s seat, a razor blade taped to a door handle, sugar in the gas tank. \u201cWhen they screw with you, they don\u2019t think it through,\u201d he told me. \u201cIt\u2019s, like, I know where you live<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

For every completed repo, Pitman took and uploaded voluminous photos. He filled out online condition reports and checked off boxes pertaining to keys, battery, mileage, tires. At each fruitless address, he dictated his findings into his phone, updating files: \u201cSingle-family home, two-car garage, white Silverado backed in the driveway, not our collateral\u201d; \u201cMobile-home park, Lexus backed into the driveway, no answer at the door.\u201d<\/p>\n

One afternoon, he hooked a Chevrolet Colorado in the driveway of a town house whose garage door stood open, revealing a neat space with an immaculate floor. Pitman knocked at both the interior door of the garage and the front door. He was just about to leave when a young man in sweats and slides with socks emerged to find the front end of his Chevy up in the air. Pitman brightly asked, \u201cThis been a pretty good truck?\u201d The man replied quietly, \u201cYeah, it\u2019s been amazing.\u201d (Pitman later told me, \u201cI knew exactly where his mind was at, in that moment.\u201d) Pitman waited as the debtor, a construction worker, transferred a reflective vest, a jug of water, a pair of shoes, a backpack, and a sack of nine-millimetre bullets to the garage. He hadn\u2019t been able to make a payment in three months. \u201cSome things went south,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another time, Pitman got a teardrop for a Toyota Camry. He failed to find it at the address listed on the loan. When he tried another address, his laptop went wrrrrRRRR<\/em>. The Camry was sitting in the driveway of a one-story home whose front door was wide open. Pitman backed up and hooked the Camry, then confirmed the VIN<\/em> on his way to the door.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A pair of industrial vats sat bubbling on the stoop, attached to propane-powered burners. Pitman knocked at the open door and hollered the name on his list. Out came a twenty-two-year-old woman in shorts and Birkenstocks. Pitman told her, \u201cWe\u2019re picking up your car for the finance company. Is there anything you need to get out?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. What?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

As the woman followed Pitman to the driveway, her grandmother fell in behind, asking, \u201cPor qu\u00e9<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to call the bank,\u201d Pitman told her. \u201cThey\u2019ll tell you why they had us come out and pick it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The grandmother said, \u201cPero ya ha pagado!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

The young woman gathered some of her things, leaving behind a hair clip, a ceramic mug, a piece of clothing, and invitations for an Easter worship service. This told Pitman that she planned to redeem the vehicle as soon as possible. In his experience, debtors with no plans for redemption either remove everything or leave everything.<\/p>\n

Later, I returned to the house to talk to the young woman. She wasn\u2019t home, but her mother, Liliana, was. \u201cDebe mucho todav\u00eda<\/em>,\u201d she told me, adding that she had begged her daughter, who was still paying for college, not to sign a car loan with a high interest rate, which she recalled being nineteen per cent. \u201cShe work in a restaurant, she work in the dentist, she make eyelashes,\u201d Liliana said. \u201cShe tried her best, but, you know, sometimes difficult to get the money that day.\u201d Liliana, who is divorced, cleans for a living and sells homemade tamales on weekends. That\u2019s what was cooking in the vats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A Tesla appeared on the map. It was a volly, which goes on a credit report, same as an involuntary repossession, but does tend to save the debtor back-end fees on transportation and storage. At Pitman\u2019s tow lot, I met a warehouse worker who told me that a credit union was charging him nine thousand dollars to redeem a Nissan Rogue. He said that he owed less than five grand on the loan itself. Pitman told me about companies that bag up the inventoried contents of repossessed vehicles and charge the debtors twenty-five dollars per bag to get back their own things. \u201cThat\u2019s extortion!\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s how these companies fleece America.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He found the Tesla parked where the debtor had said it would be, at a modest house near a golf course. A barefoot young woman in sweats and an anklet came out and told Pitman, \u201cIt\u2019s gonna need new brakes.\u201d Small children crowded at an open window, calling, \u201cMama!\u201d As the woman went to look up information about the battery, Pitman tried to figure out how the Tesla\u2019s doors worked. They raised, like wings.<\/p>\n

The car\u2019s interior was filthy. Repo agents find all kinds of things in vehicles\u2014needles, poopy diapers, sex beads. Some companies require their agents to wear protective goggles and puncture-proof gloves. Pitman operates on instinct. He cranked the Tesla, backed it into the street, and hooked it. Watching from the driveway, the woman told me that she was getting a divorce. \u201cIt\u2019s a D.V. situation,\u201d she said, meaning domestic violence. One of her kids came outside and asked, \u201cAre you gonna miss the Tesla?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cI am not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitman was looking for a Hyundai in the parking lot of a residential complex when we started talking about whether Utah should require repossessor licensing. He considers any kind of certification a \u201cbadge of honor.\u201d He noted that good repossessors already \u201clean on the side of caution, to make sure we don\u2019t get the finance company in trouble and we don\u2019t get our repo company in trouble.\u201d Insurance and bonding hedge against, among other things, what Pitman claims is \u201ca big problem\u201d in the repo industry: \u201csticky fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSince we\u2019re on the topic,\u201d I said, \u201cwhat were you busted for?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPossession of a deadly weapon,\u201d he said. (It was an illegal handgun.) \u201cI got busted with drugs on me while I was sitting in my car, in a parking lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat drugs?\u201c<\/p>\n

\u201cMeth, heroin, pills.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was after Shanda died.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMm-hmm, yep.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWeren\u2019t there burglary charges?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMm-hmm. I broke into a storage unit, took some stuff that was not mine. They had video of my license plate. I wasn\u2019t very smart about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhose unit was it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust some random person\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you know something was in there that you wanted?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNope. High on drugs, and I just helped myself to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow\u2019d you break in?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI picked the lock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019d you get?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSixty-eight hundred dollars\u2019 worth of stuff. Because that\u2019s what I had to pay in restitution. I don\u2019t really remember.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019d you do with the stuff?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSold it. Gave it away. All of the above.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor drugs?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, definitely,\u201d he said. \u201cI was homeless, living on the streets, and needed money.\u201d<\/p>\n

I once asked Pitman his opinion of the societal value of automobile repossession. \u201cIt\u2019s a deterrent,\u201d he said. At NARS<\/em>, I continually asked the same question. A forwarder from Texas said, \u201cIf cars don\u2019t get picked up and the lender continues to lose money, what do you think happens? How are they going to recoup that money? They\u2019re going to raise interest rates on everybody<\/em>.\u201d Clemmons, the former A.R.A. president, told me, \u201cRepossessions protect your ability to finance a car\u2014if there was no one to retrieve these vehicles, there would be no financing, full stop.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The NARS<\/em> conference took place at a Hilton resort and convention center with an eighteen-hole golf course and a lazy-river swimming pool. One of the sessions happened outside, on a bricked plaza, where a crowd watched Danny and Sophia Pabon, who grew their business, Florida Repossession Agency, from a single truck to a forty-employee company, lead re\u00ebnactments of scenarios that repo drivers encounter in the field: what to do if a competitor shows up at the same repo, or if a debtor uses G.P.S. to follow and confront a driver; how to safeguard against fentanyl exposure. Sophia, a Bronx native in her early forties, told me, \u201cI have a lot of respect for this industry, and I feel like people don\u2019t understand the importance of what we do and how it keeps our ecosystem of cars going.\u201d<\/p>\n

She disliked that repossessors were thought of as \u201cthe bad guys.\u201d But the reputation is earned; Clemmons, who got his start in the eighties, in Cleveland, by proving himself handy with a slim jim, said, \u201cYou name it, we did it\u2014going into garages, breaking and entering.\u201d He and Christensen, the New Jersey repo man and NARS<\/em> co-founder, are among those who have been working to reform the industry\u2019s outlaw image and, as Christensen put it, push for \u201cbetter ways to evolve.\u201d Clemmons supports mandatory training in defensive driving, situational awareness, and de-escalation. \u201cI\u2019m not the kind of guy who wants regulation\u2014I don\u2019t want the government telling me what to do,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I do believe we can force it upon ourselves. When there\u2019s no standard, there\u2019s chaos.\u201d He liked the sound of bar associations, which censure lawyers for malfeasance. \u201cRight now, in our space, there is no respected authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

At one NARS<\/em> session, Al Gonzalez, a repossessor from Texas, asked Danny Pabon, his presentation partner, to name a reputation-killing behavior in their industry. Pabon replied, \u201cBeing sloppy on social media. I\u2019ve seen people on LinkedIn be super professional, then you go on their Facebook and it\u2019s a whole different person.\u201d When Gonzalez asked what Pabon tells his employees about posting online, he replied, \u201cThey shouldn\u2019t post anything<\/em> online.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Utah, Pitman had just posted a new YouTube video, about returning to a repo rig and moving to St. George. Within twenty-four hours, it had more than nine thousand views. A fan welcomed back \u201cthe OG.\u201d Pitman had already bought a Bluetooth mike, and he planned to learn St. George\u2019s streets at pavement level, on an electric scooter. He had discovered the thrilling utility of flying a small drone into gated communities, to hover over windshields, capturing VIN<\/em>s. He had gone online and bought a badge that read \u201cREPOSSESSION RECOVERY AGENT<\/em>.\u201d Shaped like a shield, it cost $39.94 at Agent Gear USA, a website that stands equally ready to serve the credentialling needs of any \u201cBAIL ENFORCEMENT AGENT (BEA)<\/em>\u201d or \u201cINTERNATIONAL SPECIAL AGENT<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitman never wore his badge in front of me, but after I left I heard that it was hanging on a chain around his neck. In a small town called Hurricane, between St. George and Zion National Park, someone complained to the cops about a cosplaying repo man. A police detective rang Pitman and warned him about impersonating a law-enforcement officer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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There would be no new repoing on RepoNut, though: Pitman\u2019s boss does not permit it. Pitman wasn\u2019t even allowed to use RepoNut as his company login. He attributed these restrictions to jealousy, saying that other repossessors \u201cdon\u2019t have the confidence or the abilities\u201d to do what he does online. \u201cEither you got the personality for it or you don\u2019t.\u201d He was stuck posting mostly deep thoughts and scenery. An entire archive of potential reruns\u2014more than eight hundred videos\u2014also lay at his disposal. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people in this industry that absolutely hate the fact that I\u2019ve done this and put these videos up on YouTube,\u201d he once said, adding, \u201cAnd I actually agree with them!\u201d His most popular content contained \u201cthe worst shit shows\u2014they\u2019re me at my worst, they\u2019re people at their worst.\u201d (During the fact-checking process for this piece, Pitman made private most of his RepoNut videos, blaming criticisms from competitors who were \u201cbeing Karens.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Pitman, who turns fifty-six in August, cannot see working repo much longer anyway. \u201cAt the end of the day, all I\u2019m doing is making finance companies more money,\u201d he told me. \u201cThe American financial system is broken. We\u2019re forced into financial slavery. Even though I\u2019ve been the pit bull at the end of the chain for that industry for forty years, it\u2019s because I\u2019m in my position that I\u2014\u201d Instead of finishing the sentence, he told me that he wanted his next career move to be \u201cbalancing the scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

He plans to turn the living space of his camper into a podcast studio for a new program, \u201cKnow Good,\u201d where he will talk about everything that he has been through in life, including repo. Maybe he will tow the camper around the country and chat with other repo guys, asking, What\u2019s your boss like? What\u2019s your pay like? Can you live on that? Or maybe he could do ride-alongs and critique other repossessors\u2019 techniques. He\u2019d never seen New England, or Niagara Falls. Aysia, who is now a stay-at-home mom, told me that she hoped Pitman would not \u201ctransition out of repoing too fast,\u201d though, because \u201crepoing is definitely cool and fun, and I think he\u2019s super good at it.\u201d He recently bought Aysia her first car.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more How Matthew Rhys Stays Hungry<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As America\u2019s auto debt nears $1.7 trillion, repossessions are reaching levels not seen since the Great Recession. Inside an industry at the front line of the country\u2019s affordability crisis. Paige Williams reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-journal"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Repo Man Coming for Your Ride - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=624\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Repo Man Coming for Your Ride - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As America\u2019s auto debt nears $1.7 trillion, repossessions are reaching levels not seen since the Great Recession. 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