Burt Greenwood Jr.'s business is booming - not in spite of a dismal economy but because of it. His squadron of tow truck drivers can barely keep up with the orders to repossess cars and trucks of people who have fallen behind in their payments.
"Our intake of new work is increasing like crazy because of the state of affairs economically," said Greenwood, chief executive officer of Greenwood Recovery, who estimates his volume at 40 percent higher than a year ago.
That mirrors what appears to be happening statewide. Motor Vehicle Administration officials say that through April, they issued 4,791 "certificates of repossession" from the agency's Glen Burnie office, which handles the bulk of all such title work. That puts them on pace to top last year's numbers.
The 13,915 vehicles repossessed in 2007 were a 38 percent jump from 2006. However, the number of repossessions in 2005 was slightly greater than last year's total.
Recently, Greenwood has noticed a different type of vehicle owner showing up to claim personal belongings. "It's reaching deeper into the middle-class sector," he said, referring to the downturn.
He described a well-dressed woman of middle age who came in one morning last week to pick up personal items from a late-model Ford Explorer that had been repossessed. At his busy shop in West Baltimore, one of Maryland's largest and oldest repossession companies, workers bag, tag and stash personal items from vehicles in a locked vault.
"She looked sad. My heart went out to her," Greenwood said.
She told him she was in a mortgage brokerage business that went under, he said, recounting parts of their conversation she had given him permission to share. He said she told him that she could no longer afford a combination of high fuel prices, payments on the Explorer and a mortgage on a home in a nice area of Baltimore.
"She knows she is not alone, that a lot of people are in the same situation," said Greenwood, whose company also had an increase in repossession orders for boats, recreational vehicles, motorcycles, construction equipment and other merchandise purchased on credit.
On a recent visit, a reporter saw four vehicles hauled into Greenwood's shop during the space of an hour.
One was a late-model pickup truck, polished and gleaming with shiny rims. It had been picked up in Pasadena, a driver said. The owner's cell phone charger still dangled from the cigarette lighter inside the cab.
