INTRO
TONY: Welcome back to the podcast. Now, there's a lot of conversation right now about AI, automation, and how fast the world is changing. Systems are getting smarter, processes are getting faster. And on the surface, it feels like business is becoming more efficient than ever. But here's the reality that most people don't talk about. Some businesses don't get simpler with technology. They get more intense. They run in real time. They deal with real people. And when something goes wrong, there's no delay, no buffer, and no second chance.
And that's the world that today's guest has built his business in. Joe Acosta took a small towing operation and helped turn it into one of the largest towing and recovery companies in California, running twenty-four over seven, managing constant pressure, and scaling something that most people would never even attempt to systematize.
Now, this isn't a theory-based business, and it's not built on trends or algorithms. This is trucks, people, emergencies, and decisions that have to be made fast and right. We're going to talk about what it really takes to scale something like that, how you manage people and reputation when everything is on the line, and how a third generation, through YouTube and media, completely changed the trajectory of the business.
And then we're going to get into something deeper. How do you build something substantial and still stay grounded in your values when the pressure is constant? Guys, if you're building a business in today's world, especially one that requires real execution, real leadership, and real resilience, this conversation is worth your time. Let's dive in. Let's go. Bring him on. Hi, Joe. How are you doing? Welcome to The Tony D'Urso Show.
JOE: Fantastic. I'm blessed. Thank you for having me on.
TONY: We're all looking forward to learning about how to build a business twenty-four seven in this very unpredictable world. I've been watching your videos on YouTube for quite some time. I am a super fan of what you guys do and I'm impressed. I speak with entrepreneurs, CEOs, and founders all the time. What you do is amazing. What I like to do is get some anchor here. What led you into towing? How did it start? What did the business actually look like in the early days?


INTERVIEW – PART 1 (BACKSTORY: FROM GAS STATION TO TOW TRUCK)
JOE: Well, this is amazing. I started out working at a gas station, as so many teenagers do. It was a Chevron station in City Terrace, East Los Angeles, and it had a service unit—an El Camino. They would send me out for battery jumpstarts, tire changes, and lockouts. In due time, they started having me deliver cars that were already hooked up, because I didn't know how to hook them up yet. It's very easy to offload cars. They were usually vehicles involved in collisions. And then in time I started running Triple-A calls.
However, I've always been fascinated by math and numbers—geometry, algebra, stuff like that. People would always say, "You're going to make a great engineer." So I said, well, I'm going to be an engineer. I'll aim at that. At seventeen or eighteen years of age, I went into junior college immediately after high school. I had taken AP Calculus and physics in high school, so I had a very big advantage in math while also doing the tow truck work.
Coincidentally, I worked for the LAPD tow truck at the building I'm in now. So that's a wonderful testimony of where I'm at today. On Boyle Street in LA, I worked here from eighty-three to eighty-seven and then came back to buy the building in ninety-eight. That's quite an accomplishment looking at it now.
While attending junior college, my brother was helping out my father and said, "Hey, I can handle the day, but I need help at night. Why don't you continue your education—I don't want to hinder you from that—and just help me at night." Well, why not? But six weeks later, on May fourteenth of eighty-seven, I got run over on the freeway. I was hooking up a vehicle and a USC student in a Suzuki Samurai fell asleep and rear-ended my tow truck. I was in front of the tow truck, so it pinned me between the car and the tow truck. Broke my femur.
When I went back to junior college, they told me I had to start the semester all over again. That really demoralized me. And I figured—a boxer gets a broken nose, a doctor gets a malpractice lawsuit, and a tow truck driver gets run over. I already got run over. I already got rid of the bad stuff. So I decided to give it a try and stayed with my brother. It was just a one or two truck operation and it seemed easy to handle at the time. My brother's an amazing businessman himself, and that's what allowed me to really stay in it.
I was sort of forced into it because of the accident. My class went ahead of me and I sort of lost the drive, and I said, I might as well just stay in towing. It's just been a wonderful experience. That's how I got into towing.
TONY: What a story. And I've seen the casualties, you could say, of some of the tow truck and heavy equipment recovery guys when they're not really careful. You're right on the edge where people are speeding sixty or seventy miles an hour, sometimes just inches away from you. Really something when you think about the kind of risk you guys take on these recoveries.
And for the audience, you've got to check them out on YouTube at Pepe's Towing Service—P-E-P-E-S Towing Service—and also at PepesTow.com. You've got to check out these videos. These guys will repel down a mountain to recover a vehicle. And while it may seem exciting, this is not a movie. This is real life.
I'm thinking about all the struggles and hardships—what would you say were some of the hardest things you ran into, aside from getting hit yourself?

INTERVIEW – PART 2 (PERSONAL LOSSES & THE FOUNDATION OF INTEGRITY)
JOE: You know, as much as there's a business application, obviously the personal aspect of it—losing our father—has weighed on me. The founder passed away at fifty-five in March of ninety-two. That left a cloud over my head because my mind sort of told me, "He was only with you for five years after you came on, and then he was gone." But I've surpassed that by far. I'm sixty-one years old and I feel I'm in fantastic health, probably because of this industry. And Joshua's been here far longer than that, and we're going to continue with God's blessings.
You know, Arnold Schwarzenegger—in one of his big competitions, his father passed away that day, and he had to block that out and go on. I believe he won Mr. Olympia that day. That's what it takes.
My father didn't want me to see him as he was terminally ill at home. He was in Moreno Valley, sixty-eight miles east of LA. I would tell my mother, "Mom, when I get a chance." And I honestly didn't get there often enough. I regret not being a better son. So sometimes the personal integrity that we have as men—that's what shapes and molds us. And that overflows into the business.
I tell people that we must all be men and women of integrity before we leave this earth. That pretty much curtails everything: do what you say and say what you're going to do. That's it. And most people fail at that. It sounds easy, but communication is key to success. A lot of people just say it but don't live it.
Pay your bills. If you sign on a note, pay it on time. And treat people the way you would want to be treated. That would be my key phrase.
TONY: I appreciate that golden rule very strongly. But you're more than that, and I've been watching you on YouTube for quite some time. It's more than just surviving. You've taken something—let's call it simple—and scaled it to one of the largest towing companies in California or at least Southern California. This is a huge operation. Was there a point where you realized, "We're going to scale? We can grow big. There's more out there"?

INTERVIEW – PART 3 (SCALING TO THE LARGEST: PHILOSOPHY OF GROWTH)
JOE: I've always told people I don't solicit. I will not solicit. The reason is that customers can tell you called them, and they feel like they have a little more control over you. I always tell people I can only handle what God puts on my plate. How many steaks can you eat, right?
It's like at a McDonald's or any fountain drink where you pick out a thirty-two-ounce cup and you just keep filling it. When we started Pepe's, we thought small. My father only had one truck when we came on board. I told you my brother ran the day and I ran the night. Now the highway operation has grown to several dozen trucks and a dozen and a half facilities. It's been amazing.
But I'm only one man doing one job. What it is, is that you must be able to multitask. Know what inspections are coming up, what drivers are quitting—there's just so much going on. Our renewals are very important. Sometimes we overshoot our motor carrier regulations, workers' comp, and insurance company certificates. We have so many allied agencies—police agencies—that if you don't have the proper filing with them, they have to stop using you immediately until you comply. Our drivers have valid medical requirements that may expire. We have to stay ahead of all of that.
But I always give the example of Michael Jordan going up in the air, floating, coming down with a slam dunk. Everybody says, "What a wonderful dunk." But he says, "Hey, I'm just Mike. I run and I put it through the hoop. That's all I know." Yeah, but you're worth three hundred million.
Having been around for forty-two years, experience is applied knowledge. You lived it. And having a very high level of applied math—statistics, dynamics, physics—while out on the job has really made the work more manageable.

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And now back to Joe, who was talking about how decades of experience helped him grow a one-truck operation into one of the largest towing and recovery companies in Southern California. After forty years, he says he doesn't always know exactly what to do—but he definitely knows what not to do.
INTERVIEW – PART 4 (EXPERIENCE IN ACTION: HANDLING THE IMPOSSIBLE RECOVERY)
JOE: I do want to go back to when I went in for twenty-one days to the Brotman Medical Center in Culver City after my accident. When I came out, our tow truck was totaled—I never saw it again. But my brother already had three trucks when I came out, and one of them was what we call a medium duty. This handles UPS vans, catering trucks, bobtails, and ice cream trucks— bigger than a car but much smaller than a tractor trailer. I took a liking to medium duty, so I started towing heavier stuff. And then I outgrew that truck and we kept adding.
So yeah, we have some remarkable equipment. We have LA's only seventy-five-ton recovery truck—the one with a three-hundred-sixty-degree rotation boom. We've always pushed the envelope. My brother always had a saying: "If you use it, abuse it. If not, don't use it." And we sort of go by that.
TONY: For the audience—and I'm going to say this a couple more times—you've got to check them out on YouTube. Joe has been running this for four decades. He's got multiple facilities, probably seven or eight figures in revenue, and he still goes out there and runs calls himself. Joe, you have people who can do this. You can hire people. But you're still out there. What's that mindset?
JOE: Heaven for me—glory for me—is getting in one of those trucks and following my son to a major recovery and working the wreck with him. Because I didn't do that with my father. My mother, who passed away in ninety-nine, always said, "I want to go around a car with you," and I didn't make that happen. So I incorporated a lot of what I didn't do with my parents into what I do with my son.
You frustrate your kids when they're young. At first they say, "Oh that bugs me." As they grow older, they say, "You know what, I think dad was right." And as they get really old, they say, "Man, how I miss that." So I want to live out what I didn't have with my father in what I have with my son. He just doesn't know it yet. But I make myself available to run calls, and he's going to remember that.
I'm not being dark—it's just the order of life for the parent to go first. No parent should ever bury a child. And that is a great fear of mine, because cables do snap.
When you're walking alongside these tractor trailers with about an eighteen-to-twenty-inch gap—I have a twenty-inch diameter myself, I'm a big boy, so I'm walking sideways—you can literally feel the breeze of the mirror because the mirrors are wider than the trucks themselves. But it's so beautiful to go run a call because I already know the answer. It's like taking the same math test when you've taken it ten times already. But I still get butterflies when these tractor trailers and casualties are overturned and we're figuring out how we're going to handle them.
Having the right equipment obviously helps. Having the right people helps. And everything comes with prayer. I still get butterflies and say, "Lord, help me with this lift again. Just one more wreck." And it's always just one more call, one more truck. When you look at it, you split the pie—you're just dealing with that one little slice for now. You're not going to eat the whole pie at that time.
I treasure my time with my siblings and my children, but in particular my son. He's my firstborn. Going out there with him, I live my life through him. I buy him equipment and make it grand and beautiful. I never drove it like that. But I love it for him, because he's getting paid-off buildings and paid-off trucks, and he still has to put in the time. Most young men in their early thirties don't want to do the kind of work that he does. It is extremely strenuous. But he's got the mindset. He's a far better man than I ever was, and I applaud him and celebrate that.
I heard that when you retire, you expire. So I've got to stay moving. I tell people at work: I don't need to be here. I want to be here. That's the difference. And it makes all the difference in the world.
TONY: Just to frame this for the audience—we're talking about trucks that weigh fifty, seventy, eighty thousand pounds that fall on a freeway, go off the side of the road, get overturned, or go down a hill. High-speed vehicles all around you, with massive machinery that has to be lifted and moved. Hardly any two recoveries are ever the same. There are always different challenges—where's the lift point, do I need another lane, how do I handle the load? This is absolutely amazing. And for Joe and his son Joshua and the team to run this is remarkable.
Before we go further, how do you keep your cool when you arrive at a catastrophe—diesel spilling, oil everywhere, a fully overturned tractor trailer—and you've got to operate?
JOE: First, you tether and hook on. I'll give you a good example of an overturned tractor trailer that's fully loaded and spilled its load. There are certain attachment points you can use and definitely some you cannot, like steering components. Some towers find a piece they think they can attach to, and that requires more work to bring the vehicle up.
Many loads are reducible. If you can reduce the load, that's the first step. Sometimes we have to offload a tractor trailer—that's a two or three hour operation. We have equipment that goes in there to pull the pallets out. The problem is they're on their side. So many times we'll detach the tractor—the power unit—get it upright and tow that to the yard while the guys are offloading the trailer simultaneously. If there's a flat tire, we're already cutting tire repair. If we see diesel spilling, we call for extra absorbent, or if it's too much to handle ourselves, we'll hire the hazmat team from the local agency that called us.
You have to see the end from the beginning. That would be my key answer. It's like a work of art. You have it sketched out on the right side, and the left is still empty, but the right side is giving you direction as you fill in the left.
Deductive reasoning is critical. You pull on something, and if it's not working and your truck starts tipping, you put it down. That's not going to work. You need more equipment or a different approach. Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I've seen people break a cable or a chain because the writing was always on the wall that their approach wasn't going to work.
Experience is key. Sometimes people tell me, "Joe that was a nice job. You charged me two thousand dollars and you were here within ninety minutes just like you said." And I always tell them, "After forty years, I don't exactly know what to do. I know what not to do. It's a much smaller list."
You know, it was told in the beginning—you can eat from all the trees except this one. And which one did they eat from? That exact one. It's almost the same in towing. You don't put your hands under a casualty because if the chain breaks, it's going to smash your hands. Always watch your surroundings. Don't take anything for granted.
I'm always amazed—kids sometimes think their arms are about to fall off, there's blood everywhere, and then the doctor cleans it and it's a half-inch cut that doesn't even require a stitch. That's how I see recovery now. It might look horrible, but I can already see the skeleton—how it's going to come up, where it's going to end up, what yard I'm sending it to.
Billing is also extremely important—getting authorization to tow. Believe it or not, after some jobs, people ask, "Who called you? I didn't call you. I'm not paying." But you tackle the hardest part first, reduce it down, get it all in a nutshell, and take it away.


INTERVIEW – PART 5 (HIRING, CULTURE & BUILDING A GREAT TEAM)
TONY: You've got a great team out there. I see in the videos how professional they are—how they deal with people, with police, with Caltrans, with the person who had the accident. Very impressive. How do you hire these people? Because one wrong hire can hurt the reputation.
JOE: It also creates a level of healthy fear when applying here. I would say I'm not easy to work for. I push extremely hard. I'm very meticulous about the equipment. We don't drag our chains through the toolboxes—we walk them out so we don't scratch the paint. I give drivers the back end of the truck to work with since that's operational every day, but on the sides, the fenders, I don't like physical damage to the truck.
Going back to hiring—it's almost like McDonald's. You go in and they tell you, "The patty goes here, the bread here." Here, we tell them, "This is the way we do things." They'll say, "Where I came from, we did it like this." I say, "No, that's going to create this problem." Because these trucks are very expensive.
I've come across situations now where I'll tell officers, "Sir, give me two hours and I'll have your roadway clear." And sometimes, to my dismay, they tell me they don't care. They're on the clock. That's very discouraging for me. But our drivers see that. And so they begin to adjust. If putting the truck in a slightly cumbersome position is going to open the lanes faster, that's what we'll do, because we have multiple rotators.
I want to mention that when I first started investing in rotating trucks, I got a lot of pushback. People said I used more equipment than needed. But now those same companies are running two or three rotators when they get the recoveries I get. At first when they didn't have them, they said they weren't necessary. The tools and equipment being available for the drivers makes all the difference.
These drivers are in their trucks ten to twelve hours a day. It's important to give them good entertainment systems, wireless gadgets—all of it. Back in my day, we had corded everything. Now so many things are automatic and wireless. An eight-hundred-dollar wireless light bar now versus a sixty-nine-dollar corded one with a hundred-dollar cord before—the technology has made things so much better.
TONY: One thing I'm hearing from Joe is that great businesses aren't built by accident. They're built intentionally. The equipment matters, the systems matter. But ultimately it's the people that make everything work. And that seems to be a recurring theme throughout his story.
Before we continue, I just want to take a moment to thank you for being here. Your time and attention truly matter to me, and I appreciate you choosing to spend part of your day with me. And if today's episode is giving you something to think about, be sure to follow the show wherever you're listening so you don't miss what's coming next. If someone comes to mind who could benefit from this conversation, feel free to share it with them.
Also, if you're not already receiving my Elite Entrepreneurs newsletter, you're always welcome to join us. A couple of times each month, I share insights, practical ideas, and lessons from some of the world's top entrepreneurs and business leaders. Join me at TonyDUrso.com and click the newsletter button at the top of the page. That's Tony D-U-R-S-O dot com.
And now back to Joe, who was talking about building a team, hiring carefully, and creating a culture where people genuinely want to be there.
JOE: For the people, they want to be here. And I've got to mention prayer—I say, "Lord, send me somebody good." But you're always going to have a ratio of one bad driver for every ten. If you have thirty drivers, you're going to average three or four that need attention. But the old law is that when a company downsizes, seventy percent of your best employees can do one hundred percent of what a lousy full fleet was doing. We're extremely efficient. The guys that go out there operate at a high level of proficiency.
Our cameras help—drivers will call in and say, "Boss, I have this situation," and because I've more than likely seen it before, we can walk through it together. There's a saying—same thing, different day. You go out thinking it's the same thing and it's not. It looks the same but it's not. A boxer will always say the punch you don't see is the one that knocks you out. So I believe in that too.
I teach by example and make sure the right tools are waiting for them. And I push for a family atmosphere. When I can already see that someone's going to be, quote unquote, a cancer to the team, you're better off not hiring them from the get-go because it's very difficult to let them go after the fact.
Here, there's usually something to eat almost every single day—not necessarily a full lunch, but something to munch on. We push that hospitality. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I really believe that. So I push to make it hospitable, to let them know they're loved, that they're doing a job we appreciate, and that we celebrate them. Absolutely amazing.
TONY: And for the audience—you may think he's just talking a good talk. But there are videos where Joshua, Alex, Dave, or one of the team is dealing with a seventy-thousand-pound semi that's rolled over, and all of a sudden here comes Joe. On a really hot day, he's bringing Gatorade. He really does walk the talk.
And not too long ago, I watched a video where a full-size pickup truck had been run off the side of the road. The person who went off had a dog with him. Joe shows up, sees what's going on—he doesn't know he's on camera—and goes and gets some water for the dog because they'd been out there for a couple of hours and it was a hot day. This is the kind of person Joe is. Running a huge operation and still being a real human being.
JOE: I'm going to interject on that call. It had a toy hauler attached—a Dodge truck that got launched off the freeway with the toy hauler still connected. We couldn't see that connection at first. We rigged the toy hauler thinking it was separate, but it was still attached to the pickup underneath. When we started bringing in the pickup, everything came up together.
So we used the pickup like a skateboard—like a surfboard—bringing the whole thing up as one piece. We went below the casualty rather than directly to it and brought both units up together. It was actually a lot easier that way. And yes, if someone needs to smoke in my truck on a bad day, I'll let them. It might be their eight-hundred-and-fiftieth crash for me, but it might be the only accident they've ever been in. So I've got to remind myself—just answer kindly. You don't know what people are going through. And yeah, we carry water. We carry refrigerators. We just try to make it hospitable for everybody, customers included.

INTERVIEW – PART 6 (FAMILY BUSINESS: GROWING THE COMPANY WITH JOSHUA)
TONY: You have friends who've become employees, employees who've become very good friends, and you have your son. Sometimes family and business are two things that oppose each other. What was harder—growing your company or keeping your relationships strong?
JOE: What I haven't mentioned is that, having been married in nineteen eighty-eight, I got a divorce ten years later. But my devotion to my children—I signed on the dotted line. I knew I had them, I loved them, the Lord loaned them to me. That is the number one priority. Heaven for me is anything I've done with them. Not the trucks, not the accolades.
Your children are always watching you. I always remember the example of a father who violently opened the door of a closet and found his son kneeling, smoking. He yelled, "Where did you learn to do that?" And the son said, "From you, dad." I never forgot that. Children are watching.
Joshua's work ethic—when I say he's a far better man than I am, you have no idea what I mean. He's not even at one tenth of how quote-unquote bad I was. From around oh-six forward, I've mostly lived alone, with my youngest daughter. Not being involved in a relationship for well over a decade has actually allowed me to come back to the business more fully. The work is where I like to show up.
Many times, because I'm here and available, my drivers will say, "Sir, I was supposed to give an auditorium presentation tomorrow but they moved it to today. Is there any way I can go see my daughter at eleven?" I say, "Go." Because you can't replace that moment. That's what keeps my drivers here. They remember it's not about filling out a form and waiting for HR to approve it.
I gotta be real about how fast things move. When I jump in the shower, my phone is with me. We have twenty minutes to get to live duty calls and forty-five minutes to get to the big calls. Sometimes we run out of drivers and I've got to solve that crossword puzzle in seconds from the shower. We have a saying here at Pepe's: "If you want to get a call, go get something to eat." It's almost automatic that the phone rings the minute a driver gets in a restaurant line.
Going back to family—I don't think I was a great father. They see it now, but they certainly love the life they live because of the sacrifices that were made. I will add: wealth is not measured by what you have. It's measured by what you can do without.
I don't know too many, but there are miserable millionaires—people who don't feel they have enough. And then we're right next to Skid Row. Los Angeles has over sixty thousand homeless people. Someone comes up and asks for water for their cup of noodles. Sometimes they'll be walking by with their shopping cart, and I'll say, "How are you doing?" They'll say, "Oh, I'm blessed, sir." They've got cardboard for a mattress, a rock for a pillow, a newspaper for a blanket—and they're showing more joy than someone who's married with two kids, a house, and a new car, and coming to work in a bad mood.
Sometimes we just don't know how really, really blessed we are. How precious life is. And so family is of utmost importance to me.
TONY: Joe just shared something that really struck me. He said that wealth is not measured by what you have. It's measured by what you can do without. And that's not something you hear very often. Today, we're surrounded by messages telling us to get more, buy more, achieve more, and accumulate more. And yet, some of the happiest people Joe described had almost nothing.
That idea of contentment has been on my mind quite a bit lately. In fact, it became the inspiration for a new song I recently released called Be Ye Content. It's one of the things I really enjoy doing outside of podcasting—writing music. This song was inspired by a simple idea that appears throughout Scripture and honestly, throughout this conversation with Joe. Not complacency, not giving up, not settling for less, but learning how to find peace while you're still pursuing your goals.
As entrepreneurs and business leaders, we're naturally driven. We want to improve. We want to build. We want to grow. And there's nothing wrong with that. But sometimes we're so focused on the next milestone that we forget to appreciate where we are right now. Joe touched on that during this interview. He talked about seeing people who had very little materially, yet seemed to possess tremendous joy. He talks about gratitude, perspective, family, and recognizing how blessed we really are, even when life isn't easy.
That's exactly what inspired this song. One of the central themes is that a person's life isn't measured by possessions, status, or accumulation, but by something much deeper—peace, faith, gratitude, purpose. The song is called Be Ye Content. And if you'd like to hear it, you'll find it on my website at TonyDUrso.com/music, as well as all the regular music channels. I hope it encourages you as much as writing it encouraged me.
And now back to Joe Acosta, who was talking about family, gratitude, and how perspective often changes what we call success. Let's jump back into it as he shares why the next generation—his son Joshua—became such an important part of both the business and his legacy.




INTERVIEW – PART 7 (JOSHUA & THE YOUTUBE REVOLUTION)
JOE: Now the grandkids are in the picture. I've been blessed with four grandchildren. Each one of my children gave me one except for Josh—he gave me the pair. He gave me my first grandchild. So now my love and attention has focused on the grandkids whenever I'm available and not at work. That's the story.
TONY: I love it. And not all family businesses have the next generation join them. Joshua wasn't planning to go into towing—he was in different fields. But he eventually joined you in the company and then he leaned hard into YouTube and media. I'm curious—what did he see that you didn't see? And how did the business change as a result of all this exposure?
JOE: There were similar programs and companies out there before us. There's a company with green trucks in Chicago, and another in Alaska—the owner's name is Jamie—who had an incredible story and testified that going viral with media had actually been a curse because he lost customers who didn't want to be filmed, and the gold rush of people showing up trying to film brought problems of their own.
Years before, we would send out videos of our recoveries on forums. It was called Tow 411—very much like what's happening now but without the reach. We've gone through everything. We've run over drones. Joshua once forgot a five-thousand-dollar camera at a scene, and we went back and found it under the bushes. It takes money to make money, and it takes money to get notoriety.
The news media covers our competitors sometimes. One recent competitor got a big job—a cement mixer that landed between two freeways, multiple-hour recovery, choppers hovering. But that's fifteen minutes of fame. It goes away. Some of those jobs, the owner will say, "I don't have insurance. I'd rather not have anything filmed and make sure I get paid."
But eventually it all comes back to our children. I had a call where Joshua went up to recover a crane in Malibu—a massive crane, probably ninety thousand pounds—about seventy-eight miles from our shop. Our GPS truck monitoring system stopped showing my son's signal. The driver didn't answer. The hours were going by. It was getting darker. I couldn't eat the lunch they'd brought me. So I got in a proper truck and drove up there.
When I arrived, Joshua was in no danger at all. He was behind the crane, tethering it down as it descended, holding it with his truck—a thousand-foot drop just ten feet away—but they were only moving two or three miles an hour. They had broken the steering column on the crane. It could no longer turn, and we were on a winding road. When I got there, I turned my truck around, slid the crane over, hooked it from the front, and Joshua and I walked it all the way down together. When we got to the bottom, I disconnected it and gave him his lunch. I had brought it all the way up there for him.
I still don't quite think he knows how feverishly I needed to know he was okay. Not having contact with him scared me enough that I said, "Get off your hind and go out there—even if he's okay, at least you'll see it." But I wanted to add that—about loving your children and how much I care for Joshua.

INTERVIEW – PART 8 (FAITH IN PRACTICE: HOW IT DRIVES EVERYTHING)
TONY: You've mentioned this multiple times in this interview, and I've seen it in other conversations with you as well. You talk about your faith and how it plays such a central role in your life. You're not afraid to talk about it. How does that influence your decisions, the way you run your business, everything?
JOE: What a beautiful question. The sun shines on the good and the bad. We all have twenty-four hours a day. So you've got to have a discerning spirit. We all have a conscience. I tell people—you want to know what your conscience is? Take a lollipop away from a four-year-old. Take a candy from a kid and you'll see that's bad, that's wrong when he starts crying.
We sometimes have auctions and sell cars, and if somebody's in need, we'll try to accommodate them—provided everything follows the laws and bylaws of the state. Having compassion is important. The problem is you have a business to run, so you can't give it all away.
I am a huge tither. I believe in the laws of tithing more than you'll ever know. I'm not at liberty to discuss the amount, but it's a very significant amount—mainly because I live alone and don't have the obligations that others might. There's a verse in the Bible that says, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." I really do believe that.
The only time I turn off my phone and leave it unattended—with God's permission—is when I take ten or twelve days every year to go do missionary work in Guatemala. I've gone for thirteen years in a row to take care of the poor and the needy. And I'll tell you—you think you're doing it for them, but it changes you. The perspective I come back with simply means how you see things.
I have two examples that have really come into my heart. We were giving out soccer balls—always go around Christmas time. A lot of the children, the only footwear they have are rubber rain boots. Not Nikes, not Adidas—just little rain boots. So they had to take off the boots to play with the soccer balls. We said, "Well, that's not fair." We found a gentleman selling a dozen Crocs for ten dollars each—Superman for the boys, pink for the girls. We took care of it. The Lord said, "The poor you will always have." That's what we're accountable for.
But the one that really stayed with me was when a sister invited us to her house for lunch in a very bad area. She said three brothers were walking to school and she asked if they were hungry. They said yes, so she brought them in and made two eggs each. The two older brothers started eating right away. The little one held off. She asked, "Aren't you hungry?" He said yes. She asked, "What's wrong?" And the little boy said, "Are these two eggs mine?" She said yes. Why? And he said, "My mother gives two eggs to all four of us every morning."
I cannot ever, even if I tried, forget that. When I come back and I see my lineup of trucks and what they cost, I think—sometimes we're just so poor in the way we think because we're so ungrateful. You and I are probably in the top two or three percent in the world. Seriously, if you live a comfortable life with any kind of savings and a car, you're only two or three percent. Over ninety percent of the world is in dire, dire need.
So when I see that—I apply it to the actual business. You never know what people are going through. When people crash their trucks, sometimes that's their only truck and there goes their livelihood. The wife comes with them to remove property from the car. The two kids are there and she's crying. That's hard on me. But I have a business to run. We have to be good stewards of what we're entrusted with.
The Bible stands for Basic Instruction before Leaving Earth. Everything you need is in there. And I'll be honest—I'm extremely disobedient to a lot of it, but the very little I do listen to gets me very far.
OUTRO
TONY: Absolutely amazing. We could keep talking about this. I love it so much. Once again, this is Joe Acosta. We talked about building a twenty-four-over-seven business in an unpredictable world. So much good information here. You can find him again on YouTube at Pepe's Towing Service or at PepesTowLA.com.
Joe, I just want to thank you so much. Good advice, good application of morals that grows the business. And despite all the unpredictability and everything going on, it's those common points—the basics—that really matter. You treat people as people. It really shows. I really enjoyed this chat with you. Thank you so much.
JOE: Thank you. God bless you. God be the glory. Thank you, sir.
TONY: Wow. Absolutely amazing. I just absolutely love this, guys. Again, you've got to check out the YouTube videos. You've got to check out some of the information we talked about today. I know I've said it quite a few times—you can tell I'm a big fan. If you like this, would you share it with your friends? Tell them about Pepe's Towing. Tell them about Joe Acosta. Tell them about Joshua. Tell them about what they do as a team and how strong they are in character and doing the right thing. What they've been through and accomplished is amazing.
And guys, wherever you're at, would you do us a favor? Would you follow this show? It helps to bring more amazing guests to you. All right. Let's use this and let's help you move on your journey to success. Thanks. Remember, just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Sow good seeds, do good deeds. And I'll see you on the next episode.