I turned the key in the Sienna on a Thursday afternoon in July and got one click. Then another. Lainey looked up from her phone in the passenger seat and said, "That's not the sound it usually makes." I had taken a vacation day to drive her to a one-day volleyball camp in Cameron, about 40 miles east of home on US-36, and the camp was over. It was 91 degrees in the parking lot.
That was July 9. The Sienna's starter had died. I tried a few more times, which confirmed it, and then I called the number on the back of our insurance card. Before long a tow truck had the van hooked up, and Lainey and I were riding in the cab for the 40 miles back to St. Joseph. The van went straight to our shop on the south side. Tina picked us up there in the Silverado, and we were home by 5:15. The next afternoon the van had a new starter. The bill was $312.
The tow cost us nothing.
What paid for the tow
When we switched insurers last November, I kept a roadside add-on on each vehicle. It's $8 per vehicle every six months, or $16 a year per car. For three cars, that's $48 a year. It covers a tow to a shop of our choosing within a certain limit, plus a jump, a lockout, a flat tire change, or a few gallons of gas if someone runs out.
Cameron to St. Joseph was within our add-on's tow limit. A tow that far would likely have cost a couple hundred dollars or more out of pocket on a weeknight. The add-on paid for itself about four times over in one phone call.
The add-on versus a club
After the tow, a coworker at the terminal asked why I don't just buy a membership in an auto club. He's had one for twenty years and swears by it. So I compared them for our family.
The basic membership he mentioned is $79 a year. Here's how it stacked up against what we already had.
- Cost: $48 a year for all three of our cars on the add-on, versus $79 a year for one club membership, with extra charges to add family members.
- What's covered: the add-on follows the car; a club membership follows the person, in any car they're riding in, including a friend's.
- Tow distance: our add-on's limit was enough for Cameron. The club's basic tier has a similar limit; higher tiers go farther for more money.
- Extras: the club throws in travel discounts and maps. We don't use those.
- Claims: our agent said a roadside call isn't treated like an accident claim on our policy. I've read that some insurers keep track of how often you use it, so this is worth asking about.
For a family that road-trips a lot, or has teenagers who ride in friends' cars, a club makes sense, because it goes with the person. For us, most of the driving happens in our own three vehicles within an hour of home. And the add-on costs less for all three cars than one club membership.
What we kept
We kept the add-on on all three: the Sienna, the Silverado and Garrett's Civic. $48 a year total. I didn't buy a club membership.
The Civic is the one I thought about most. Garrett drives it alone, sometimes late, home from closing shifts at the grocery store. If it breaks down on the Belt Highway at 9:45 p.m., I want him to have one phone number to call that gets a truck there. That's worth $16 a year, without question.
The tow got me thinking about the van overall. It's around 205,000 miles. Starter in July, battery in January, AC compressor the summer before. None of those are signs of a dying van. They're the parts of a fifteen-year-old vehicle that wear out. The engine and transmission are fine. We decided to keep it through the winter and see.
What I won't do is let it leave town without a working roadside plan. The day the starter went, the number was on the card in my wallet, I called it, and help came. That's all I want from a $16 line on a policy.
When I picked the van up from the shop, Lainey had put a sticky note on the dashboard that said "Do not stop in Cameron." I left it there. It seems like good advice.