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Abandoned vehicles are a problem across the country, and especially out west. With so much land and wide-open space, people take it upon themselves to ditch their unwanted cars wherever they feel like. That’s enough to upset some folks, and for others, it’s enough to take action. That’s what happened recently when one tow truck operator criticized another company online for leaving its crashed wrecker on the side of a Colorado mountain. As is often the case on the internet, however, that’s only part of the story.
Milo’s Towing and Recovery responded to a call on Sept. 29, 2025, that proved treacherous. Owner Chris Frey says they were dispatched to Hamlin Gulch Road, a trail that was covered in snow, and his squarebody Chevrolet wrecker slid off a rock. It ended up in a precarious position, but it got worse from there as the ground gave way when the driver attempted to run a winch cable to a nearby tree. No one was hurt—except for the Chevy.
The landscape looks awfully different in August, but you can see how this would be tough with more than a foot of snow. Milo’s via Facebook
Frey explained in a Facebook post that they decided not to chance a risky recovery with winter taking hold. He claims he was in touch with the Forest Service, which allegedly agreed it’d be best to wait until spring. The truck sat there through the coldest months, banged up and still wearing its Milo’s branding.
Fast forward to May 31, 2026, and that’s where Zac Beaman gets involved. Beaman owns a tow truck himself, and he’s one who was driven to action by all the abandoned vehicles littered across the Rocky Mountains. He posts his off-road experiences on Facebook and YouTube under the name Zacstrax. When he came across the wrecked Milo’s truck, he reached out to the company about retrieving it, but they supposedly couldn’t agree on a price.
Wrecker Abandoned in the woods!
From there, Beaman criticized Milo’s and Frey for leaving the truck on a mountainside for months. His original post got quite a bit of traction online before he removed it.
“[Zac] reached out to me about my truck and offered to pull it out for me with a cost of 3k to 5k [dollars],” Frey shared on Facebook. “My message back to him was confused. I said I would leave it there before I paid that kind of money to have someone else remove it. My meaning behind that was not to abandon it up there at all. That was never, ever my intention. That is why my logos, phone number, license plates, and VIN were still on it. I never, ever wanted to leave my truck up there. The plan was always to remove it.”
It took a pair of 4×4 wreckers to recover the heavy Chevy. Milo’s via Facebook
Frey was finally able to retrieve the Milo’s Chevy on August 25. It took a lot, seeing as the rear axle snapped in half on the way up. But all the hullabaloo was enough to make it on CBS Colorado, which reported on the viral back-and-forth.
“I’m glad he got it out. That’s all that matters,” Beaman told the outlet. “That’s more satisfying than anything. It was in a tough spot, too. He did a good job of getting it out.”
Beaman and Frey still aren’t buds. That said, Beaman says there’s been an uptick in abandoned vehicle recoveries since he first posted about Frey’s truck on that mountainside. In his eyes, it’s a net positive.
Got a tip or question for the author? Contact them directly: caleb@thedrive.com
From running point on new car launch coverage to editing long-form features and reviews, Caleb does some of everything at The Drive. And he really, really loves trucks.
