Think Repo Men Like Recession? Think Again

Repossession agents must thrive on recession, right? Wrong, reports the Wall Street Journal. “People are doing everything they can now to hold onto what they’ve got,” says the owner of an auto-recovery business, whose revenue plunged 23% in 2008. “Do you think they’re going to wait (around) to give up their cars? They hide them. They fight over them.”

Repo orders surged to 1.67 million in 2008 from 1.49 million in ‘07, thanks to defaults on cars bought with easy credit; but vehicle financing has fallen 32% from a year ago—bad news for repo men. On a recent night, two such men went to work in South Carolina; 10½ hours and 350 miles later, they’d found three of nine cars they had pursued. (More repossessions stories.)