Mike Welsh has devoted most of his life to building up one of the most successful towing companies in Central California but is now unhitching his affiliation with the sale of Ceres Pro Tow.

Now 71, Welsh has retired and sold the business to employee Chris Hough, who has worked for Ceres Pro Tow for 11 years and who Welsh has mentored for the past few of years.

“I had a number of people who wanted to buy my business — my business has grown a lot, especially in the last 10 or 15 years – but Chris really wants to carry on in the tradition we have here,” said Welsh. “We’ve been around a long time and are pretty well known.”

Ceres Pro Tow has expanded to more of a regional AAA tow operator, expanding its service beyond Ceres and farther up into Modesto, and as far west as the San Joaquin River. The company has doubled its volume in the past 12 to 15 years and Welsh believes Ceres Pro Tow is now AAA’s first or second largest suburban tow company in Northern California, growing to nearly $3 million in revenue.

“That’s not bad for a small tow company.”

In time Ceres Pro Tow quit towing for other automotive clubs like All State to focus on AAA. For that dedication, coupled with Ceres Pro Tow’s exemplary service, AAA rewarded the company with the designation as a “preferred service provider.”

Assembling a dependable and competent crew was key to building the business, Welsh noted, because tow operators must be willing to respond around the clock whenever need arises. Ceres Pro Tow also is called upon to tow for Ceres Police Department during traffic stops where automobiles are impounded or where they are wrecked and need to be cleared from roadways.

The sale to Hough was approved by AAA.

“He’s gonna do great,” Welsh said of Hough. “I feel like everything is in good hands. I feel good about it. I gave him a deal he couldn’t refuse.”

Hough feels taking over the business presented a great opportunity to “step up and keep it in the same direction but put some new fresh life into it.”

“I was only supposed to be here for a year and go back to being an electrician but it didn’t turn out that way,” Hough said.

Welsh got into the towing business through his father, the late Gene Welsh who started Ceres Body Shop in 1967. Mike graduated from Ceres High School in 1969 and was in his second year at Modesto Junior College in 1971 when his father became ill, which prompted him to get involved in the family business.

“He thought he had leukemia but he had a reaction to some paint or whatever so I dropped out of college and started running his business and been there ever since,” said Welsh. “I’m glad. I’ve enjoyed my time but I should have retired a couple of years ago but I didn’t.”

In 1981 the shop snagged a contract to tow for AAA automotive club. The Welshes got out of the body shop business in 1995 to focus on towing, changing the name to Ceres Pro Tow.

Initially Mike was a tow truck operator but stopped in the 1990s. Some of those calls involved towing away wrecked cars which killed or maimed occupants. One crash that stayed with him was that involving the son of a Turlock towing company owner.

“His son was coming up Geer Road by Hatch … he kind of ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ the canal. He was going southbound probably 100 mph and flew over the canal and hit a tree and it killed him. I’ve seen a lot of stuff over the years. That’s the sad part, when you go out and somebody’s lost their life.”

The pandemic presented some challenges for the company with an overnight loss of 25 percent of volume. He realized that he needed to extend service to areas he previously refused to service.

“We used to pass on two percent of our calls. Most of those calls were ones that were going to Sacramento or San Francisco or Fresno, 60, 80, 100 miles. Because of time and the availability of trucks, a lot of tow companies would pass those. I decided, there’s the answer right there so we started running 99.9 percent of our calls. I filled in that dollar void with running some of those higher dollar calls. Even though it wasn’t cost-effective because the price of fuel was so high, I was able to maintain my employees.”

He also took advantage of the CARES Act offer of $26,000 for each employee through the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) program.

Welsh was impressed with the way that Hough led most of the state in AAA’s battery sales push, selling about 200 per month during calls for roadside assistance. The company has computers on their service vehicles to analyze problems like dead batteries.

“It’s a big deal for AAA now,” said Welsh. “We first diagnose the car to see what’s wrong with it and if it’s the battery then we have 15 or 20 different batteries on the truck. It saves people from having to go to Walmart or somewhere and buy a battery and pick it up and then try to install it. People don’t know how to install stuff.”

Ceres Pro Tow has grown from four to eight two tow trucks and from zero to four service vehicles as well.

Mike and wife Maureen have constructed a home in a rural area near Minden, Nevada where they plan to maintain their primary residence while remaining connected to Ceres. He recently stepped off the Ceres Unified School District Board of Trustees last year and sold his Ceres home to son Nick who is a Ceres Police officer. On his return trips to Ceres they plan to stay in the home of his late mother, Bettye Welsh. Another son is a firefighter and the other a school teacher.

“I still have deep ties to Ceres. I love Ceres.”

Retirement will allow him to enjoy life more with travel and golf in his plans.

“I joined a golf club in Nevada. I plan to do a lot of RVing, sightseeing, golfing, probably take up fishing again. I have an interest in watching my grandson play baseball in Ceres here. He’s eight years old and on the Ceres Blaze team.

“Just kind of do what retired people do, go have some fun. You know, we’ve worked our a** off all these years to get to this point and I’m still healthy enough.”

Welsh also drives a racecar every year “and stupid stuff like that.”