Car repossessions - or seizing other vehicles and financed goods - have hit the reality TV scene with shows like "Repo Men: Stealing for a Living."

But the drama doesn't end on the TV set; it goes on right here in Northeast Georgia nearly every day.

Local "repo men" snatch vehicles and goods on which owners have defaulted payments. To do this, some use infrared night vision video cameras and others drive "snatch trucks," or flat-bed trucks, to find and recover the unpaid-for goods.

And they all have something in common - people don't usually like them.

"I've had eight, 10 people pull guns on me," said Mike, who doesn't want to reveal his last name for fear of retaliation. "I had a guy here in Oakwood, his car was parked right next to his door. We were told by the finance company the guy said, ‘Come and get it,' and we pull up in a roll back, I walk up to the car ... and the guy come right out of the door and put a shotgun right in my face and said ‘Dude, get off my property. I'll kill you right now.'

"You right away look to see if they have their finger on the trigger, and the guy has his finger on the trigger. It's not worth it to get the car."

But repossessing cars is just a job, Mike said. As the owner of Fast Trac Towing & Recovery in Gainesville, he said he got the idea for his business from a repo reality show.

"I feel bad. I consider myself a humanitarian, but this is my job, basically," he said.

And, it's not all doom and gloom.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time, the people can get their car back if they contact the finance company. The finance company just wants to know what is going on with their collateral; they don't want the car, they want the people to pay."

In most circumstances, finance companies and title lending companies will work with customers to get their property back.

John McCloskey, attorney for the corporate office of Atlanta Title Loan, said most lending companies don't want the cars back.

"What I can say generally is - and hopefully this would be the case for most lenders, I know it's the case for our company - we don't want to repossess anyone's car," he said. "It's a losing proposition at that point. So we usually try to work with customers as best we can, but once they are - if they are picked up - the customer would have the ability to get it back if they just paid what they owed. There's going to be several weeks before it's sold probably, at least, and so they're going to have the ability to get it back."

Richard McDaniel, owner of McDaniel's Towing, agreed with Mike and McCloskey that the companies want to work with individuals.

"If individuals would just call their finance company - you know if you are behind - they'll roll it to the back or they will work the payment in," he said.

McDaniel has repossessed some vehicles over the years but now has a contract with a company to repossess storage units.

"I work with small finance companies, repo cars from time to time," he said. "As far as the buildings, we give them the opportunity to clean the buildings and get their stuff. We had them where people have hid them, moved them far off, they've moved them with trailers."

Along with the storage units, McDaniel said he has repossessed vehicles like boats, campers and forklifts.

"This truck here is a flat bed. It's a roll back so the bed actually rolls back so I can load buildings," McDaniel said. "We can repo up to a 30-foot (long) building. It usually takes about 15 minutes (for the building); for a car, just a minute or two."

But the most interesting repo McDaniel has done is recovering a boat from Lake Lanier.

"We've only gotten one. It was kind of crazy, trying to locate it was the biggest thing," he said. "It was at a dock, it was in the water. We had a key to it ... and took off with it to the nearest dock."

McDaniel started the Sea Ray cruiser very easily - he had a key given to him by the finance company.

"The finance company usually has a secondary key, so they usually keep the key and the paperwork," McDaniel said.

But then gray areas in the law seem to spring up. When exactly can the repo man come onto your property and take your vehicle?

"If they have a paved driveway, that's an attachment to the road," McDaniel said. "If it's sitting in their driveway there is no problem getting it."

Mike said he follows the laws closely, beginning with the repossession order.

"We ask our customer for that just to verify that we are going on a legal repossession," he said. "It's called a right of repossession and we ask them for that. They show us that; they show us all the contract information, and that's enabling us to go get the vehicle.

"If it's a detached garage, as long as you don't touch the ground inside there with our equipment, we can go in, hook up to the car without touching the ground. I never want to cross any threshold of personal property boundaries."

Mike uses his "snatcher truck" to repossess vehicles in Hall County and all over the state. The truck, he said, is state-of-the-art with equipment like a video camera and controls inside the truck to snatch cars.

But people still think they can out smart the repo man.

"If we can't get it they are going to move their car, eventually," Mike said. "I'd rather have someone take my car from my house than get me at the grocery store or at work."

And others are running an even larger scheme.

"A lot of these people that I deal with, they go from place to place and they are professional debtors," Mike said. "They know they are going to go bad on the account ... it's hard to find them. And then they are using completely different information when they get somewhere else - their wife's, their cousin's, their friend's."

For McDaniel, one of his biggest frustrations is when people make it very hard for him to recover the item the finance company wants.

"I've picked up a car, and of course sometimes they just demolish stuff ... the car was flipped up on its side," he said. "The biggest thing is, they know they are behind on the car and they have personal stuff in the car and they'll come out the door fussin' and stuff like that ... people can get carried away over a vehicle. The buildings aren't so bad."

Mike and McDaniel said despite the headaches, they don't mind - business is booming in this rough economy.

Mike said he's repossessed more than 100 vehicles since July, and 10 percent of his business is repossessions.

"There was a big influx in June and July and tapered off in August but it's starting to pick up again."

McDaniel said he usually picked up one repossessed storage building a month but now he averages 12.

"I've been hauling buildings for three years and just recently ... I have a backlog," he said.

But put all the reality-show drama and excitement aside - does McDaniel really love his job?

Without a doubt, he said, yes.

"It's fun," he said. "It's definitely an adrenaline rush."