TowingBossPro Blog — Running a Towing Business

Adding Vehicle Transports to Your Towing Business

Most towing work is unplanned. Someone breaks down, someone crashes, someone gets locked out. Transports are different. A dealer needs a car moved to another lot. Someone bought a project car and needs it brought home. A body shop needs a vehicle taken to a specialty shop. These are scheduled jobs, and they can be some of the steadiest work a tow company does.

Transports are a good way to fill the quiet parts of your week and build relationships with businesses that need regular moves.

Why Transports Are Good Business

After weighing heavy-duty in Adding Heavy-Duty Work to Your Towing Business, transports are a much lighter step. You likely already have a rollback that can handle most of them. The work is scheduled, so you can plan around it. And the customers are often businesses, like dealers, body shops and repair shops, that need moves regularly.

Transports also smooth out your week. Emergency tows come in waves, often at nights and on weekends. Transports can be scheduled for the slower weekday hours when trucks would otherwise sit.

Transports are also usually lower stress for drivers. No accident scene, no upset stranded customer, just a clear pickup and a clear destination. That makes them good work for newer drivers and a nice break for veterans after a busy weekend.

Who Needs Transports

Look around your area for businesses that move vehicles. Car dealers moving inventory between lots. Body shops and repair shops sending cars to specialists. Private sellers and buyers. People moving and needing a car brought along. Classic car owners going to shows.

Each of these can be a one-time job or a repeat customer. Dealers and shops often become commercial accounts that send you regular work.

Price Transports by Distance and Time

Transports are usually priced by distance, with a base charge for the hookup and loading. Long-distance runs need to account for the return trip, since the truck is coming back empty unless you can line up a load.

Be clear about what is included. Is the customer paying for a set pickup time? Do they need the vehicle secured a certain way? Is there a charge if the vehicle is not ready when the truck arrives? Put it in the estimate. TowingBossPro estimates can be approved online, so the customer agrees to the price before the truck goes out.

Build in a little room for the unexpected. Vehicles that will not roll, keys that are missing, or a destination that is not ready to receive the car all eat time. Decide ahead of time how you charge for waiting or extra work, and put it in the estimate so it is not a surprise.

Schedule Them Around Emergency Calls

The risk with transports is that an emergency call shows up while the truck is booked for a transport. Plan for it. Schedule transports when you expect fewer emergency calls, and keep at least one truck free for the unplanned work if you can.

The TowingBossPro dispatch board is laid out by truck and by day with route order, so you can see transports on the schedule alongside everything else. Transports is its own category, which makes it easy to see what is planned versus what just came in. If a transport has to move, two-way texting lets you tell the customer right away.

Get the Pickup and Drop-Off Right

Transports depend on clear addresses and clear instructions. Every call has a pickup and a drop-off address, plus vehicle details: year, make, model, color, plate and VIN. Add notes for anything special, like which lot entrance to use, who has the keys, or which person signs at the destination.

The driver sees all of it in the app, sends on-the-way and arrival texts, and takes vehicle photos at pickup and drop-off. Those photos matter even more on transports, since the customer is often not there to see the vehicle loaded.

Turn One-Off Transports Into Accounts

A dealer that uses you for one transport and has a good experience will often call again. Make it easy. Set them up as a commercial account so their calls and invoices are grouped together. Keep a card on file or set up regular billing. Follow up after the first few jobs.

Steady transport accounts give your business a base of planned work that is not at the mercy of the weather or the weekend. Next, the guide on adding impound and storage. More on the full system is on the towing business software page.

Ask dealers and shops how often they move vehicles and what frustrates them about how it works now. Sometimes the answer is simply that their current company is hard to reach or slow to confirm. Fast confirmations and on-time pickups are easy ways to win that work.