TowingBossPro Blog — Impound & Storage

Scheduling Impound Pulls on the Dispatch Board by Truck and Day

Not every impound tow is an emergency. Plenty of storage work can be planned: scheduled patrol sweeps for property managers, moving account vehicles out of the lot to a body shop, transferring vehicles between yards, picking up a car an agency asked you to collect tomorrow morning. That work fits around the emergency calls, but only if someone plans it.

Building Clean Storage Invoices: Line Items, Sales Tax and Detail was about invoices. This article is about the trucks that create them.

The Board by Truck and Day

TowingBossPro has a dispatch board organized by truck and day. Each truck has its calls laid out, so dispatch can see who is doing what and when. Scheduled storage work goes on the board just like any other call, with a pickup, a drop-off and the vehicle details.

That makes the lot's work visible next to everything else. A dispatcher can see that Truck 3 has two shop deliveries from the lot in the morning and is free in the afternoon.

Looking ahead a day or two helps too. If the board shows Thursday packed with shop deliveries from the lot, you know to keep a truck free that morning instead of booking it with a long-distance tow.

Moving Vehicles Out of the Lot

When a body shop or dealer is ready for a vehicle you have been storing, the move is a new call with the pickup at your storage lot and the drop-off at their location. Put it on the board for the day they want it.

Before the truck leaves, make sure the storage days for that vehicle are on the invoice. Vehicles leaving on your own truck do not pass the release window, which makes them the easiest to forget to bill.

Tell the yard the night before which vehicles are leaving in the morning. A yard person who has the cars staged near the gate saves the driver twenty minutes of digging through the back rows, and the whole day runs smoother for it.

Private Property Sweeps

Some property managers want scheduled enforcement at set times. Put those on the board so a truck is assigned. When the driver finds a vehicle to tow under your agreement and local rules, the call is created under the property manager's account with the drop-off at your lot.

Private property towing rules vary by place, including when and how you may tow. Make sure your schedule and procedures follow what applies.

Leave Room for Emergencies

The biggest scheduling mistake at a towing company is filling the board so tightly that one accident call blows up the whole day. Plan storage work for the slow parts of the day and leave capacity for the calls you cannot predict. Impound moves can usually wait an hour. A car blocking a highway lane cannot.

The Waiting List of incoming calls on a live map helps here. Dispatch can see what is coming in and decide whether a planned move needs to slide.

When an emergency does push planned work, move it on the board right away and let the account know. A shop that gets a text saying the delivery moved to the afternoon is fine. A shop that waits all morning for a truck that never shows is not.

Drivers See the Details

When a driver opens a scheduled call in the driver app, they see the pickup, the drop-off and the vehicle details. For vehicles going out of your lot, that means they know exactly which car to grab, so the yard person is not walking rows looking for "the gray one."

Photos at the lot before loading are worth taking for account vehicles, especially ones that have been sitting a while. They show the condition when the vehicle left your care.

Tell drivers to check the vehicle details against the car before loading anything out of the lot. Pulling the wrong silver sedan out of storage and delivering it to a shop is an embarrassing mistake, and it leaves the right car sitting in your lot still racking up storage nobody expects.

Review the Board at the End of the Day

At close, check what got done and what did not. Moves that slipped go back on the board for tomorrow. Vehicles that left the lot should no longer show in storage. That end-of-day check keeps the board, the lot and the invoices in agreement.

Planned storage work done well keeps trucks busy in the gaps and the lot from overflowing. See how dispatch connects to storage on the Impound & Storage Software page. Next: the Waiting List and live map.