TowingBossPro Blog — Impound & Storage

Storage Fees and Local Rules: What to Check Before You Set Impound Rates

There is no national rulebook for impound and storage fees. What you may charge, how you count days, what you must post and who you must notify can all depend on your state, your county, your city and the agreements you have with agencies and property owners. Two lots twenty miles apart can be playing by different rules.

Letting Impound Customers Pay Online Before They Come to the Lot was about getting paid online. This article is about making sure what you charge is something you are allowed to charge in the first place. It is not legal advice, and it does not tell you what your local law says. It tells you what to go find out.

Questions to Answer Before You Set a Rate

Before you put a daily storage rate on any vehicle, find answers to these for every place you tow:

• Is there a maximum daily storage rate, and does it differ by vehicle size?
• Do police-ordered tows and private property tows have different rules?
• When does storage start, and is there a free or grace period?
• How are partial days counted?
• Do rates need to be posted at the lot, filed with an agency or included in a contract?
• Are there limits on other charges, like gate fees or after-hours release fees?

Write the answers down with the source and the date you checked. Rules change.

If a question does not have a clear answer, treat that as a reason to ask an expert, not as permission to charge whatever you like. The rules you did not look up are still the rules.

Where to Look

Start with your city and county ordinances, then state law. If you tow for police, your agreement with the agency usually has its own terms. If you tow for property managers, your contracts and local private property towing rules both matter. Industry associations can point you in the right direction, and an attorney who handles towing in your area is worth a consultation if the rules are unclear.

Do not rely on what another tow company charges. They may be wrong, or under different rules.

Keep a simple file, paper or digital, with the rules that apply to each place you tow, the date you checked and where the information came from. When a new employee asks why the rate is what it is, or a customer challenges a charge, you can show the reasoning behind it instead of saying "that is what we have always charged."

Build Your Rate Sheet Inside the Limits

Once you know the limits, build a short rate sheet for each type of work: private property, police, account storage, and anything else you do. Keep it simple enough that anyone in the office can apply it correctly.

In TowingBossPro, each stored vehicle has its own daily storage rate. Put the right rate on each vehicle from your sheet when it enters storage, and the software counts storage days and adds them to the invoice. The rate on the vehicle is what gets billed, so getting it right at entry matters.

Post It, Explain It

Whether or not your area requires it, posting your rates at the lot and explaining them in your pickup messages reduces fights. People still will not like the number, but they are less likely to believe you made it up.

Make sure what is posted, what is in your texts and what is on the invoice all say the same thing. Inconsistency between those three is one of the fastest ways to turn an ordinary complaint into a formal one.

Record How You Applied It

If a fee is ever challenged, you want to show exactly how the bill was built: when storage started, the daily rate, the number of days and every other charge. A record with a start date, rate and counted days on the invoice gives you that. Notes on any changes help too.

Review It Every Year

Rules get updated, agency agreements get renewed and costs change. Put a date on the calendar to check the rules again each year and update your rate sheet if needed.

Charging fairly and within the rules is good business, and it protects the lot. See how rates and storage days work together on the Impound & Storage Software page. Next: finding the vehicles that have been sitting the longest.

If you tow in more than one city or county, review each one. It is common for a lot to serve several jurisdictions with different rules, and a rate that is fine in one may not be allowed in the next one over.