TowingBossPro Blog — Accounts & Customers

The Six Commercial Account Types That Keep a Tow Company Busy

Every tow company eventually notices the same thing: a handful of accounts produce most of the calls. Which accounts those are depends on your market, your equipment and your reputation, but they almost always fall into six types. Each one calls differently, expects different paperwork and pays differently.

In Towing Account Management Software: The Complete Guide for Commercial Accounts and Retail Customers, we covered the big picture. This article breaks down the six commercial account types so you can set them up in a way that matches how each one actually works.

Motor Clubs

Motor club work is volume work. The calls come at all hours, the vehicles are usually disabled rather than wrecked, and the customer on the side of the road is someone else's member. The job for your office is to log each call quickly, get the right truck rolling and capture the details the motor club will want when you bill.

TowingBossPro does not connect to motor club dispatch systems, so calls are entered by your dispatcher. What it does is keep every one of those calls under the motor club account with the pickup, the drop-off, the vehicle details and the invoice, so reconciling a month of work is a matter of pulling the account history rather than digging through call sheets.

Police and Municipal Agencies

Police and municipal tows are about accuracy and documentation. The vehicle may be evidence, may be headed to impound, or may belong to someone who will show up at your counter angry and confused. Plate, VIN, year, make, model and color should be captured on every call, and driver photos of the vehicle are worth their weight in gold when a dispute comes up.

Agency rules for these tows vary widely by city, county and state, so check your local requirements. In the software, the agency is an account like any other, and its calls, storage and invoices stay together.

Body Shops

Body shops are often the most loyal account a tow company has, because a shop that likes your drivers will steer customers to you. Body shop calls are frequently from a scene or a storage lot to the shop, and the shop wants to know when the car is coming so it can plan the bay.

Saved locations matter here. Most shops have a specific drop-off area, after-hours key drop or gate. Put that on the shop's location once and every driver sees it.

Dealerships

Dealerships send scheduled work: lot-to-lot moves, customer cars going to service, trade-ins coming in, units going to auction. Many dealer groups have several rooftops, which is where multiple locations per customer earns its keep. One dealer group account, five locations, every move tracked under the account.

Dealership work is also where estimates come in handy for longer moves, since the service manager often wants a price before approving.

Property Managers

Apartment complexes, HOAs, shopping centers and commercial lots call about vehicles parked where they should not be. These calls can be sensitive. The vehicle owner did not ask for the tow, and private property towing is heavily regulated in many places, so rules on signage, notice and fees vary — always check your local requirements.

From an account standpoint, each property is a location under the manager's account, and the calls, storage and invoices stay organized by property.

Fleets — and Putting the Six Together

Fleet accounts — delivery vans, utility trucks, rental companies, box trucks — call when their vehicles break down and want them back on the road. The fleet manager cares about where the unit went, when it got there and what it cost. Unit details on every call and invoices that are easy to find make you the easy company to call again.

Not every company should chase all six. A two-truck operation with light-duty wreckers may live on motor club and retail work; a company with a rollback fleet and a secure yard may build around body shops and police. Knowing which types fit your equipment keeps you from signing accounts you cannot serve well, which costs more in reputation than the work is worth.

Once you see your work through these six types, tag each account accordingly. Tags let you pull a list of every body shop or every fleet in seconds, and reports by account show which type sends the most work. The towing account management software overview shows how these accounts, their locations and their invoices fit together in TowingBossPro.