TowingBossPro Blog — Impound & Storage

Finding the Vehicles That Have Sat in Storage the Longest

Every lot has them: the vehicles in the back row that nobody has asked about in weeks. The storage bill on each one gets bigger every day, but bigger is not the same as collectable. Some will be picked up. Some will never be. Either way, you need to know which ones they are.

Storage Fees and Local Rules: What to Check Before You Set Impound Rates covered checking your local rules. Those same rules will matter a lot for the vehicles in this article.

Sort the Lot by Start Date

Because every stored vehicle in TowingBossPro has a storage start date, you can see the oldest ones at a glance. Sort by start date, and the vehicles at the top are the ones that need attention.

Do this on a schedule, weekly for a busy lot. The goal is not just to know they are there. It is to make a decision about each one before it becomes a problem.

Look at the storage days alongside the start date. A vehicle that has racked up a month of storage at your daily rate has a bill that may now be larger than the car is worth to its owner. That is often the point where people stop coming. Knowing that early gives you a chance to reach them while picking up the car still makes sense to them.

Put Each Long-Stay Vehicle in a Bucket

Most long-stay vehicles fall into a few groups:

• Under a police or agency hold, waiting for clearance.
• Owned by an account, like a body shop or dealer, that knows it is there.
• The owner has been in contact and is working on getting it.
• Nobody has contacted you at all.

Tags make this easy. Tag each long-stay vehicle with its situation, so the next person looking at the list knows which ones are fine and which ones need action.

Review the buckets as a team once in a while. The office often knows things the yard does not, like an owner who called last week promising to come Friday. Putting that knowledge on the record with a note means nobody has to rely on memory.

Contact the Ones Who Have Gone Quiet

Where you have contact information, reach out. An automated text or email reminder, followed by a personal message using two-way texting, sometimes shakes loose an owner who was putting it off. Be clear that storage continues to add each day.

For account vehicles, look at the account's open invoices and send payment follow-ups. A body shop that forgot about a car will usually move it quickly once it sees the storage line growing.

Keep a note on the record each time you reach out: the date, how you contacted them and any reply. If the vehicle ever ends up going through your jurisdiction's unclaimed vehicle process, a clear history of your attempts to reach the owner is useful to have.

Unclaimed Vehicles Are a Legal Process

Vehicles that nobody claims eventually need to be dealt with, and how that happens is governed by state and local law. There may be required notices, waiting periods, filings and procedures before you can dispose of a vehicle or recover what you are owed. Those rules vary widely.

TowingBossPro does not process liens, file paperwork with agencies or run auctions. It gives you the record you will need: when the vehicle came in, the details, the photos, the storage days and the invoice. Handle the legal process the way your jurisdiction requires, with professional help if you need it, and note what you did on the record.

Watch the Revenue Picture

Long-stay vehicles can make your storage revenue look bigger on paper than it is. An invoice that keeps growing on a car nobody will pick up is not money in the bank. Use reports to compare storage billed against storage actually collected, so you are not fooling yourself.

Space Is Money Too

Every space taken by a car nobody wants is a space you cannot use for the next impound. A lot full of dead cars turns away profitable work. Finding and resolving long-stay vehicles is as much about making room as it is about collecting.

A clear list of your oldest vehicles, reviewed regularly, keeps the back row from becoming a junkyard. See how start dates power that list on the Impound & Storage Software page. Next: following up on storage invoices billed to accounts.

If your lot is consistently full, the long-stay list is the first place to look before you think about renting more land. Clearing out a handful of vehicles nobody is coming for can free up exactly the room you need.