Your towing and recovery lien clocks start the moment the vehicle lands, and nobody is watching them.
Towing and recovery is the business of moving disabled, wrecked or unlawfully parked vehicles and storing them until someone claims them. It is a licensed trade with truck classes defined by what they can lift, and the money in it depends on lien law: how many days of storage you may charge, when notice must go out, and how long a vehicle must be held before it can be sold. Miss a date and the charge disappears.
Neurobird Towing and Recovery in short
- Start the holding and notice clocks the moment a vehicle is booked into the yard, not when someone remembers.
- Record the class of truck and the driver who ran the job against the job itself.
- Track notice sent dates so a late notice is visible before it caps what can be charged.
- 35 days An unclaimed vehicle or vessel may be sold free of all prior liens 35 days after the qualifying event, and the count excludes the day of towing and the date of sale. Florida HSMV procedure TL-26
- 7 days If notice is not given inside the required timeframe, the tow company may not charge more than 7 days of fees. Florida HSMV procedure TL-26
- Pricing runs 130 to 700 US dollars per month across 3 tiers. Early access is free.
What towing and recovery operators actually deal with
Why it stays broken
Towing software grew out of dispatch, which is about the next hour. Lien law is about the next sixty days, and it is written state by state with different notice windows and different holding periods. An operator running under a state contract also carries a records retention duty that outlives any single job. Those three clocks rarely live in the same system.
35 days is how long an unclaimed vehicle must be held in Florida before it can be sold free of prior liens, counted from the writ, not from the tow.
Rotational and other types of contracts for towing and recovery services must assure that the correct equipment is brought to the scene and that the specialists are qualified for the task at hand.
Neurobird Towing and Recovery Dispatch Platform
One record per vehicle that knows the day it arrived, which clock applies to it, and what notice has already gone out.
- 1Start the holding and notice clocks the moment a vehicle is booked into the yard, not when someone remembers.
- 2Record the class of truck and the driver who ran the job against the job itself.
- 3Track notice sent dates so a late notice is visible before it caps what can be charged.
- 4Retain job records for the period a state contract requires without anyone maintaining a filing cabinet.
What changes with Neurobird Towing and Recovery?
The same work, read left to right: how it runs today, and how it runs once the record is in one place.
| Today | With Neurobird Towing and Recovery |
|---|---|
| A vehicle sits in the yard and nobody can say which day its holding period actually started or ends | Start the holding and notice clocks the moment a vehicle is booked into the yard, not when someone remembers. |
| Lien notice goes out late on one file and the recoverable charge collapses to a fraction of the storage owed | Record the class of truck and the driver who ran the job against the job itself. |
| Records for a job three years back cannot be found, even though the state contract requires keeping them for five years | Track notice sent dates so a late notice is visible before it caps what can be charged. |
Who is this for?
Three places where a day slips and the money goes with it.
The notice that went out late
A storage bill runs for six weeks, but the lien notice was posted after the required window. Under Florida procedure the operator may then charge no more than 7 days of fees. The date the notice went out is the single most valuable field in the file.
The five year record
Arizona requires towing firms under a tow service agreement to retain all records for five years from the date the agreement ends. That is a retention duty attached to the contract, not to the job, and it outlives most dispatch systems.
Matching truck to job
Truck classes are defined by capability, with Class B-2 covering trucks rated over 30,000 GVWR with air brakes. Recording which class actually ran a recovery matters when the invoice is questioned or the state audits the contract.
How does Neurobird Towing and Recovery work?
Book in
The vehicle is logged with its arrival date and the rules that apply, so the holding period and the notice deadline are calculated rather than estimated.
Notify
Lien notices are recorded against the vehicle with the date they went out, because a late notice caps recoverable fees at a fraction of what was stored.
Close or sell
When a vehicle stays unclaimed the file already carries the dates, notices and charges needed to move to sale without reconstructing the history.
What the numbers say about towing and recovery
The trade runs on dates and truck ratings. Both are recordable, and both decide whether an invoice survives a challenge.
An unclaimed vehicle or vessel may be sold free of all prior liens 35 days after the qualifying event, and the count excludes the day of towing and the date of sale.
Florida HSMV procedure TL-26If notice is not given inside the required timeframe, the tow company may not charge more than 7 days of fees.
Florida HSMV procedure TL-26Class B-2 tow trucks are rated at over 30,000 GVWR with air brakes and cover medium trucks, trailers and motor homes.
Washington WAC 204-91ATowing firms must retain all records for five years from the date the tow service agreement ends.
Arizona DPS tow service programArizona Revised Statute 41-1830.51 is the authority under which DPS contracts with towing firms for towing and storage services.
Arizona DPS tow service programSee it work
A short walk through a vehicle from tow to lien sale.
Drag a job onto a manager to assign it.
Towing and recovery software questions, answered
Key terms
- What is towing and recovery management?
- It is the work of running a tow operation as a record rather than a series of calls: which truck went to which job, when a vehicle entered the yard, which lien clock applies to it, when notice went out and what may lawfully be charged. Dispatch is the visible half. The half that determines whether the money is collectable is a set of dates attached to each vehicle, governed by state law that differs considerably from one jurisdiction to the next.
How long must an unclaimed vehicle be held?
It depends on the state and the circumstances. Florida procedure allows an unclaimed vehicle or vessel to be sold free of all prior liens 35 days after the qualifying event, with a longer window in some cases, and the count excludes the day of towing and storage and the date of the sale. Because the start date is not simply the day of the tow, holding periods calculated by hand are a common source of error.
What happens if lien notice goes out late?
The recoverable charge collapses. Under Florida procedure, a tow company that fails to give notice inside the required timeframe may not charge the person claiming a lien more than 7 days of fees, no matter how long the vehicle actually sat. A storage bill that should have run for weeks becomes a week. That single date is worth more than most of the rest of the file.
How are tow trucks classified?
By capability. Washington defines Class A for passenger cars and light vehicles, Class B for medium trucks and motor homes, Class B-2 for the same work at over 30,000 GVWR with air brakes, and Class C and rotator classes for large trucks and buses. Recording the class that ran a job matters for contract compliance and for defending an invoice.
Is this available to buy?
No, it is in development and open for early access. We are building it with yard managers so the lien clocks match the states they actually operate in.
Why we are building this
The thing that surprised us about towing is how much of the revenue depends on a date nobody is paid to watch.
A notice posted a few days late does not cause a small problem. In Florida it caps what can be charged at 7 days of fees regardless of how long the vehicle sat. That is a rule a spreadsheet cannot enforce and a dispatch board was never designed to.
So we are building the yard record around the clocks rather than the calls. The Neurobird Team would rather cover a few states properly than claim fifty and get them approximately right.
Where the requirement comes from
Primary sources, straight from the regulators.
- Washington WAC 204-91A, tow truck operators Defines tow truck classes, equipment and operator requirements.
- Florida HSMV, wrecker operator lien procedure TL-26 Sets the holding periods, notice duties and fee caps for unclaimed vehicles.
- Arizona DPS, tow service program State contract terms including the five year records retention duty.
- FHWA, towing and recovery response and clearance procedures Traffic incident management context for on scene recovery work.
How much does Neurobird Towing and Recovery cost?
Early access pricing, held for the first 12 months for operators who help shape the build.
Get free early access
We want yard managers who can tell us where a lien clock has cost them money.
Straight answer on where this is: The software is unfinished. Vehicle intake, lien clocks and notice tracking work. State rule profiles cover a handful of states so far and there is no billing integration.
Prefer email? Write to office@neurobird.com and a person will reply. No autoresponder.