Every figure on this page links to the organization that produced it, and each was re-checked against that source before publishing. How U.S. towing and roadside companies get customers and use video, and the evidence behind it: our own YouTube Data API read of the 333 most-viewed tow truck and towing videos and the industry's own channels, our count of every towing-named carrier in FMCSA's register and every Texas tow operator licence, how many towing businesses there are and what tow truck drivers earn (including Florida), how many roadside calls and tows AAA, Agero, Urgently and Allstate report, tow operator deaths and Move Over laws, the states that require photos before a tow, nonconsensual towing fee caps, and where the popular towing numbers came from.
Children's and animation channels posted 45.6% of the 333 most-viewed YouTube videos for 'tow truck' and 'towing' and drew 60.3% of their views; the channels of named towing companies drew 0.8% (our read, Nov 2026). (Mark Studios)See details
Three towing companies that film their own recoveries had 2,867,000 YouTube subscribers between them, about 60 times the 47,705 of Miller Industries, Jerr-Dan, AAA, Agero and Honk combined. (Mark Studios)See details
We counted 53,950 active USDOT carriers with TOWING or WRECKER in their name in November 2026, about 5.0 for every towing establishment with employees in the BLS count; 52.9% reported a single power unit. (Mark Studios)See details
BLS counted 10,722 U.S. towing establishments with 73,303 jobs in 2025, 21.8% more establishments than in 2015. (BLS)See details
Towing businesses with employees took in $11.96 billion in 2022, 65.4% more than in 2017 before inflation, according to the Economic Census. (U.S. Census Bureau)See details
BLS counted 247 towing-industry work deaths from all causes in 2020-2024, one about every 7.4 days or 49.4 a year, fewer than the repeated 'one every six days'. (BLS; our calculation)See details
In a 2025 survey of 5,887 U.S. drivers, only 58% knew their state requires action when passing a stopped tow truck, and 46% said they slowed down the last time they passed one. (AAA Foundation)See details
Caps on towing a car from private property without consent run from $125 in New York City (with three days' storage) and $145.00 in Miami-Dade County to $272 in Texas. (NYC DCWP; Miami-Dade County; TDLR)See details
Colorado requires at least four photographs before a nonconsensual tow, and Connecticut has required at least two photographs since October 2025; we found one bill, in Arizona, that names video. (Colorado General Assembly; Connecticut General Assembly)See details
How do towing companies get customers, and where does video fit?
Mostly through motor clubs, insurers, police rotations and search, and nobody has measured their video use. We found no survey by a trade body, trade magazine or software vendor that counts how many towing companies post video or photos. The only recurring survey of operators, Autura's State of Towing, is run by a towing software seller and covers business conditions: it began in 2024 with input from 198 towing professionals (Autura). In its 2025 edition, 43% of operators said they were less busy than a year earlier (Autura), growing commercial accounts was the most common plan, cited by 70% (Autura), and 41% had named hiring and retention a top challenge in 2024, falling to 36% in 2025 (Autura).
Search is where urgent customers look, and Google treats towing as a category of its own. Its Local Services Ads list Towing as an Auto care category, with screening that can include On-hook insurance and licence checks (Google). Towing is not on Google's current Advanced Verification list, which names only garage door and Locksmith services: United States, Canada (Google). In March 2025 Google sued operators of fake Business Profiles, saying they often targeted locksmiths and urgent-need services such as towing companies (Google complaint, N.D. Cal.). A service-area business's area should not extend beyond about 2 hours of driving from its base, under Google's Business Profile guidelines (Google).
Consumers do watch local businesses' video. In BrightLocal's 2025 survey of 1,026 U.S. adults (BrightLocal sells local-marketing software), over three-quarters said they watch video when looking up local businesses (BrightLocal), and the most-watched format was video the business posted about its own services, picked by more than a third (BrightLocal). In its 2026 survey of 1,002 adults, 97% read reviews for local businesses (BrightLocal), Google's share as a review source fell from 83% to 71% (BrightLocal), and use of ChatGPT and other AI tools for local recommendations rose from 6% to 45% (BrightLocal). These are surveys of all local businesses, not towing.
For club and insurer work, the customer's screen shows the tow truck coming. AAA Club Alliance says members who request help digitally see a photo of your driver with name, credentials and arrival time (AAA Club Alliance). Agero, which sells dispatch to insurers and carmakers, said in 2021 that requests through its clients' apps were up 60% year over year (Agero), that in a pilot app users were 30% more likely to rate service favorably than phone callers (Agero), and that more than 97% of customers who got real-time status updates said they helped (Agero). By 2023, 81% of its provider assignments were made automatically by its Swoop dispatch software (Agero), and the median time from dispatch to arrival for its in-network providers was 48 minutes (Agero). In 2017 it said 50 percent of consumers preferred to call (Agero), and in 2021 that nearly 35% of breakdowns happen at home or work (Agero). The Auto Club Group, a AAA club, said in March 2025 that AI-run text messaging cut dispatch handling time by 50% across six million calls in 14 states (The Auto Club Group and Riptide).
Dash cams are common in fleets, but camera makers publish no towing results. The one towing case study we found, Samsara's on a New Jersey heavy-towing company with more than 100 vehicles, describes dual-facing cameras used to clear drivers in disputes, storing up to 60 hours of footage, and gives no outcome figures (Samsara, case study).
Who makes the most-watched towing videos on YouTube?
Mostly children's channels, not tow companies. We read the 200 most-viewed YouTube results each for "tow truck" and "towing" through the YouTube Data API on November 3, 2026: 215 channels posted the 333 unique videos, which had 3.31 billion views between them. We classified every channel by hand. Children's and animation channels, including toy and diecast channels, posted 45.6% of the videos and drew 60.3% of the views; on "tow truck" alone they drew 69.9%, and on "towing" 46.2%, with independent creators at 40.4%. A single Vlad and Niki toy tow truck video drew 10.2% of all the views.
Who posted the 333 most-viewed "tow truck" and "towing" videos
Towing and roadside businesses, incl. operators who vlog
3.9%
Mark Studios
Of which named towing companies
0.8%
Mark Studios
Vehicle and equipment makers and dealers
0.4%
Mark Studios
No motor club, insurer or roadside network posted any of those 333 videos. The channel with the most videos in the sample was truTV UK, with 18 South Beach Tow uploads. The median video had 3.58 million views and 309 of the 333 had at least a million; the 10 biggest drew 30.8% of all views. The median towing or roadside business video had 1.76 million views, against 5.39 million for children's channels.
Length splits two ways. 29.8% of the videos ran 60 seconds or less and drew 31.1% of the views; 40.1% ran three minutes or less, but 172 ran longer than 10 minutes, mostly long recovery videos and compilations. The sample is recent: 72.1% were published in 2023 or later and 70 in 2026.
"Roadside assistance" is a different list. Its 200 most-viewed videos shared only two with the towing lists. Towing and roadside businesses posted 45.0% of them and drew 87.2% of their views, but one channel, The Roadside Tech, which films its own service calls without naming a company, posted 52 and drew 70.2%; named companies drew 10.3%. Motor clubs, insurers, roadside networks and automakers posted 13.0% of the videos and drew 3.1% of the views, the clubs, insurers and networks alone 2.7%. These are short: 67.5% ran three minutes or less and drew 96.0% of the views, and 31.0% ran 60 seconds or less. The median one had 122,316 views and 18.7 likes per 1,000 views, against 5.2 for the towing lists, and 79.0% were published in 2023 or later.
The industry's own channels against tow companies that film their work
None of the 531 most-viewed videos across the three searches came from the official channels of Miller Industries, Jerr-Dan, AAA (national), Agero or Honk. Those five channels had 47,705 subscribers between them and posted 37 videos in the past year, with a median of 1,554 views. Miller Industries' channel had 29,900 subscribers; AAA's national channel posted 28 videos with a median of 1,356.5 views; Jerr-Dan's had 2,950 subscribers; Agero and Honk posted no videos in the year. We found No YouTube channel for Urgently or the Towing and Recovery Association of America.
Three towing companies that film their own recoveries, Matt's Off Road Recovery, Pepe's Towing Service and Everything Autos, had 2,867,000 subscribers between them, about 60 times the five organizations, and posted 553 videos in the year against those organizations' 37. Matt's Off Road Recovery, a Utah towing and recovery company, had 2,210,000 subscribers, about 74 times Miller Industries', and posted 148 videos in the year with a median of 652,883 views, none of them 60 seconds or less. Pepe's Towing Service posted 163 and Everything Autos 242. The video files are in youtube-videos.csv and youtube-brand-channels.csv.
Which states require photos or video before a tow?
A growing number, for nonconsensual tows from private property. The rules below require the tow operator to photograph the vehicle, the parking violation or both before hooking up, and some say how long to keep the files. We found only one, a 2026 Arizona bill, that names video. We found no photo requirement in Texas's towing rules (16 TAC ch. 86) or in Florida's statutes and county ordinances.
Place
What the rule requires before a nonconsensual tow
Keep for
Source
Colorado (statute)
at least four photographs (front, rear, both sides), at least two thousand pixels by at least two thousand pixels; without a photo of the reason, the law creates a rebuttable presumption that the tow was unauthorized
Colorado's two official sources disagree: the statute text applies the photo rule to nonconsensual tows generally, while the Public Utilities Commission's consumer poster limits it to residential property. We show both.
How many towing companies are there in the U.S.?
About 10,700 with employees. BLS counted 10,722 private towing establishments with employees (NAICS 488410, motor vehicle towing) in 2025, employing 73,303 people on average across the year (BLS QCEW). That is up from 8,800 establishments and 58,565 jobs in 2015 (BLS QCEW), a rise of 21.8% in establishments and 25.2% in jobs (our calculation). In 2020 the counts were 9,772 establishments and 64,499 jobs (BLS QCEW). The average establishment had 6.8 jobs in 2025 (our calculation).
Most are very small. Census County Business Patterns counted 10,566 towing establishments with employees in 2023, with 73,320 employees and an annual payroll of $3,786,569 thousand (U.S. Census Bureau). Of those establishments, 6,395 had fewer than five employees, 2,030 had five to nine, 1,310 had 10 to 19 and 700 had 20 to 49 (U.S. Census Bureau): 60.5% had fewer than five (our calculation).
The industry took in about $12 billion. The 2022 Economic Census counted 10,414 towing establishments with employees, owned by 10,066 firms and employing 75,295 people, with receipts of $11.96 billion (U.S. Census Bureau). In 2017 it counted 9,196 establishments with receipts of $7.23 billion (U.S. Census Bureau), so receipts rose 65.4% in five years before inflation (our calculation). That is about $1,148,450 per establishment in 2022 (our calculation). Towing itself was 93.1% of the industry's 2022 receipts, or $11,130,493 thousand (U.S. Census Bureau); heavy truck repair was 3.7% and warehousing and storage 0.9% (U.S. Census Bureau). Roadside service has no line of its own in the Census product list.
Census publishes no count of towing businesses without employees: Nonemployer Statistics stops at NAICS 488, all transportation support, so one-truck owner-operators are missing from every figure above. Owner data exist only for the wider group NAICS 4884 (support activities for road transportation, mostly towing): of 13,310 employer firms in 2023, 1,852 were owned by women and 737 by veterans (U.S. Census Bureau Annual Business Survey), or 13.9% and 5.5% (our calculation).
What does the federal carrier register show about towing companies?
Far more towing businesses than the employer counts show, and most of them run one truck. We counted every record in FMCSA's Company Census File, the register of USDOT numbers, whose legal or trade name contains TOWING or WRECKER, on November 3, 2026 (file updated November 2). 53,950 such carriers were active, out of 83,966 records of any status; 35.7% were inactive. That is about 5.0 active towing-named carriers for every towing establishment with employees in the BLS count (our calculation), because the register includes owner-operators with no employees, firms that tow alongside repair or salvage work, and registrations that are active on paper only.
The name rule is a floor and a ceiling at once. It misses tow companies without either word in their names and keeps repair shops that tow. Adding TOW SERVICE, ROADSIDE, RECOVERY or the whole word TOW would add 6,947 active carriers, but RECOVERY alone brings in 3,556, many of them repossession firms; the whole word TOW adds 2,541 and ROADSIDE 1,140. Within the main rule, 2,516 carriers use WRECKER without TOWING. In a random check of 30 active matches by name, at most 3.3% were not plainly towing businesses.
The median active towing-named carrier reported 1 power unit, and 81.5% reported one to five. Records keep arriving: 4,146 towing-named records were added or reactivated in 2025 against 2,798 in 2016, up 48.2%, and 3,307 more arrived between January 1 and November 2, 2026. 35.0% of the active carriers had an add date in 2021 or later. FMCSA's add date also marks reactivations and system updates, which is likely why 2015 shows a spike of 6,663.
By state, California had the most active towing-named carriers, 8,151, then Florida with 4,765, 8.8% of the U.S. total, and Georgia with 4,760; the top 10 states held 58.5%. Texas had only 1,600, because Texas licenses its tow operators itself: its licensing agency, TDLR, listed 12,613 unexpired tow truck operator licences on the same day. Of those, 66.4% were Incident Management licences (police-requested and accident tows), 3,979 were Consent Tow licences and only 259 were Private Property licences. Five counties (Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Tarrant and Travis) held 44.2% of them, Harris alone 2,234 and Dallas 1,318. Dallas County had more Consent Tow licences than Harris, 780 against 777, and 27.8% of the state's Private Property licences. Another 34.0% of the operator licences in TDLR's file had already expired. TDLR also listed 2,328 vehicle storage facility employee licences. The counts are published in fmcsa-towing-carriers.csv and tdlr-towing-licenses.csv (aggregate counts only).
How many tow truck drivers are there, and what do they earn?
BLS has no tow truck driver occupation of its own. O*NET, the Labor Department's occupation database, puts tow truck drivers inside heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers (SOC 53-3032), defined by trucks of at least 26,001 pounds gross vehicle weight, and its description ends "Includes tow truck drivers" (O*NET OnLine). Drivers of lighter tow trucks may be counted elsewhere, so no BLS figure counts tow truck drivers exactly. The closest industry cut is road transportation support (NAICS 488400), the group that holds towing: in May 2025 it had 114,040 jobs, of which 50,180 were heavy truck and tow truck drivers (BLS OEWS).
Those drivers earned a median of $48,810 a year, or $23.47 an hour, in May 2025 (BLS OEWS). The lowest-paid tenth earned under $35,600 and the top tenth over $76,290 (BLS OEWS). That median is 16.8% below the $58,640 median for all heavy truck drivers (BLS OEWS). In Florida the all-industry median for the occupation was $50,640 (BLS OEWS).
Pay per job at towing companies, which includes office staff and managers, averaged $58,451 in 2025 (BLS QCEW), up from $43,348 in 2020 and $35,784 in 2015 (BLS QCEW), a rise of 63.3% in ten years before inflation (our calculation). BLS projects employment of heavy and tow truck drivers to grow 3.8% from 2025 to 2035, and 7.3% of them were self-employed in 2025 (BLS Employment Projections).
How big is towing in Florida, and what are Florida's rules?
Florida had 684 towing establishments with employees in 2025, with 5,475 jobs paying an average of $57,947 (BLS QCEW). That is 6.4% of U.S. towing establishments (our calculation). Jobs grew much faster than businesses: from 3,337 in 2015 (BLS QCEW) and 4,179 in 2020 (BLS QCEW), jobs rose 64.1% in ten years, while establishments went from 622 in 2015 (BLS QCEW) and 682 in 2020 (BLS QCEW) to 684, up 10.0% (our calculation). Average pay rose from $34,670 in 2015 and $40,252 in 2020 (BLS QCEW). For comparison, Texas had 912 towing establishments and 7,141 jobs in 2025 (BLS QCEW), and California 1,416 and 11,491 (BLS QCEW).
Census County Business Patterns counted 648 Florida towing establishments in 2023 (U.S. Census Bureau). The 2022 Economic Census counted 613, with receipts of $643,344 thousand (U.S. Census Bureau), against $317,511 thousand in 2017 (U.S. Census Bureau), a rise of 102.6% before inflation (our calculation). The federal carrier register shows many more small operators: Florida had 4,765 active USDOT carriers with TOWING or WRECKER in their name in November 2026, second only to California.
In Florida, counties and cities set towing rates and licences, as the Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County caps in the rules section below show; state law, as in force in 2026, sets the procedure for tows from private property. A tower must notify the local police within 30 minutes of removing a vehicle (Florida Statutes s. 715.07) and release it within 1 hour of a request (Florida Statutes s. 715.07). In counties of 500,000 people or more, the vehicle must be stored within a 10-mile radius (Florida Statutes s. 715.07). Tow-away signs must be up for at least 24 hours before a tow (Florida Statutes s. 715.07). Breaking the storage-distance, drop-fee, kickback or release rules is a third degree felony (Florida Statutes s. 715.07). For liens on unclaimed vehicles, the tower must send notice by certified mail within 5 business days (Florida Statutes s. 713.78), may sell an older vehicle 35 days after storage (Florida Statutes s. 713.78), may not charge more than $250 in unauthorized fees (Florida Statutes s. 713.78), must accept at least two of three forms of payment (Florida Statutes s. 713.78), and may charge a lienholder it failed to notify for no more than 5 days of storage (Florida Statutes s. 713.78). Miami-Dade has required towers to take digital payments such as Zelle and Apple Pay since July 16, 2023 (Miami-Dade County).
Florida's Move Over law names wreckers. Drivers who cannot move over must slow to 20 miles per hour below the speed limit (Florida Statutes s. 316.126), and since January 1, 2024 the law also covers disabled vehicles (Laws of Florida ch. 2023-197).
How many tow operators are killed on the job?
About 50 a year, from all causes. The BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries counted 50 work deaths in the motor vehicle towing industry (NAICS 48841) in 2020, 51 in 2021, 52 in 2022, 48 in 2023 and 46 in 2024 (BLS CFOI). That is 247 in five years, one about every 7.4 days (our calculation). 26 of the 2024 deaths were transportation incidents, which include being struck at the roadside and crashes while driving (BLS CFOI). NIOSH put the industry's average death rate at nearly 43 per 100,000 workers in 2011-2016, more than 15 times the rate for all private industry (NIOSH); more than half of those deaths were at companies with 10 or fewer employees (NIOSH). Nonfatal injuries are a different story: in 2024 towing employers reported 2.3 injury and illness cases per 100 full-time workers (BLS SOII), the same as the 2.3 for all private industry (BLS SOII).
Roadside strikes are the part national crash data miss. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, which AAA's motor clubs fund, read news reports, obituaries and crash files and identified 123 roadside assistance providers (tow operators, mobile mechanics and safety patrollers) struck and killed by vehicles in 2015-2021 (AAA Foundation), about one every 20.8 days (our calculation). NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System identified only 34 of them as roadside workers (AAA Foundation), so the national file undercounts these deaths 3.6 times over (our calculation). Yearly deaths rose from 10 in 2015 to 26 in 2021 (Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center, from AAA Foundation data). 89% were killed where the speed limit was 55 mph or more, 63% in darkness (AAA Foundation), and in 63% the striking vehicle left the road before hitting them (AAA Foundation). About a third, 39 of 123, were working in the travel lanes (AAA Foundation), and 39% of the drivers who hit them were never tested for alcohol (AAA Foundation).
Counts by other groups differ because they count different things. The industry's own memorial, the National Tow List's Fallen Operators list, recorded 334 tow truck driver deaths from all causes in 2015-2021, including deaths unrelated to traffic (AAA Foundation, citing the list). The Emergency Responder Safety Institute, a nonprofit that tallies news reports, counted 20 tow operators among 45 responders struck and killed in 2023, 12 among 46 in 2024 and 11 among 36 in 2025 (Emergency Responder Safety Institute), and 251 responders of all kinds in 2019-2023 (Emergency Responder Safety Institute). GAO, citing the same institute, reported 18 tow truck operators struck and killed in 2022 (U.S. GAO). AAA says 15 roadside service providers were killed in Slow Down, Move Over incidents in 2025, a year in which it answered more than 30 million roadside events near traffic (AAA). More broadly, more than 2,100 people were killed outside disabled vehicles at the roadside in 2019-2023 (AAA Foundation, from NHTSA data).
What do Move Over laws require, and do drivers know them?
Every state has one; fewer drivers know it. NHTSA says all 50 states have Move Over laws (NHTSA). GAO's legal review of the 50 states and D.C. in 2023 found that 48 covered tow trucks (U.S. GAO); by fall 2025 the AAA Foundation found every state's law covered stopped tow trucks and 28 states protected all stopped vehicles (AAA Foundation). The counts for all vehicles conflict because the dates and definitions differ: GAO found 16 states in 2023 (U.S. GAO) and NHTSA's page says 19 states plus D.C. (NHTSA). GAO found 21 states covering disabled vehicles in 2023 (U.S. GAO). 13 states always require drivers to slow down even when they move over (AAA Foundation). Fines range from a set $30 in Florida to a maximum of $25,000 in Illinois (U.S. GAO); Twelve states authorize jail time (U.S. GAO). 27 states qualified for NHTSA's new Preventing Roadside Deaths grants in fiscal 2024 (U.S. GAO).
In the AAA Foundation's national survey of 5,887 U.S. drivers in September and October 2025 (AAA Foundation), only 58% believed their state required any special action when passing a tow truck stopped on the shoulder (AAA Foundation), against 66% for a stopped police car (AAA Foundation). Asked about the last time they passed a stopped tow truck, 85% said they moved over but only 46% said they slowed down (AAA Foundation). Among drivers aware of a law, more than 90% knew it meant moving over but fewer than half knew it meant slowing down (AAA Foundation), and in states that always require slowing down, fewer than one in five knew it (AAA Foundation). Once the laws were explained, 90% supported them (AAA Foundation), but more than two-thirds thought violators were unlikely to be caught (AAA Foundation), and only 24% of drivers aware of the laws thought a violator was at least fairly likely to be caught (AAA Foundation).
How many roadside calls and tows are there a year?
No agency counts tows. The largest published count comes from AAA, a motor club that sells roadside assistance: it received over 27 million emergency roadside calls in the U.S. in 2024 (AAA), of which roughly 13 million needed a tow (AAA), about 48% (our calculation). It estimates about 215,000 of its 2024 calls were for electric vehicles (AAA). In 2015 AAA said it rescued 32 million drivers (AAA), helped more than four million who were locked out (AAA), and that one-in-five calls for vehicles under five years old needed a tow (AAA); summer was the busiest season, with 8.3 million calls (AAA). The 2015 and 2024 figures are counted differently (drivers rescued against calls received), so they do not show a decline. Holidays concentrate demand: nearly 600,000 calls over Thanksgiving 2024 (AAA), more than 860,000 over the 2024 year-end holidays (AAA) and more than 350,000 over Memorial Day weekend 2025 (AAA). AAA had over 58 million U.S. members in 2026 (AAA).
Most tows for clubs and insurers are dispatched through networks that contract with independent tow companies. Agero, a private network, says on its website that it handles more than 14 million events a year and has 8,000+ contracted service providers (Agero, company claims), and that 2 out of 3 top insurance carriers use it (Agero, company claims). Urgently, a North American roadside network that agreed on March 13, 2026 to be bought by Agero (Urgent.ly Inc. 10-K), completed about 0.8 million dispatches in 2025, down from about 1.1 million in 2023 and 1.3 million in 2022 (Urgent.ly Inc. 10-K), a fall of 38.5% in three years (our calculation). It had contracts with 13,510 service providers at the end of 2025 (Urgent.ly Inc. 10-K), against 12,182 at the end of 2023 and 14,215 in 2022 (Urgent.ly Inc. 10-K), and says those providers often work for multiple clubs and aggregators at once and choose jobs by rate (Urgent.ly Inc. 10-K). Its revenue fell to $129.2 million in 2025 (Urgent.ly Inc. 10-K) from $184.7 million in 2023 (Urgent.ly Inc. 10-K); its largest clients were 56% of 2025 revenue (Urgent.ly Inc. 10-K), and its post-service satisfaction score was 4.6 out of 5 (Urgent.ly Inc. 10-K). It has handled about 7.2 million requests since it was founded (Urgent.ly Inc. 10-K).
Insurers are selling more roadside cover. Allstate Roadside had 1,244 thousand policies in force at the end of 2025, up from 758 thousand in 2024 and 553 thousand in 2023 (The Allstate Corporation 10-K), a rise of 125.0% in two years (our calculation), and it contributed 46 million dollars of adjusted net income in 2025 (The Allstate Corporation 10-K). Allstate lists the product's services as Towing, jump-starts, lockouts, fuel delivery and tire changes (The Allstate Corporation 10-K).
The trucks come mostly from one maker. Miller Industries, formed in 1990, calls itself "The World's Largest Manufacturer of Towing and Recovery Equipment", a registered trademark, and gives no market share figure in its filings (Miller Industries 10-K). It reported net sales of $790.3 million in fiscal 2025 (Miller Industries 10-K), down from a record $1.26 billion in 2024 (Miller Industries 10-K) and $1.15 billion in 2023 (Miller Industries 10-K), and up from $818,166 thousand in 2019 (Miller Industries 10-K) and $540,966 thousand in 2015 (Miller Industries 10-K): 46.1% higher than ten years earlier (our calculation). Foreign sales were $148.9 million in 2025 (Miller Industries 10-K). It employed about 1,535 people at the end of 2025 (Miller Industries 10-K), against 1,711 a year earlier (Miller Industries 10-K) and 990 in 2015 (Miller Industries 10-K), and sells through about 76 independent distributor locations in North America (Miller Industries 10-K).
In annual reports, towing is mentioned less often than roadside assistance used to be. EDGAR's full-text search finds 93 10-K documents filed in 2015 containing "towing" against 65 in 2025 (SEC EDGAR), while "roadside assistance" went from 23 to 34 (SEC EDGAR) and "tow truck" from 5 to 3 (SEC EDGAR). The counts include exhibits and can change when the SEC re-indexes.
What do the rules cap on nonconsensual towing?
Prices for tows the owner did not ask for are set locally, and they vary by about two to one. Federal law bars states from regulating most motor carrier prices but makes an exception for tow truck operations performed without the owner's consent, an exception last widened in 2015 (U.S. Code, 49 U.S.C. 14501(c)); since 2005 states may also require written authorization before a private property tow (U.S. Code). The table compares the maximum fee for towing a car or light truck from private property without consent, as each rule prints it.
Heavier vehicles cost more: Texas allows $380 for a medium-duty tow and up to $978 for a heavy-duty one (TDLR). Storage is capped separately, in the rules in force in 2026: at $22.85 a day in Texas for vehicles 25 feet or less (TDLR), $48.19 per 24 hours in Colorado (Colorado PUC), $27.60 a day outdoors in Miami-Dade after the first six hours (Miami-Dade County) and $31 a day in Palm Beach County (Palm Beach County). Texas storage lots may add up to $50 for notifying the owner (TDLR) and an impoundment fee of at most $20 (TDLR). Police-ordered tows have their own 2026 caps: $162.81 in Miami-Dade (Miami-Dade County), $193 in Palm Beach County in FY2027 (Palm Beach County), $286.15 an hour for tow and recovery in Colorado (Colorado PUC) and $140 in New York City's rotation programs for some vehicles (NYC DCWP).
The rules also set clocks. California requires the property owner to notify police within one hour (California Legislature) and Maryland the tower within 1 hour (Maryland General Assembly); both California and Florida require storage within a 10-mile radius (California Legislature). California makes a tower who overcharges liable for four times the excess (California Legislature). Maryland bans paid spotters who report parked cars to towers (Maryland General Assembly). Colorado's notification fee is capped at $75.00 (Colorado PUC), and its 2022 Towing Bill of Rights lets an owner take the car back by paying 15% of the fees, up to $60 (Colorado Attorney General). Owners in Texas have 14 days to ask a justice of the peace for a tow hearing (TDLR).
Complaints and enforcement
Texas, the state that licenses tow operators most tightly, publishes the numbers. TDLR counted 31,755 tow company and tow operator licensees in fiscal 2025 (TDLR) and received 2,205 consumer complaints about towing, down from 2,512 in fiscal 2024 (TDLR), a fall of 12.2% (our calculation). The most common allegation was a tow without authority, with 625 cases opened (TDLR), and 110 cases alleged overcharging (TDLR). Only 6.71% of towing cases ended in disciplinary action, against 12.94% across all TDLR programs (TDLR), and they took 290.59 days on average to close (TDLR). TDLR assessed $153,475.00 in penalties (TDLR) and obtained $55,899.74 in restitution for consumers (TDLR) in fiscal 2025.
State attorneys general bring the larger cases. Colorado's settled with Wyatts Towing for $1 million in December 2023 (Colorado Attorney General), after finding about 2,000 owners had each paid a notification fee of at least $75 from 2019 to 2022 (Colorado Attorney General); in November 2024 more than 5,000 consumers were due restitution checks (Colorado Attorney General). In November 2025 a Pennsylvania court ordered the owner of Vince's Towing in Pittsburgh to pay $379,279 in restitution (Pennsylvania Attorney General), after insurers were billed as much as $9,805 for towing a car one-third of a mile (Pennsylvania Attorney General). In March 2026 New York City sued a Bronx tow operator over more than a thousand alleged violations, after a compliance sweep that warned more than 300 tow truck operators citywide (NYC Mayor's Office); the claims are allegations, not findings.
What do the popular towing numbers really say?
"A tow operator is killed every six days"
It is an estimate with no dataset behind it, and the counted figures are lower. The oldest attributable form we found is on the 2016 Wall of the Fallen page of the International Towing & Recovery Hall of Fame & Museum, which credits the chair of its memorial with "one towing operator dies every six days" (International Towing & Recovery Museum). In 2020 he told a TV station the average was 60 deaths a year (KELOLAND News); in 2018 a fleet magazine, citing the museum, said between 50 and 100 (Automotive Fleet). The trade body TRAA calls it "an estimated one operator every six (6) days" without a source (TRAA). News outlets now credit it to AAA: NBC Connecticut in September 2026 attributed a death every six days to "AAA data" (NBC Connecticut), a lender to tow operators repeated every six days in 2022 (Beacon Funding), and a safety-training vendor credits AAA with "every six days" and more than 60 a year (Hard Hat Training). AAA's own research gives no such figure.
What the counts say: BLS's Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries recorded 247 deaths from all causes in the towing industry in 2020-2024, an average of 49.4 a year, or one every 7.4 days (our calculation); "every six days" would mean about 61 a year. Earlier, NIOSH counted 191 towing-industry deaths in 2011-2016 (NIOSH), about one every 11.5 days (our calculation). Deaths from being struck at the roadside are fewer again: the AAA Foundation's 123 roadside assistance providers struck and killed in 2015-2021 (AAA Foundation), which it says were nearly four times what national crash data alone identified (AAA Foundation). Use instead: the BLS count for a given year (46 in 2024), and say whether you mean all work deaths or roadside strikes.
"Tow operators are 15 times more likely to die on the job"
This one holds up, with its comparison group. It comes from NIOSH, which found the towing industry's death rate in 2011-2016 was nearly 43 per 100,000 workers, more than 15 times the 2.8 for all U.S. private industries combined (NIOSH). The nonfatal lost-workday injury rate was 204 per 10,000 full-time workers, only about double the private-industry rate (NIOSH). An insurer's fact sheet relays it faithfully, as "nearly 15 times" (SafetyNow / ICW Group), but Oregon Public Broadcasting in 2021 said the risk was 15 times higher than in "other dangerous private industry jobs such as welding and construction" (OPB), which NIOSH did not say. Use instead: "about 15 times the all-private-industry rate in 2011-2016 (NIOSH)", and note the data are a decade old.
"X million vehicles are towed every year"
No agency counts tows, and the repeated totals have no source. A parking app's blog says approximately 6 million vehicles are towed in the U.S. each year (Parksy) and, further down the same page, approximately 10 million in 2022 (Parksy), naming no source for either. The trade body and the market-research firms publish no count of tows. The largest published figure belongs to one motor club: AAA received over 27 million roadside calls in the U.S. in 2024 (AAA), of which roughly 13 million required a tow (AAA), more than either repeated total for AAA members alone. In 2019 AAA said it handled nearly 30 million roadside calls a year across North America (AAA). Use instead: "AAA alone towed roughly 13 million vehicles for its members in 2024", and say there is no national count.
"The towing industry is worth $X billion"
The repeated totals range from $5.5 billion to $12 billion, and the Census figure sits at the top. A statistics aggregator lists $5.5 billion for 2023 as an "IBISWorld estimate", linking an IBISWorld page that does not print it (Gitnux); a towing-equipment retailer says $9.3 billion in 2018 (MFR Express); a safety-training site says $7.1 billion from an unnamed 2019 report (Hard Hat Training); a lender says IBISWorld reported growth of 2.6 percent a year (Ameris Bank Equipment Finance). IBISWorld's own free page now estimates $12.0bn in 2026 (IBISWorld) across 40,065 businesses (IBISWorld), a modelled figure whose method is paywalled and which it forecasts to decline. The 2022 Economic Census, a count rather than a model, found $11.96 billion in receipts at towing businesses with employees. Use instead: the Economic Census figure, with its year, and add that businesses without employees are not in it.
"Every minute a lane is blocked causes four minutes of delay"
It is a rule of thumb that FHWA states in two different ways. One FHWA page says each minute a freeway lane is blocked during peak use causes an estimated 4 minutes of delay after the incident is cleared (FHWA); another says every minute "multiplies traffic queues by a factor of four" (FHWA). FHWA's own briefing slides credit the 4 minutes figure to Oregon DOT in 2012, which estimated four to six minutes (FHWA). The companion claim, that the risk of a secondary crash rises 2.8% for each minute an incident stays a hazard (FHWA), is credited in the same slides, as 2.8 percent, to "a study published in the ITS Journal" (FHWA). The often-repeated "20% of incidents are secondary", which a state DOT newsletter repeated in October 2024 as "20%" (Nebraska DOT), has no measured national source we could find; FHWA's 2013 self-assessment found secondary incidents were 2.8 percent of incidents at the 15 locations that tracked them (FHWA). Use instead: FHWA's wording, labelled as an estimate.
"Video lifts landing-page conversions by 80%"
It goes back to one vendor's first test on one client's page. In November 2009 EyeView, which sold landing-page video, said its first test, for the online tutor TutorVista, boosted conversion by over 80 percent (EyeView Digital). Its 2010 white paper called over 80% a best case (EyeView Digital), and the one test it described in full, for the trading platform eToro, found almost 32 percent (EyeView Digital). Unbounce turned it into a general rule in August 2010: video "can increase conversion by 80%" (Unbounce). We found no towing company or towing marketer repeating it; the nearest is a video production company telling freight trucking firms that videos lift conversions "by up to 80%" (Beverly Boy Productions). Use instead: no general figure exists; test video on your own pages.
We started from the questions people search for about towing video statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 406 figures from 58 publishers.
On November 3, 2026, each sourced figure on this page was re-fetched with the fetch cache cleared and matched against the recorded wording: BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages open data, occupation wage estimates (through the BLS data API), Employment Projections, the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries and injury rates; Census County Business Patterns, the 2017 and 2022 Economic Census and the Annual Business Survey (through the Census data API); O*NET; the filings of Miller Industries, Urgently and Allstate and EDGAR full-text search; AAA, Agero, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, NIOSH, NHTSA, FHWA, GAO and the Emergency Responder Safety Institute; the statutes, rules and rate sheets of Florida, Texas, Colorado, California, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, New York City and Portland; the attorneys general of Colorado and Pennsylvania; Google, BrightLocal, Autura and Samsara; and the pages behind each popular claim. Where a site refuses automated requests we read an Internet Archive copy. Our carrier and licence counts come from FMCSA's Company Census File and TDLR's licence data on data.transportation.gov and data.texas.gov, and our YouTube figures from the YouTube Data API, all on the same day. We left out TikTok (its robots.txt blocks AI agents), a National Academies report (same reason), TRAA's website (it did not answer), figures known only from news reports or trade-press reprints, Autura's full report (behind a form) and surveys that publish no sample size or field dates.
We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.
Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:
sum of views where channel_class = children's/animation / total views of the 333 rows x 100 (toy/diecast/RC/LEGO channels included: 53 videos and 9.5% of views)
sum of views where channel_class = towing or roadside business and class_flags lacks op (13 videos) / total views x 100; working operators vlogging under a personal or channel name with no company named (flag op) drew another 3.0%
sum of views where channel_class = children's/animation and queries includes 'tow truck' / total views of those 190 rows x 100 (124 videos; the 200 results held 190 unique videos)
rows where channel_class = motor club/insurer/roadside network or class_flags includes auto (26 videos from 18 channels) / 200 x 100; their views / total views x 100
rows where channel_class = motor club/insurer/roadside network (12 channels incl. AAA South Jersey; AAA Northeast; RACQ; Zurich; AAMI; I Need Roadside) / 200; views share
rows where channel_class = towing or roadside business (90 videos from 14 channels) / 200 x 100; views share; The Roadside Tech (52 videos and 70.2% of views) is classed a business on thin evidence
rows where channel_title = The Roadside Tech (52) and their views / total views x 100; classed a roadside business on thin evidence (POV service calls; no company named)
videos_in_part_a_sample = 0 for all 5 organisation rows (two regional AAA clubs, AAA South Jersey and AAA Northeast, appear once each in the roadside list)
This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.
Limitations
Our YouTube read follows YouTube's ranking. The 333 videos are what YouTube's search returned for two queries sorted by views on one day, not a census of towing video; counts are snapshots and include views from ads. We classified channels by hand, and one large roadside channel names no company.
Our carrier count matches names. FMCSA's register has no towing flag, so the TOWING or WRECKER rule misses tow companies named otherwise and keeps repair shops that tow; an active USDOT number does not prove a business is operating.
No one measures towing companies' video use. We found no survey by a trade body, magazine or software vendor of how many towing businesses post video or photos; the consumer surveys cover local businesses generally.
Tow truck drivers have no occupation code of their own. BLS counts them with heavy truck drivers, so the wage figures cover a wider group, and Census publishes no count of towing businesses without employees.
Roadside call volumes come from sellers. AAA, Agero, Urgently and Allstate sell roadside service; their counts are calls or events, not tows, and are defined differently from year to year.
How to cite this page
For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/towing-video-statistics#DRV-201. To cite the page as a whole:
Mark Studios. "Towing Video Statistics." Last verified Nov 3, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/towing-video-statistics
APA
Mark Studios. (2026, November 3). Towing video statistics. https://www.markstudios.com/research/towing-video-statistics
MLA
“Towing Video Statistics.” Mark Studios, 3 Nov. 2026, www.markstudios.com/research/towing-video-statistics.
Chicago
Mark Studios. “Towing Video Statistics.” Last modified November 3, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/towing-video-statistics.
BibTeX
@misc{markstudios_towing_video_statistics_2026,
author = {{Mark Studios}},
title = {{Towing Video Statistics}},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
url = {https://www.markstudios.com/research/towing-video-statistics},
note = {Last verified 2026-11-03}
}
Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.
Towing and Recovery Association of America (trade body), U.S. Move Over Laws (Not stated (earliest Internet Archive capture 2023-09-26)). Accessed 2026-11-03.
We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is February 2027. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.
Nov 3, 2026: First published with 406 figures from 58 publishers, each checked against its original source.
Frequently asked questions
How many towing companies are there in the U.S.?
BLS counted 10,722 towing establishments with employees in 2025, with 73,303 jobs. Our count of FMCSA's carrier register found 53,950 active USDOT carriers with TOWING or WRECKER in their name in November 2026, most of them one-truck operators.
How much do tow truck drivers make?
BLS has no tow truck driver occupation of its own. Heavy and tow truck drivers in road transportation support, the industry group that includes towing, earned a median of $48,810 a year, or $23.47 an hour, in May 2025. Pay per job at towing companies averaged $58,451 in 2025.
How big is the towing industry?
Towing businesses with employees took in $11.96 billion in 2022 according to the Economic Census, up from $7.23 billion in 2017. Census publishes no figure for towing businesses without employees.
How many tow truck drivers are killed each year?
BLS counted 46 work deaths in the towing industry in 2024 and 247 in 2020-2024, from all causes. Roadside strikes are a part of that: the AAA Foundation found 123 roadside assistance providers struck and killed by vehicles in 2015-2021.
Is a tow truck driver killed every six days?
No count supports it. The figure traces to a towing museum's memorial page in 2016 and has no dataset behind it. BLS's count averages 49.4 towing-industry deaths a year from all causes in 2020-2024, about one every 7.4 days, and roadside strike deaths are fewer.
How many cars are towed each year in the U.S.?
No agency counts tows. AAA alone received over 27 million roadside calls in 2024, of which roughly 13 million needed a tow.
What is the maximum fee for a car towed from private property?
It depends on the state or county. Texas caps a light-duty private property tow at $272, Colorado at $250.91, Miami-Dade County at $145.00 and New York City at $125 including three days' storage. Florida and California set no statewide dollar cap.
Do towing companies have to take photos before towing a car?
In some states. Colorado requires at least four photographs before a nonconsensual tow, Connecticut at least two photographs since October 2025, and Oregon at least one photograph, dated and kept for at least two years.
