What a Tow Is Legally Allowed to Cost in Broward

People ask what a tow "should" cost in Broward and get wildly different answers, because there are two completely different kinds of tow and only one of them is rate-regulated.

Which one you are dealing with comes down to a single question: did you call the truck, or did someone else?

Non-consent tows are capped

A non-consent tow is one you did not arrange — your car towed from a private lot, an apartment space you were not entitled to, or a vehicle removed at the direction of law enforcement after a crash or a violation.

Florida law lets counties set maximum rates for those, and Broward County does. The operator may charge less than the maximum but not more, and the schedule covers the separate pieces of the bill rather than one lump sum: the hookup or service call, a per-mile charge, storage for each day the vehicle sits, and a release fee for getting it back outside normal hours.

Those are ceilings, not the price. Two companies working the same lot can legitimately charge different amounts.

Consent tows are not

This is the part that surprises people. If you break down and call for a truck yourself, that is a consent tow — you and the company are agreeing a price, and the county's maximum schedule is not what governs it.

Which means the protection on a consent tow is the conversation before the truck rolls, not an ordinance afterward. Ask for the total, not the hookup rate: what it costs to hook up, what the mileage runs, where it is going, and whether anything changes if the car will not roll or has to come off a soft shoulder.

A company that will not give you a number on the phone is telling you something useful.

What you are entitled to either way

An itemized receipt, showing each charge separately rather than one total. Rates posted or produced on request. And on a stored vehicle, access to retrieve personal belongings from inside it — a storage lot holding your car is not holding your possessions.

If a bill on a non-consent tow looks wrong, the itemized version is what makes it checkable, because you can compare each line against the county's published maximum rather than arguing about the total.

A cap is a maximum, not a price

Two things get confused here. A published maximum is the highest an operator may charge for a specified service; it is not the rate everybody charges, and it is not a guarantee that a lower quote is unavailable. On a consent tow, where you are choosing, the cap is largely irrelevant because you can simply ask two companies.

The other confusion is scope. A rate schedule covers named services, typically the hookup, the mileage and daily storage. Charges that sit outside those categories are not automatically capped, and an invoice can be entirely lawful while still containing lines you did not expect. Administrative and after-hours charges are the ones worth reading closely.

That is the practical reason to insist on itemization rather than a total. A single figure cannot be checked against anything. A list can be read line by line, and the lines that do not correspond to a scheduled service are the ones to ask about first.

Ask for it at the counter rather than afterward. Once you have paid and driven away, obtaining a breakdown from a busy lot becomes a phone call nobody returns, and the itemization is the only thing that makes a later complaint reviewable by anyone.

Check the current schedule

Broward's maximum rates are set by ordinance and revised from time to time, so any specific figure quoted online — including on a towing company's own site — is worth verifying against the county's current published schedule rather than trusted.

That is also the honest answer to "what should this have cost": look up the maximum in force on the day of the tow, then read the itemization against it.

If you are choosing the truck

You are in the consent-tow situation, which means you have the one thing a non-consent tow never gives you — the ability to ask first.

Davie Towing quotes the whole job before dispatch: hookup, mileage, and anything the situation adds. Call (954) 758-5905 with where the vehicle is, where it is going, and whether it rolls, and you will get a number rather than a range.