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This one is a little smaller than the other regulatory changes I have been writing about, but it is the kind of thing that catches operators off guard if they are not paying attention to county notices.

Starting February 1, 2025, Howard County stopped absorbing the merchant service fees associated with payments made by credit card or ACH to the county. That applies to towing companies paying their licensing fees to the county. Before February, if you paid your towing company registration by credit card, the county was covering the processing fee on their end. Starting in February, that fee gets passed to the company making the payment. The fee amount shows up during the checkout process so you can see it before you confirm.

This is not a huge dollar amount on its own. Credit card processing fees typically run somewhere between 2 and 3 percent of the transaction. On a $250 annual towing license fee, that is probably somewhere between $5 and $7.50. The reason it is worth mentioning is that if you have your county licensing payments set up on autopay or if you just renew the same way you always have without checking the total, you are going to see a slightly higher number and you will want to know why.

Howard County’s trespass tow law requires that towing companies operating in the county maintain a current registration certificate from the Maryland MVA for each truck, carry proof of insurance for each truck, and follow the procedures laid out under the county’s trespass towing rules. Those rules cover what information has to be posted at a property before a nonconsensual tow can be authorized, what the vehicle owner’s rights are when they try to retrieve their vehicle before the tow is completed, and what fees can be charged.

The trespass tow law in Howard County, like similar laws in other Maryland counties, is meant to regulate nonconsensual towing from private property, which is the area of the towing industry that generates the most consumer complaints. The rules around signage, fee caps, and retrieval rights exist because before those rules were in place, nonconsensual towing from private property was an area where abuse was common and vehicle owners had limited recourse.

For my operation, changes like the credit card fee shift are a reminder to review what county payments look like on an annual basis. Licensing fees, per-truck charges, and the terms around payment methods can change and the notices do not always come with a lot of lead time. Howard County gave notice that the change was coming on February 1, but if you were not reading the county’s communications to towing companies you could have missed it.

If you pay county fees by ACH rather than credit card, the same change applies to those payments. ACH fees are generally lower than credit card fees, but they are no longer being absorbed by the county either.

It is worth checking with any county you operate in to see whether similar changes to payment processing policies are coming. This is not unique to Howard County. Counties across Maryland have been moving toward making fee payers responsible for their own transaction costs, and that trend is probably going to continue.

Fairfax County, Virginia made some significant changes to its trespass towing rules at the end of 2025, and if you operate or are thinking about operating in Northern Virginia it is worth knowing what changed and why.

On December 9, 2025, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to raise the maximum base charge for trespass towing from $150 to $210 for passenger cars. That is a 40 percent increase. The board also increased the maximum daily storage fee from $50 to $70. For vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating between 7,501 and 10,000 pounds, the hookup and initial towing fee went from $250 to $305. The new fees took effect immediately after the vote.

The increase was driven partly by a change in Virginia state law and partly by a 2024 report from the Virginia State Corporation Commission, which recommended raising the maximum hookup fee for passenger cars. Virginia Code Section 46.2-1233.1 previously capped the hookup and initial towing fee for passenger cars at $150. Virginia Senate Bill 1332 changed that, setting a new maximum of $210. Fairfax County’s Trespass Towing Advisory Board had been working through proposed changes for most of 2025 before the Board of Supervisors took the final vote.

Not everyone was happy about the increase. During the public hearing before the vote, a resident named David Davis called the $210 fee “ridiculous” and “predatory.” Another resident, Krista White, pointed out that people sometimes get towed for minor things like forgetting to display a residency permit in their own apartment parking lot. Those are fair concerns and they reflect a tension that comes up constantly in the nonconsensual towing business. The fees have to cover actual operating costs, but from a resident’s perspective getting a $210 bill for parking in the wrong spot still feels harsh.

Michael Fernandez, who owns Battlefield Towing in the area, testified at the hearing that the increase is not about excess or greed. He is right that costs have gone up. Fuel, insurance, equipment, and labor are all more expensive than they were when the $150 cap was originally set.

There was also a structural change to how Fairfax County licenses trespass tow operators. The county replaced its registration system with a mandatory operator permit issued by the Department of Cable and Consumer Services. Under the new rules, any tow truck Fairfax VA operator doing trespass towing in the county must hold a current operator permit, renew it annually by January 31, and have valid tow truck driver registrations issued by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services for each driver. The initial application fee and annual renewal fee for operators storing vehicles inside Fairfax County is $50. Existing registrations converted automatically to permits under the transition, but companies will need to go through the full renewal process going forward.

There was also a separate change that went into effect earlier, in October 2024, around apartment and condominium towing. A new state law required that towing operators give residents of multi-family properties at least 48 hours written notice before towing a vehicle with expired registration or inspection stickers. The notice has to go to both the resident and their landlord. Operators who skip the notice requirement face a $100 civil penalty and have to cover the towed vehicle owner’s costs. Several Fairfax County towing companies were already following the new rules before the county formally updated its ordinance in October 2024 to match the state law.

If you are doing private property towing in Northern Virginia, the combination of the new fee schedule, the permit requirement, and the 48-hour notice rule for residential properties means there is more administrative structure around nonconsensual towing in Fairfax County than there was two years ago. That is probably the direction things are going to keep moving.

I get asked about police rotation lists fairly often, usually from people who are newer to the industry and want to start doing police-initiated work. I am going to write down what I know from operating in Maryland, with the understanding that the specific requirements vary by county and you need to check with the relevant county department before assuming anything applies to your situation.

The first thing to understand is that in Maryland, police-initiated towing is regulated at the county level, not the state level. Each county sets its own fee schedules, equipment requirements, response time windows, and rotation procedures. What applies in Montgomery County does not necessarily apply in Howard County, and what applies in Howard County does not necessarily apply in Harford County. You have to research each jurisdiction separately.

In most Maryland counties, to get on the police rotation list you need a towing company license issued by the county, proof of insurance for each truck you operate, a registration certificate from the Maryland MVA for each truck, and storage facilities that meet the county’s zoning and fencing requirements. Anne Arundel County charges an annual license fee of $250 plus $25 per truck, with licenses expiring on August 31. Other counties have their own fee structures.

Storage requirements are not trivial. In Baltimore County, the regulations specify that an applicant needs a secure fenced-in storage facility with capacity for 30 or more vehicles. The fencing has to be maintained and free of holes. The facility also needs to have a fax machine, a computer with broadband internet, a printer, and a cell phone capable of receiving texts. Those last requirements may seem like they go without saying in 2025, but they are written into the county’s towing regulations because at some point they were apparently not going without saying.

Response time is one of the most important factors in staying on a rotation list. For light and medium duty calls in counties like Montgomery and Frederick, the typical expectation is 15 to 30 minutes. For heavy duty calls, the window is longer, usually up to 40 minutes in counties that have published those standards, with some allowance for weather and traffic. If you consistently miss your response windows, you will be moved down the list or removed from it. There is no gray area there. Missing windows is the most common reason companies lose rotation standing.

Drivers also have to be approved individually in some counties. In Anne Arundel, all drivers have to be approved by the Police Department’s Special Operations Division Towing Coordinator. That means you cannot just hire someone and put them on a police call without going through that approval process first.

One thing worth knowing is that Maryland regulates the fees you can charge on police-initiated tows. You cannot set your own rates for those calls. There are published fee schedules for towing, hook-up, and storage, and if you charge more than what the schedule allows, you are going to face complaints and potential enforcement action. Harford County publishes its rotation areas, fee structures, and requirements publicly, and most counties do the same.

If you are trying to get on a rotation list in a new county, the honest path is to contact the relevant licensing office, get the current regulations, make sure your equipment and facility actually meet the requirements before you apply, and then be realistic about your response time capacity based on where your trucks are actually located. Getting on the list is the easy part. Staying on it comes down to showing up on time, every time, and keeping your equipment in the condition the county requires.

Anne Arundel County passed Bill 77-24 in late 2024, and it took effect in early 2025. The bill reorganized how police-initiated towing works in the county by formally separating heavy duty and light duty towing into two different rotation lists with different equipment requirements for each.

Before this change, the county’s rotation list did not draw as sharp a line between light and heavy duty calls. Bill 77-24 introduced formal definitions for both categories and set specific equipment standards that a company has to meet in order to qualify for each list. Light duty covers vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating under 26,000 pounds. Heavy duty covers larger vehicles and situations that require specialized equipment.

For heavy duty towing in Anne Arundel County, the requirements in the new bill are specific. Companies applying for the heavy duty list need the right equipment to handle those calls, and the police department has discretion to determine what equipment is required for a specific recovery. If the department decides that specific equipment is needed for a job that a heavy duty applicant does not have, it can make that determination and the company has to work with it.

There is also a piece in the bill about debris cleanup at collision scenes. The bill puts in writing that tow truck operators are required to clean all debris from a collision scene, including glass, auto parts, and any absorbents used during the cleanup. This is not a brand new concept. The Anne Arundel County Police Department’s own written directives already made the officer on scene responsible for ensuring that the tow company cleaned up the debris. But having it codified in the county ordinance makes it a formal legal requirement rather than just a department policy.

I want to say something about the separate rotation lists because I think this is a change that makes sense operationally but creates a real barrier for smaller operators. If you are a small company that has been doing light duty police calls in the county, the new structure is fine for you as long as you stay on the light duty list. But if you want to get on the heavy duty list, the equipment requirements are not cheap. You are talking about trucks with significant boom ratings and the capacity to handle commercial vehicles and recoveries that are not standard.

Baltimore County already had something similar in place. Baltimore County’s 2025 police towing regulations specify that for heavy duty, an applicant needs at least two trucks, with one having a boom rating of 25 tons or more. Light and medium duty companies in Baltimore County have a 20-minute response window for police calls, while heavy duty has a 40-minute window, with an extra 10 minutes allowed for traffic or weather. Anne Arundel’s new structure is moving in a similar direction.

If you are thinking about getting onto the Anne Arundel heavy duty list under the new framework, the first step is to look at exactly what equipment the county requires and then honestly assess your fleet. The police department has discretion over what it determines is needed for any given call, and if you show up without what is needed you are not going to stay on that list for long.

If you do private property impound work in Anne Arundel County, there is something you need to know. As of January 1 of this year, all private tow companies operating in the county are required to log their private property impounds through the Autura PPI portal, which stands for Private Property Impound. This is a web-based reporting system that the county uses to track vehicles towed from private property and to give vehicle owners a way to locate their car and get an estimate of fees.

Anne Arundel County has been using Autura for its police-initiated towing dispatch since 2018, when the county awarded Autura a contract to manage dispatch and impound services for the Anne Arundel County Police Department. The extension of that system to private property impounds is a newer development and it changes the administrative side of doing nonconsensual tows from parking lots and private roads in the county.

The way it works is that when you tow a vehicle from private property in Anne Arundel County, you are now required to log into the Autura PPI portal and enter the tow. The county published instructions for towing companies along with a letter explaining the procedure changes. Vehicle owners can then go to autura.com or call a customer service line at 301-468-7342 to locate their vehicle and see a fee estimate before they even show up at the lot. Complaints and questions from the public about towing in the county go to towing@aacounty.org or to the Department of Inspections and Permits Licensing section at 410-222-7788.

I have mixed feelings about systems like this. On one hand, the transparency piece is useful. When someone can look up their vehicle online and see what the fees are before they drive over, it tends to reduce the confrontation at the window. That part I do not mind. Nobody enjoys an argument with someone who was not expecting the number they are about to pay.

On the other hand, adding a required digital reporting step to every private property tow means more time on the administrative side of each job. If you are doing volume, that adds up. The portal has to work correctly and the county’s system has to be accessible, and like any software it is not going to be perfect every time.

If you are operating in Anne Arundel County and have not yet gone through the setup process for Autura PPI reporting, that is now overdue. The county’s towing page has the instructions and a link to the web portal. Getting your account set up properly before you need it is a lot better than trying to figure it out after you have already completed a tow and need to log it.

This kind of digital reporting requirement is probably going to spread to other Maryland counties over time. Anne Arundel is not the only county using Autura, and the push toward electronic record-keeping in towing has been building for a few years now at both the county and state level.

A new law went into effect in Maryland on October 1, 2025 that changes how towing companies are required to notify vehicle owners after a tow. I want to walk through what it actually says because I think there is some confusion out there about what changed and what did not.

The law is HB191, which was also introduced in the Senate as SB40. It passed the General Assembly unanimously earlier in 2025 and was signed into law by Governor Wes Moore. The Towing Recovery Professionals of Maryland, which is the state’s main industry association, supported the bill and actually helped shape how the notification process was going to work.

Here is the problem the law was trying to fix. Under the old rules, a towing company that took a vehicle was required to notify the police within one hour and then send written notice to the vehicle owner by certified mail within seven business days. Seven business days is a long time. The Consumer Protection Division of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office testified during a House Environment and Transportation Committee hearing in Annapolis in January 2025 that this process was leaving vehicle owners not knowing what happened to their car for up to a week. That is frustrating for owners and it creates more storage fees building up in the meantime, which leads to complaints directed at us.

What HB191 does is require towing companies to notify the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration electronically after any tow. The MVA then sends an email notification to the vehicle owner using whatever email address the owner has on file with the MVA. If the owner does not respond within seven days, the certified mail process still kicks in as a backup. So the old mail requirement did not go away entirely. It is now a fallback rather than the first step.

One thing the Towing Recovery Professionals of Maryland worked out with the MVA during the interim period before the law passed was that the MVA would send the notification using its own records rather than having towers handle owner email addresses directly. That matters for privacy reasons and it also puts the responsibility for contact information accuracy on the MVA rather than on us.

From a practical standpoint, what this means for our operation is that we now have an electronic reporting step that has to happen after every tow, not just police-initiated ones. The notification has to go to the MVA, and that system has to be in place and working before we pull out of the lot. That adds a small amount of time on the administrative side of each call.

I think the law is reasonable overall. Most of the time when someone’s car gets towed they find out quickly because they go looking for it and it is gone. But there are situations where people park somewhere, come back much later, and genuinely have no idea what happened. An email notification that goes out within a few hours is better than a certified mail letter that arrives a week later. It reduces the number of phone calls we get from confused owners and it cuts down on storage disputes because people know sooner and can act sooner.

If you are running a towing operation in Maryland and have not yet set up your MVA electronic notification process, that is something to get sorted out. The law is now in effect and the reporting obligation applies to all companies towing in the state.