Towing Issues: wait time, tow truck driver, tow company

Question
QUESTION: Say u are sitting and waiting for a hour to get a car how much is it to wait for a hour

ANSWER: I am totally lost here.  Are you a tower who is on Standby to get the vehicle at an accident scene, or something like that, or are you the car owner who is waiting for the tow company to show up and release the vehicle.



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I'm a tow truck driver I was wondering how I can charge for wait time

Answer
well it all depends on the reason that you have to wait.

Generally in your rates you should have a standby time charge, but if you are waiting for a customer to arrive if you got there early then it really is not a good idea to charge for it.

And likewise if you have a good customer or shop you are towing for, I would not be charging standby while you are waiting for them either to get you keys or stuff like that.

Now if you are working an accident and you are told to wait by the police or investigator then you can charge for it as your truck is tied up and you can not do anything else.

Are your rates charged by a hook up and mileage system? or are you charging a hourly rate for the service, time out to time in?

Each of those presents a different challenge in billing.

And if you are doing tows at a flat rate or quoted price then you are stuck.


I hate to say this but your question has so many parts where it would be a different answer for each kind of problem that it would take an hour to two to solve it.

And what does your boss say about this or are you a one truck company where you are the only driver and you own the truck???  More issues there.

I will try to help more but we might have to get into regular e-mail or phone calls to get more done.