Delaware Towing Laws: Fee Limits, Recovery, and Your Rights

Under Delaware towing laws, a company that tows your vehicle without your consent cannot charge more than $250 for the tow or more than $50 per day for storage, and it must have followed a specific set of rules before hooking up your car. Miss any of those rules and you are entitled to a full refund of everything you paid plus your actual damages. The framework lives in Title 21, Chapter 69A of the Delaware Code, and violations are enforceable by the Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Unit.¹

What a Towing Company Can Charge

For nonconsensual tows of noncommercial vehicles and rental vehicles, Delaware sets hard ceilings:

Towing fee: $250 maximum
Storage: $50 per day maximum
After-hours release: $50 maximum
Anything else: not allowed. The statute prohibits additional towing-related fees beyond those numbers.²

Fees below those caps can still be challenged. Under § 6907A, a charge is presumed excessive if it exceeds the towing company’s own usual rate for consensual tows by more than 25%, or if it exceeds the going rate for nonconsensual tows in the same county by more than 50%. Local municipal ordinances may set lower ceilings, and those local numbers override the state caps.²

Payment method matters too. Towing companies and storage lots must accept all major credit and debit cards. If the facility does not, it must keep an operating ATM on site with reasonable access fees. A cash-only demand with no ATM is unlawful.³

When a Nonconsensual Tow Is Legal

Chapter 69A covers nonabandoned vehicles weighing 5,000 pounds or less when the owner has not consented and police have not ordered the removal. Three conditions must all be met before a private-lot tow is lawful: the towing company holds a contract with the parking area owner, proper signage is posted, and the vehicle is photographed to document the unauthorized parking.²

The signs are not optional decoration. They must be posted conspicuously at every vehicular entrance, use lettering at least one inch tall, warn that unauthorized vehicles will be towed, spell out any parking restrictions, and display the towing company’s name, address, and phone number.⁴ A missing sign, or a sign without the company’s contact information, means the tow did not meet the statutory requirements.

If the parking area is held open to the general public, the towing company also needs prior written authorization from the parking area owner for that specific tow. The authorization can be electronic, but it must include the authorizer’s name, phone number, email, date and time, and a signature.² A tower cannot simply cruise the lot and decide to hook up a car.

Photos and paperwork must stay in the towing company’s records for at least two years, and you can request copies at any time, free of charge, delivered electronically if you ask.² Requesting the pre-tow photograph is the fastest way to test whether a tow was legitimate. Within one hour of the tow, the company must also notify the police department in the jurisdiction where the parking area sits, which is how you locate your car if you come back to an empty space.³

Stopping a Tow and Getting Your Car Back

If you catch the tow in progress, timing controls the price. Before the tow truck is physically attached to your vehicle, the company must stop and cannot charge you anything. If the truck is already attached but has not left the parking area, the company must still stop, but it can charge a drop fee of up to 50% of the standard tow fee, which caps at $125 for a noncommercial vehicle.²

You can also call the towing company before your car reaches the storage lot. If you arrange retrieval by phone, the company can charge the full tow fee but cannot add storage or any other fees, provided you pick the vehicle up within 24 hours.²

Once your car is at the lot, you have the right to retrieve personal belongings at no cost during normal business hours with valid ID. After-hours access must be reasonably available for the $50 fee. One rule the storage facilities tend to skip: if the lot cannot get you access within 90 minutes of you following its posted instructions between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., it cannot charge you any storage fees or the after-hours fee for that day.³

If You Leave the Car There

Storage runs at $50 a day, and the lien process moves quickly. To assert a lien for unpaid towing and storage, the company must send you a certified letter within 30 days of the tow. That letter has to include an itemized list of fees to date, any fees that will keep accruing, and a warning that a lien will be asserted if you do not retrieve the car and pay within 60 days of receiving the notice.² Skipping or botching that notification kills the lien.

A separate track applies to abandoned vehicles under Title 21, Chapter 44, which sweeps in vehicles that are inoperable, wrecked, displaying plates expired by 30 or more days, or missing major components. For vehicles eight years old or older, the wrecker owner has five calendar days to contact the Division of Motor Vehicles to identify the owner, then 10 days after getting DMV information to notify the owner by certified mail. The owner then has five calendar days to satisfy the lien or contest it in Justice of the Peace Court. No response, and the wrecker can dispose of the vehicle.⁵

What You Can Recover If the Tow Was Illegal

If the towing company broke any provision of Chapter 69A, you are entitled to a full refund of every fee you paid plus your actual damages incurred in retrieving the vehicle. If the company also refused to let you access personal belongings, it is separately liable for consequential damages. Every towing company and storage facility involved is jointly and severally liable, so you can pursue any or all of them for the full amount.⁶

Attorney’s fees are recoverable through a specific procedure. Send a written settlement offer at least 10 business days before filing suit. If the company rejects it or ignores it for 10 business days, and the court ultimately awards you at least as much as your offer, the court must order the company to pay your reasonable attorney’s fees and costs. That is what makes a $300 dispute worth a lawyer’s time. The statutory remedies also do not replace any other legal remedy you might have, including criminal complaints and separate civil claims.⁶

Two practical paths for pushing a complaint forward:

File a consumer complaint with the Delaware Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Unit. House Bill 67 made Chapter 69A violations unlawful practices under Delaware’s consumer protection statutes, which gives the unit authority to investigate and take enforcement action. Complaints are filed through the Department of Justice website.¹⁷
File in Delaware’s Justice of the Peace Court, which handles civil claims up to $25,000. You can bring a debt action for money paid on an illegal tow, or a trespass action if the towing company damaged your vehicle.⁸

Extra Protection for Active-Duty Servicemembers

If the vehicle owner is on active duty, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act blocks a towing company or storage facility from foreclosing on or enforcing a lien during military service and for 90 days afterward without a court order. A court can stay the proceedings or adjust the debt to protect the servicemember. Knowingly violating this protection is a federal misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine, and towing companies are expected to verify military status through the Defense Manpower Data Center before auctioning or disposing of a stored vehicle.⁹

1
Delaware General Assembly. House Bill 67
2
Delaware Code Online. Delaware Code Title 21 Chapter 69A – Removal of Motor Vehicles from Private or Public Property Without Consent
3
Justia. Delaware Code 21-6906A – Storage of Nonconsensually-Towed Motor Vehicles
4
Justia. Delaware Code 21-6904A – Consent for Towing; Exceptions
5
Delaware Code Online. Delaware Code Title 21 Chapter 44 – Abandoned Vehicles
6
Justia. Delaware Code 21-6909A – Damages, Compensation, and Penalties
7
Delaware Department of Justice. Consumer Complaints
8
Delaware Code Online. Delaware Code Title 10 Chapter 93 – Jurisdiction and Venue
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3958 – Enforcement of Storage Liens