If you are reading this the day after something happened, take a breath. Nothing here is urgent and none of it is complicated once somebody lays it out. Most of what makes the tow part of a crash feel bad is that it happens while you are still rattled, and nobody explains the choices while they are being made.

So this is the choices, written down slowly. Our neighbors down the page have a separate piece on the checklist at the scene itself. This one is about who decides, and what happens because of it.

Two different tows, and why the difference matters

The first kind is a rotation tow. Law enforcement agencies keep a list of towing companies and work down it in turn, so that when a wreck has to be cleared immediately there is never a question of favoritism about who gets called. When a car is sitting in a travel lane on I-95, or leaking fluid across US 1, or otherwise making the road unsafe, the officer on scene calls dispatch, dispatch calls whoever is up next, and that truck takes the car. Nobody asked your opinion because the road could not wait for it. That is the system working correctly.

The second kind is a consent tow. The car is out of the way, or on a shoulder, or in a parking lot, and there is no emergency forcing anybody’s hand. Here the decision is yours. You pick the company, you name where the car goes, and you sign for it. In most situations in Florida this is how it works, though the specifics can differ by agency and by circumstance, so it is worth confirming with your insurer and asking the officer directly what applies to your scene.

Knowing which one you are in changes what you should do next. If the road is closed and a wrecker is already hooking up, arguing is pointless and your job is to grab your things and write down where the car is going. If nobody is in a hurry, you have time to make an actual decision, and it is worth taking.

The truck that showed up without being called

Sometimes a wrecker arrives that no officer called and you did not call either. The driver is friendly, he is already positioning the truck, and the whole thing has a momentum to it that makes stopping feel rude.

You are allowed to stop it. Being the first truck on scene does not make a company the assigned company, and a driver who arrives on his own is asking for your business the same way any business asks for it. That is a request, and requests can be declined.

What we would want a friend of ours to do is ask three plain things. What company are you with. What is the phone number, and can I see it on the side of the truck and on your paperwork. Where exactly are you taking my car. Then take thirty seconds and look up the company on your phone. A real local company holds up fine under that. If a name and a number do not match what is painted on the door, or the answers get vague, you can say you have already called somebody. You do not owe anybody an explanation for that.

None of this is about the industry being sinister. Most operators in Brevard are decent people doing hard work at bad hours. It is about the fact that you are about to hand a stranger the keys to something expensive while your hands are still shaking, and a thirty second pause costs you nothing.

Take the photos before anything moves

Once the car is on a deck, the conversation about what it looked like beforehand is over. Two minutes with a phone is enough.

Get the car where it sits, from far enough back that you can see the whole vehicle and what is around it. Get each damaged area up close. Then get the parts nobody thinks about: the wheels and tires, because a bent wheel is easy to argue about later, and the interior including the dash, and the odometer.

Two more that matter specifically because of the tow. Photograph the underside if you can see it without crawling anywhere unsafe, since anything hanging down gets blamed on the tow otherwise. And photograph the tow truck itself, including the company name on the door and the plate. That is not hostile. It is the same reason you photograph a rental car in the lot before you drive off, and any operator worth using will not react to it at all.

Where the car goes, and why naming a place matters

When you have the choice, name a destination out loud and make sure it is written on the paperwork. A car with a stated destination goes to that address. A car with no stated destination goes wherever the truck normally puts things, which is a storage yard.

The yard is not a scam. Every towing company needs somewhere to put vehicles, and after a bad wreck at two in the morning a secured lot is the sensible answer. The problem is only that it is the default, and defaults have a way of lasting longer than anybody planned. A car in a yard is behind a gate with hours, which means retrieving anything takes coordination, and it is sitting still while nothing about the repair progresses.

The shop you actually want to use is usually the better destination, when you already know which shop that is. Your own driveway can work too, for a car with cosmetic damage that is not leaking and is not going to become a problem for your HOA. Either way the point is the same: you naming a place is what makes it happen. If the car went to a yard because the scene had to clear, that is fine, and moving it out later is an ordinary job. We do those transfers regularly, and you can send the details to dispatch to get one scheduled.

Get your belongings out while the car is still in front of you

This is the single most practical paragraph on this page. Whatever is in that car is about to become much harder to reach.

Work through it in a loop so you do not miss anything: glovebox, center console, visors, door pockets, under both front seats, the trunk. The items people call about later are the garage remote clipped to the visor, the toll transponder on the windshield, a work badge or laptop in the trunk, and daily medication in a bag they forgot was in there. If you have a child seat, take it, even though a seat that was in a crash gets replaced rather than reused, because you will want it in hand.

If the car is already gone before you thought of this, it is recoverable. You call the yard, you find out their hours, and you bring your license and something showing the car is yours. Annoying, not tragic.

How the tow ties into the adjuster’s paperwork

Your insurance claim and the tow are two separate threads that have to meet. You open the claim, an adjuster gets assigned, and at some point that adjuster has to look at the car, either in person or through photos from the shop. Where the car sits determines how fast that happens, which is the practical reason destination matters.

Keep the tow receipt. It should carry the company name, the date, where the vehicle was picked up, and where it was delivered. If towing is covered under your policy, that document is what gets submitted, and the adjuster’s paperwork moves faster when the details are legible and the destination is unambiguous. Save the crash report number in the same place. If you need a copy of a tow record from us for a claim, ask and we will pull it.

One thing worth being careful about: nobody at a crash scene should be offering to handle your insurance claim for you, steering you to a particular body shop, or asking you to sign something you have not read while you are standing in the road. A tow company’s job is to move the vehicle and give you clean paperwork. That is the whole job.

The opposite of the mystery truck

Everything above adds up to one idea, which is that you should know who has your car. That is most of what people actually want after a wreck. Not a promise, just a name, a number that a person answers, and a truck you can identify.

Ours are hot pink, which started as a branding decision and turned into an accountability one. There is no anonymous version of our truck. When you call (321) 728-1869, a dispatcher tells you the driver’s name and roughly when he will be there, and when he arrives the truck matches what you were told. We run accident and collision towing across Brevard County, and you can see the full list of towns in our service areas.

If you are sitting on a shoulder right now with a car that is not going anywhere, call. If it is the next morning and you are trying to work out where your car ended up and how to get it moved, talk to dispatch and we will help you figure it out even if the tow itself is not ours.