Lake Charles, LA Business Licensing & Operations: Towing Companies (2026)

Article IV of Chapter 22, Section 22-120, governs private property tows in Lake Charles, defined as the towing of a vehicle from private property and its storage without the consent of the registered owner, but with the authorization of the property owner or person in control of the property. This is the classic non-consent tow scenario, a car parked in a private lot without permission that gets hauled away at the lot owner's request rather than the vehicle owner's. The ordinance requires every wrecker operator, after performing such a tow within the City of Lake Charles, to notify the police department of the tow and to provide a description of the vehicle, the vehicle's license number, the name of the towing franchise, and the time of the tow, all within one hour after the vehicle arrives at the wrecker operator's storage facility.

This one-hour notification window exists so that a vehicle owner who reports their car missing or stolen can be quickly matched against the police department's private-tow log rather than filing an unnecessary theft report. Separately, emergency and rotation-list wreckers that respond to police-initiated calls operate under Article III, Sections 22-94 through 22-96, which requires compliance with the Louisiana Towing and Storage Act and the state Towing, Recovery, and Storage Rules, sets response-time windows of 35 minutes for standard wreckers and 45 minutes for heavy-duty tows, and lets the police chief add or remove operators from the call-out rotation list.

Article IV's private-property-tow notification duty is distinct from that rotation-list scheme; it applies to tows a wrecker operator arranges directly with a property owner or manager, not tows dispatched by police. The Code does not spell out a specific dollar penalty for skipping the one-hour notification under Article IV, so a violation falls back on the Code's general penalty provision, which treats any unspecified violation of a city ordinance as a misdemeanor.