Walla Walla County, WA Business Licensing & Operations: Towing Companies (2026)

WWCC 10.34.010(A) adopts by reference twenty-six specific sections of RCW 46.55, covering who may order a tow, notice to registered and legal owners, redemption and lien procedures, and licensing of tow truck operators. Rather than writing its own substantive towing code, the county incorporates those state sections wholesale so that any wrecker company operating in unincorporated Walla Walla County, including non-consent tows from private property or county rights-of-way, follows the same licensing, notice, storage and fee limits set statewide. WWCC 10.34.010(B) then localizes the process: hearings that a vehicle owner requests under RCW 46.55.120 to contest an impound are heard by the Walla Walla County District Court rather than a state hearing officer, and that court can waive its own filing fee under General Rule 34 for parties who cannot afford it.

WWCC 10.34.010(C) adds a further local layer, directing the District Court to weigh the reasonableness of a towing company's fees and charges under the Washington Supreme Court's 2021 decision in City of Seattle v. Long, 198 Wn.2d 136, which addressed towing and storage fees imposed on a vehicle owner. Because the tow procedures themselves are the adopted RCW sections rather than separate county text, the impound authority cited elsewhere in Title 10, including the county-lot and overnight-parking chapters, cross-references this same chapter for how any tow actually proceeds once a vehicle is ordered removed.