Yuma, AZ Business Licensing & Operations: Towing Companies (2026)

Section 212-04, carried forward from '80 Code § 28-49 by Ordinance 1798 in 1978, applies whenever a vehicle is towed or transported without the owner's express permission, covering trespass tows from private lots as well as any other non-consent tow a company performs in the city. Before moving the vehicle, the person or company doing the towing must first notify the Police Department of the intent to tow and disclose five specific facts: the vehicle owner's name and address if known, the vehicle's license number and description, the reason the vehicle is being moved without the owner's permission, the location the vehicle is being taken to, and the name and address of the towing person or company.

The section sits in Chapter 212's Stopping, Standing and Parking title alongside the city's own impoundment authority: § 212-03 lets the Police Department take any vehicle into custody that is found violating a parking or standing law, under direction of the Chief of Police, and § 212-02 sets up a presumption that a vehicle's registered owner was the person who parked it in violation, useful once a towed vehicle's owner disputes the tow. Because the notice must come before the tow, not after, a private towing company operating in Yuma has to loop in police dispatch on every non-consent tow, giving a vehicle owner searching for a missing car a police record to check.