Hendersonville, TN Parking Rules: Towing & Impound Rights (2026)

The controlling rate schedule is Section 9-608 of Title 9, Chapter 6, the city's wrecker service chapter. When the Hendersonville Police Department calls a licensed emergency wrecker service, the maximum fee that service may charge the vehicle operator for a standard vehicle is $125.00. Four labor add-ons are itemized and capped: use of dollies or winching for unusual circumstances beyond the intended purpose of removing the vehicle from the roadway is $35.00; winching without towing is $100.00 plus $25.00 per quarter-hour unit after the first fifteen minutes; labor after the first hour on scene is $60.00 per hour; and mileage outside twenty miles of the Hendersonville city limits may not exceed $2.50 per mile. Storage is $30.00 per day and may be assessed only after the vehicle has been stored for at least twelve hours, so a car retrieved the same evening should carry no storage line at all. These figures were set by Ord. 2013-20 in May 2013.

A second and much older fee track applies when the Police Department impounds a vehicle rather than routing it to a wrecker off the call list. Section 15-704 authorizes officers to remove and impound the vehicle of a person who is arrested, or any vehicle illegally parked, abandoned, or parked so as to obstruct or endanger normal traffic. The impound fee under that section is $35.00 to $45.00, with storage at $10.00 per day. Release is conditional: the vehicle is held until the owner claims it, gives satisfactory evidence of ownership, and pays all applicable fines and costs. The same section sets the abandonment trigger at seventy-two consecutive hours parked on a street or alley without permission from the Chief of Police or a designee, and then only if the owner cannot be located after a reasonable investigation. Section 15-704 was last amended by Ord. 1997-26 in July 1997, so the dollar figures the code prints are nearly three decades old and worth confirming with the department before relying on them.

The chapter puts real timing duties on the wrecker rather than on the owner. Under Section 9-609 the service called must arrive within thirty minutes of notification, or promptly tell the Police Department it cannot so another service can be dispatched. Failing that three times in a calendar month brings a sixty-day suspension from the police call list, and three suspensions inside twelve months means permanent removal. Each service on the call list must make vehicles available for pickup or inspection between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday excluding holidays, within one hour of a request. Any vehicle towed in response to the police call list must be stored in Hendersonville unless the owner agrees to somewhere else.

Owner control over destination is unusually explicit here. Section 9-613 requires the driver, before moving the vehicle, to ask the owner or operator where they want it taken, and to take it there, unless the police believe the vehicle was involved in a crime. Only when no place is designated may the driver haul it to the operator's own storage lot, and if the owner is not present at a parking-violation tow the vehicle goes to the licensee's tow-in lot. The same section makes it unlawful for a wrecker owner, agent, or employee to coerce or insist that a vehicle owner use any particular repair company. Section 9-610 entitles the driver to a written receipt listing the licensee's name, the amount charged, the date, the mileage, and the basis for any additional charges, and the licensee must keep a copy for one year. Section 9-611 requires a daily manifest of every vehicle towed, retained for two calendar years and open to the Chief of Police at any time.

Two structural points shape when the cap applies. Section 9-604 declares the emergency situations that justify immediate removal, namely a vehicle parked, stopped, or standing in violation of a city regulation, one obstructing the orderly flow of traffic, and one so disabled by a wreck or collision that it obstructs traffic; Section 9-605 authorizes officers to order removal in those cases, and from private property where a wrecked vehicle has come to rest there, at the owner's expense. Section 9-617 separately lets the City Administrator contract for removal of a vehicle left unattended in one place on a thoroughfare for two consecutive days, or parked on a thoroughfare without current registration. Section 9-618 confirms that an unlicensed wrecker service may still operate by direct contract with a vehicle owner, which marks the practical boundary of the $125.00 cap: it governs calls made by the Police Department, not a tow the driver arranges privately.