Mississippi Towing: The Drop Fee Ban Covers Only Trucks Over 15,000 Pounds

The Mississippi Legislature passed Laws, 2024, ch. 384 and created a new Title 63 chapter headed Nonconsensual Towing of Commercial Vehicles, effective July 1, 2024. Read the definitions in Sec. 63-37-1 before you read anything else in it. A commercial vehicle is defined in Sec. 63-37-1(n) as a self-propelled or motored device designed primarily to transport passengers or property with a gross vehicular weight rating of fifteen thousand pounds or more. Nonconsensual towing in Sec. 63-37-1(b) is limited to the moving, transporting or recovery of a commercial vehicle. Heavy-duty towing means a gross vehicle rating over 26,000 pounds and medium-duty towing means over 15,000 up to 26,000 pounds. A drop fee is defined in Sec. 63-37-1(l) as a fee charged to unhook a commercial motor vehicle from a tow truck. Nothing in the chapter reaches a car, pickup or SUV under that weight, so the widely repeated claim that Mississippi now bans drop fees is only half true.

Within its scope the chapter is strict. Section 63-37-13(3) forbids the towing and recovery service from assessing a drop fee to release the vehicle after it is hooked up but before it leaves the private property. Section 63-37-13(2) requires authorization before the hook-up: either a law enforcement officer requested a police-initiated tow from a service on the tow list, or the private property owner gave permission, and the statute adds that a towing service shall not tow from private property without the owner or operator of that property giving written permission. Section 63-37-13(2)(c) requires signage visible and facing the driver at each entryway, stating that vehicles parked without authorization or inappropriately or illegally parked are subject to being towed, carrying the international towing symbol no smaller than four inches by four inches, permanently mounted no lower than five feet and no higher than eight feet.

Section 63-37-13(1) adds a photographic record. Before connecting the vehicle the service must take at least four photographs, one each from the front, rear, driver's side and passenger's side, each showing the entire vehicle from that angle with the vehicle filling at least three-fourths of the frame measured side to side, plus a fifth photograph showing the reason for the tow, including any sign the vehicle was towed for violating. Copies must be produced on demand of the vehicle owner or operator, the owner's designee, the Department of Transportation or the Commercial Vehicle Towing Advisory Committee, and failure to produce them creates a rebuttable presumption that the service had no authority to tow.

Rates are set by rule rather than by the statute. Section 63-37-5(b) directs the Commercial Vehicle Towing Advisory Committee to establish statewide maximum towing and storage rates for nonconsensual tows, including tows from private property and including maximum administrative fees. A service may charge less than the approved statewide rate but never more, may not charge or retain any fee the committee has not listed, and the schedule must be reviewed annually against consensual towing market rates. Section 63-37-5(c) requires the committee to ban per-pound billing, which Sec. 63-37-1(k) defines as multiplying the weight of the vehicle, equipment or cargo by a monetary amount. Section 63-37-5(d) required a Towing Service Standard Manual no later than January 1, 2025, containing rules on itemized invoices, factors for deciding whether a charge is fair, equitable and reasonable, a complaint investigation process, a service-charge dispute process with deadlines and a hearing and cessation of storage fees while the dispute runs, an appeals route, and discipline including removal from the tow list. Ask the committee for the current schedule before paying a commercial towing invoice, because the ceiling is in the rule, not in the code.

Two more commercial protections are worth naming. Section 63-37-7(2) requires the service to give the owner, the operator or the owner's designee reasonable access to collect personal property from the vehicle regardless of whether the towing charges have been paid, and Sec. 63-37-7(3) requires immediate release of the vehicle once an undisputed invoice is paid. Section 63-37-7(1) and Sec. 63-37-11(2) both require that a vehicle towed nonconsensually in Mississippi be stored in Mississippi, and Sec. 63-37-11(2) further requires that private-property tows of illegally parked commercial vehicles be performed by Mississippi-based towers. Section 63-37-15 bars a towing service from using a vehicle immobilization device, a boot, except under the direction of law enforcement. Section 63-37-11(1) makes it unlawful for a law enforcement officer to take compensation for steering a tow, to hold a financial interest in a towing service, or to recommend one, and for a towing service to employ spotters whose primary task is to report improperly parked commercial vehicles for towing.

For everything under 15,000 pounds, Miss. Code Ann. Sec. 85-7-251 is the operative law, and it is a lien and notice statute rather than a rate statute. Subsection (1) makes the owner liable for the reasonable price of towing and storage and gives the towing company a possessory lien until it is paid, whether the tow was at the owner's request, at the direction of a law enforcement officer, or at the request of a property owner whose land the vehicle was left on without permission. Subsection (2) then sets the timetable: report the tow to the local law enforcement agency with jurisdiction within 24 hours unless the owner asked for it; if the owner has not made contact within five business days, obtain the names and addresses of any owner and lienholder from the appropriate authority, and if that fails, make a good faith effort to trace ownership including checking tag information, the inspection sticker and papers in the vehicle; notify owner and lienholder by registered mail of the amount due, postmarked no later than the tenth day after the tow.

If the bill is unpaid 30 days after the initial tow, the company must send a certified-mail notice of sale to any legal owner and lienholder, and if the vehicle is not redeemed within 10 days after that letter is mailed it may go to public auction, advertised for two consecutive weeks in a newspaper circulating in the county where the vehicle was first towed. Sale proceeds above the towing, reasonable storage and necessary expenses are held for six months, and if unclaimed they become county property and are paid to the chancery clerk of the county where the sale was held for deposit in the county general fund, subject to a recorded lienholder's rights. The section was rewritten by Laws, 2020, ch. 462, Sec. 1, effective on its approval on July 8, 2020.

Section 85-7-251(3) carries the sharpest consumer remedy in Mississippi towing law: failure to make a good faith effort to comply with the section precludes the imposition of any storage charges or towing charges against the towed vehicle. That is a complete defence, not a discount, and it is why the 24-hour law enforcement report, the five-business-day trace and the tenth-day registered letter matter so much. Section 85-7-251(4) requires every towing company to keep accurate records for three years identifying the vehicles towed and stored and the steps taken to comply, which is the paper trail to demand when you dispute a bill.

On the commercial side, the enforcement route is the Commercial Vehicle Towing Advisory Committee rather than a court in the first instance: Sec. 63-37-5(d)(iii) through (vi) require the committee's manual to create a complaint process, a service-charge dispute process that halts storage fees while the dispute is pending, an appeal from the committee's determination, and discipline up to suspension or removal from the tow list, and Sec. 63-37-5(d)(vii) gives the Department of Public Safety its own removal process. A missing set of photographs is itself evidence: under Sec. 63-37-13(1)(c) the failure to produce them creates a rebuttable presumption that the tower had no authority to tow at all.