South Dakota Towing Rules: Written Permission, a 24-Hour Report, and Forfeited Fees

The operator in these statutes is the "removal agency," defined by SDCL 32-36-2(5) as any public body or private or nonprofit organization authorized to remove and salvage abandoned and junk motor vehicles and other scrap metals, including a business in the trade of removing or salvaging vehicles. The same section defines an abandoned motor vehicle as one left on a public street or highway, or left on private property without the permission of the landowner or tenant, and its list of covered vehicles is broad: automobiles, boats, house trailers, mopeds, motor trucks, motorcycles, off-road vehicles, snowmobiles, and trailers all count.

For a tow from a private lot, SDCL 32-36-4.1 is the controlling rule and it is short: no removal agency may remove abandoned motor vehicles from private property without the written permission of the landowner or tenant, and a violation is a Class 2 misdemeanor. A phone call from an apartment manager or a shopping center tenant is not written permission. South Dakota does not, however, require the lot to be posted with signs, does not license tow operators, and does not set a schedule of maximum charges the way a state utility commission tariff would, so the price of a private-property tow in Sioux Falls or Rapid City is a matter of contract and of the reasonableness standard in SDCL 32-30-18.

For a tow off a public street or highway, SDCL 32-30-3.1 imposes the reporting duty. If the removal was not at the written request of the owner, an authorized agent of the owner, or a law enforcement officer, the removal agency must report the removal to the owner within twenty-four hours. If it cannot reach the owner, it must instead report within the same twenty-four hours to the county sheriff when the tow happened outside a municipality, or to the chief of police when it happened inside one. Failure is a Class 2 misdemeanor, and SDCL 32-30-3.2 adds the sanction that matters most to a vehicle owner: the agency is not entitled to any towing or storage fees for that vehicle, and no such fees may be billed or collected.

Charges are secured by a possessory lien under SDCL 32-30-18, which covers only the reasonable costs of taking custody of and storing the vehicle. Two limits protect what is inside the car. The lien on the contents of the vehicle may not exceed five hundred dollars, and no possessory lien attaches at all to the tools and implements a person uses and keeps for the purpose of carrying on a trade or business, or to any clothing or food. A tradesperson whose truck is towed can therefore demand the tools back even while the fee dispute continues.

Notice deadlines come from SDCL 32-36-8. Within forty-five days after removal the agency must send written notice by certified mail to the registered owner and to all readily identifiable lien holders of record at their last known address, on a form provided by the Department of Revenue, stating the date and place of the taking, the year, make, model and serial number of the vehicle, where it is being held, and the right to reclaim it. A ten-day clock runs alongside that: if the agency does not give notice within ten days from the date of removal, no storage may be charged beyond the ten-day period until the notice is mailed. Where the owner and lien holders cannot be identified with reasonable certainty, notice is published once in a newspaper of general circulation in the area where the vehicle was abandoned or wrecked. Violating this section is also a Class 2 misdemeanor.

The deadline for the owner is thirty days. Under SDCL 32-36-9, title vests in the removal agency thirty days after the SDCL 32-36-8 notice was sent, and the record holder of title or the lien holder must notify the department in writing within thirty days of an intent to reclaim. SDCL 32-30-15 applies the same notice-and-thirty-day path to abandoned, wrecked, and impounded vehicles. Going the other direction, SDCL 32-30-18.1 makes an owner who intentionally abandons a vehicle on a public highway or right-of-way civilly liable to the removal agency for the towing expense and for storage expense under SDCL 32-36-8.

1, are each Class 2 misdemeanors, which SDCL 22-6-2 punishes by up to thirty days imprisonment in a county jail or a five hundred dollar fine, or both. Failing to send the certified mail notice required by SDCL 32-36-8 carries the same classification. 2 bars a nonreporting agency from billing or collecting any towing or storage fee, and SDCL 32-36-8 blocks storage charges past the tenth day until notice is mailed. Because SDCL 32-30-18 secures only reasonable costs, an owner who believes the bill is inflated contests the amount of the possessory lien in circuit court rather than before a regulator: South Dakota has no towing rate board, and no agency reviews a private tow bill.