99% Invisible - Service Request #5: Dude, Where's My Car?

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

A missing car reveals the confusing rules, murky fees, and private actors behind modern towing. What infrastructure mystery keeps you up at night? Submit your Service Request by recording a voice memo with your question and emailing it to [e-mail]. Service Request is a production of 99% Invisible and Campside Media. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, I thought my car had been stolen, which I was like, does that even happen? I guess it does, but, you know, my car is really old. It's like 2011 Mazda 6, so I really didn't know why anyone would want to take that car. This is Kelly Prime. We work together at 99PI and she lives in Brooklyn. And not too long ago, she had an experience that shook her. She and her friends had been out for the day in Coney Island. and they were stopping to get some takeout on the way home. They were looking for a place to park, not too far from the restaurant. And, you know, this is Brooklyn, so there's not a lot of parking available, and all the street parking looked like it was filled up. But on the right-hand side, we come upon this brightly lit, beautiful, empty parking lot in front of a 7-Eleven. Perfect, like irresistible, it sounds like.

Irresistible, an oasis. This allure, some might say. So we parked in the parking lot, pulled up, only car there. What a miracle. And just ran out into the supermarket and spent probably like, you know, 15 minutes grabbing our stuff. They came back out, went to the 7-Eleven parking lot, and the car wasn't there. Disappeared. The car was gone. And I was sort of in denial for a second.

I was like, well, surely. Like, I just, I'm not that great at remembering where I parked anyway, but it's not a big lot, and it's super brightly lit, and there's no cars there. So she and her friends went into the 7-Eleven to ask if anyone had seen anything. We go to the register, and we're like, I think our car just got stolen. Did you see anyone steal a car? And the guy was like, no, it didn't get stolen, got towed. And this guy is just acting like,

Like he's never heard something more boring in his life. And he was like, yeah, like 20 cars get towed a day. There's a sign out there called the number. Back out in the parking lot, they did find signs warning that unauthorized cars would be towed. One was in Cyrillic. One was covered in graffiti. And another was tucked away in a far corner of the lot. Kelly had the idea to pull up the Google reviews for the 7-Eleven.

And they found dozens of people telling pretty much. the same story. Says, I was their customer for many years, gave a great business for all those years, till my car was towed less than six minutes absence. If you read the other one-star review, you'll understand what's going on. This store is running a scam. We bought drinks in the store, and someone called the towing. Never buy anything from this store.

Call 3-1-1. Terrible and unethical. Take your car hostage and get $150 from you. I'm Delaney Hall, and this is service request from 99% Invisible. and campside media. We take your burning questions about infrastructure, and we investigate. Kelly eventually got her car back that night, and we will get into that. But the whole experience left her with a question that she could not shake.

Or really, a whole bunch of questions. How is it that you can just park your car? 15 minutes later, it's gone. I don't know who's in charge of regulating this. I don't know. who empowers these tow truck guys under whose authority are they working? It just feels like this black box of mystery that's affecting clearly a lot of people

if the Google reviews are to be believed. Today, the black box of mystery of towing and impoundment. Who decides when your car gets taken? Who decides where it goes? And when things go wrong, which it turns out, they do a lot. Why is it so hard to fix? When we started trying to find the answer to Kelly's question, I learned the term that describes this kind of practice. It's called predatory towing.

And it describes towers who actively hunt for cars to pick up and then demand inflated fees when owners try to get them back. Predatory towing happens everywhere. But in some places, it happens a lot. Detroit, Michigan has a well-documented and long-running predatory towing problem. And so that makes it a good case study for us. I mean, it's a big business. It's a multi-million dollar business, and they make a lot of money doing this. Yeah.

So that's why they do it. This is Tom Berry. He spent 35 years as a police officer in Detroit, and he retired as a lieutenant about a decade ago. Since then, he's worked as a fraud investigator for insurance companies. And he has seen the towing industry from basically every angle. He's been a cop who called tow trucks, and he's been an investigator who's uncovered how corrupt towing companies actually operate. I'm curious, can you help us understand, in an ideal world, how is towing supposed to be a public good? What kind of service do toowers provide when they're working well?

If it's working good, which we all like to see, you live on Elm Avenue and you come out one day and you can't get out of your driveway because somebody's parked there. So, of course, you call the police because you've got to go to work. And the police call the tow truck and the tow truck comes out and moves that car out of your way so you can go about your business. That's a good deal. Also, we have accidents. Once they take care of the injured, we need to remove those cars from the road. The tow companies take them to a tow yard. so it can be good.

In many cities, when there's a crash that needs to be cleared or a vehicle that's been abandoned on the street, police will call a private towing company to call it away. That's how it works in Detroit, too. Tom says that when he was a police officer, the department gave him a list of the tow companies that he was allowed to call. These were companies that had a contract with the police

to cover a certain area of the city. And most officers would go down the approved list calling companies until one was available to send a tow truck. But years later, as a lieutenant, Tom discovered that not all police officers were doing it that way. They were using a certain toer. They weren't calling the scheduled toers, the toers on the list. They were calling their friend. Some cops were calling tow companies they had a relationship with. And many of those companies were inflating their fees way beyond what a typical tow would cost.

Then they'd pay kickbacks to the police officers who sent the business their way. And the corruption kind of swelled. It just keeps surmounting and eventually, you know, it comes crashing down. That's what happened here in Detroit. Eventually, there was a federal investigation into the corruption that Tom is talking about. And some cops went to jail. But that wasn't the end of towing problems in the city. In fact, Tom says some of the most problematic towing doesn't even involve the police.

It involves situations like Kellys, where people get towed for parking in a private lot. I'm curious if, kind of zooming out, you can walk me through how a predatory towing operation works. Like, what does a typical day look like? what are the most common schemes that you see? Well, I think that most toors are basically honest. First, I want to give them a little accolade. So what happens? Like your friend there at the 7-Eleven.

So it's illegal to park and private property and go to the doctor's office, let's say, or go do your shopping. So if you own a business in your city, you know, McDonald's or Burger King or whatever, and you have private citizens that aren't patronizing your business tying up your lot, and they keep coming in there, and you're losing customers because your lot's full of people going to shop at Macy's, then you're mad. So you, the business owner, can contact, you know, Joe's towing and say, hey, I got a red Chevy out in my lot. Can you come and get it?

It's been here for a half hour. This practice makes sense. A business needs to keep its lot clear for actual customers. And that's what happened to Kelly. She parked at a 7-Eleven, walked to a neighboring restaurant, and then came back to find her car gone. She technically broke the rules, and the tow company had the right to take her car. But there are sketchier tactics that some toowers use to maximize the number of cars they can grab. For instance, spotters.

Spotters are paid citizens that live in that area. I approach them and say, hey, I'm the owner of Joe's towing. And I know that your apartment overlooks the Burger King lot over here. So we meet. It's okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to watch this lot. And if you see somebody go into that lot and not use the business, you call me. And so I'll be right there.

And if I get the tow job, you get 50 or 100 bucks. So tow truck makes cash. People make 50 bucks, no taxes. Everybody's happy except the person that parked there. Except the person who parked there. So this is interesting. Some tow companies, they basically recruit a neighborhood network of eyes on the ground, of spies. That's a good way to put it.

A neighborhood network. Excellent. People who are just keeping an eye on these various parking lots. And when they see someone park there and not use the business, they just give the tow truck driver a call and they get a kickback. Exactly. In some cities, it's illegal for tow companies to use spotters. But not in New York City or in Detroit. One tow company there became so notorious for using spotters, they felt the need to put out this little explainer video on their Facebook page.

A lot of people think a spotter's illegal, but it's not. There's nothing illegal about it. They're just maintaining parking spaces for the property owner. After the break, we'll talk with a driver who used to work for that notorious Detroit tow company. Well, I guess to start, could you just introduce yourself, like, your name and where you are and what you're doing? My name is Shane Nation. I'm in Detroit, Michigan, and I currently tow, and I've been in the industry for about five years. When I spoke with Shane, he was in his toe. truck between calls on his lunch break. As far as I can tell, there aren't a lot of tow truck

drivers who are willing to talk with a journalist about the realities of the job, but Shane is one of them. He started in the industry when he was just 16 years old. Once I started like working in the industry, it's like a bug. It's very hard to go do something where you're not as free. Like go sit in an office or inside all day long. And it honestly, I, It's not boring. There's people that have been towing for 25 years and they'll tell you that they learn new stuff every day because it's just genuinely that type of job. So for people who are not familiar with towing, what is a typical day like in the life of a tow truck driver? You normally sit in the truck, you plan on your phone, do whatever to let time pass. And then you just wait for police calls to come in.

Those could look like impounds, like somebody got arrested. and we would tow their car to impound lot. It could look like a car crash, and we have to be out there cleaning the scene on the highway or something. And it could be as simple as your mom broke down, and she just needs a tow to the mechanic shop and to get her car fixed. Have you towed your mom? Yeah, not my mother.

Luckily, she buys newer vehicles and gets warranties and stuff, but family members, yes. So they're like, oh, I know exactly who to call. Shane. Yeah, unfortunately, that is what seems to be what they do. Shane's first real towing job was with a company in Detroit that had a reputation for predatory towing. Shane doesn't actually have a problem naming this company. He's spoken on TV in Detroit about them.

But we don't want to name them in this episode. We don't want Shane to get in trouble. So since day one there, they would say, hey, look, we're on the news all the time. It is what it is. People don't like their car getting towed. So that's pretty much how I was told there. Like, hey, you're going to see that we're this, this, and that. And just don't believe it because, you know, we're just doing the public of service. And some people don't appreciate that.

At first, Shane thought, maybe that's just how the world works. People just complain to the media a lot. Plus, he liked his job. He liked the trucks and getting greasy and how every day was interesting and new. A lot of the jobs he was doing were private property impounds or PPI's. That's when a tow company has a contract with a property owner, like an apartment complex or a 7-Eleven to tow cars that shouldn't be there. And this company that Shane worked for was aggressive about it.

They would work with spotters like the ones Tom told us about. They had people sitting in the parking lot, watching and waiting for someone to park illegally. We had two different spotters. They would sit and tended out cars and just wait for somebody to pull up. We would sit around the corner. We wouldn't be no further than five minutes away. One of the lots Shane worked was across the street from the med center, which is a cluster of major hospitals in downtown Detroit.

People would park in the apartment complex lot and then walk across the street to visit someone in the hospital. And Shane's job was to tow their cars the moment they walked away. We'd pull up right away, grab their car, and drive off with it. Now, these people, sometimes they would come out and, you know, they'd be screaming, yelling, I don't have another car, how am I supposed to get to work, how am I supposed to take my kids to school? And when I was 17, I'm not going to lie, I had no remorse for them.

I didn't feel bad for them at all. But once I started getting older and having bills to pay and understanding that it's genuinely hard out here in the world to survive, especially on a low income, and then somebody's come in and taking your car when you're just trying to visit, you know, your mom or your dad that's in the hospital. I can understand now that's like just a really crappy thing to do to somebody. Shane says he would sometimes spend whole shifts sitting in his truck near that one parking lot waiting for spotters to call in toes. Because that single lot was sort of a gold mine.

It's 100% returns other than the fuel you used. So, I mean, they're making a killing just towing 15 to 20 cars a day off that one lot. And they have all of downtown Detroit. So, I mean, it's a big operation. Given the company's reputation, sometimes the Detroit police would show up to see what was going on. Or they'd respond to complaints from people who were getting their cars towed. But the company was ready for that. Shane says they trained their employees on what to say when the police arrived, which

laws to mention in their arguments for towing a certain car. Shane's interactions with the public weren't any better. It was all so confrontational. They would always beg and plead, and that's understandable, especially if you don't have the money. It was standard. I was constantly, for lack of better word, I was constantly the a-hole in every predicament I've ever, like every interaction I had, I was the aggressor. and I just say it wasn't a good feeling.

If you think about it, it is kind of wild that these non-law enforcement private companies are allowed to just take people's unattended vehicles. Shane says that bad practices are common in the world of private property impounds because there are basically no checks in the system. Definitely. It's the least regulated. You're not pulling up on a police scene with police there, and you're not pulling up on a broken down vehicle with the car, car's owner there. You're pulling up on an unintended vehicle that you have full access to. And,

I mean, you just hook up this car and you call the police nearby and you go, hey, I'm towing this car because it's parked incorrectly on this lot. There's no verification of this whatsoever. You just, you call the police and you tell them you're doing it and they put the system, they put the car in lean so it can't be reported stolen. That's all it is to PPI's and there's just no verification in the system so everybody exploits it. So you're doing this at this apartment complex lot. You've gotten a little older. You're like, this doesn't feel good because you understand kind of the implications of having your car towed. It's expensive. It's like a huge headache. So what happened from there? So it was never that like I wanted to continue doing it. It was kind of the fact that I had bills to pay in my own

family to feed is why I stayed there for so much longer after that time period. Right. But yeah, like, I hated it every day after that. Like, it made me lose my love for towing, and I genuinely just wanted out in any way, shape, or form by the end of it. Shane was having a full-blown crisis of conscience. He dreaded going to work and spending all day towing people who he believed didn't really deserve it.

Eventually, he left the predatory tow company. He thought he might go back to working in fast food. But instead, he started with a different company where he was doing different kinds of toes. I just didn't want to do PPI. That was my biggest thing, was private property impounds feel like they're just not necessary. Like, at least in the way they did it. Like, it was just unnecessary. And I just did them so much 24-7 that I just didn't want to do them ever again.

And that was my main thing. Where I'm at now, all I do is services. Like, I'm not towing anybody's car because I want to. You know, it's simply they call or the police call, and I'm going there to either clean up the wreck or I'm going there to get those people home. Especially where I'm at now, it's never the case that I'm going there for any other reason other than to service them. These conversations with Tom and Shane helped me understand so much better. what might have happened with Kelly's car. She was involved in a private property impound situation.

She parked at that 7-Eleven illegally. There may have been a spotter that saw her do it, and the company probably had a relationship with a toer who was contacted as soon as she walked away. So after standing in the parking lot, trying to figure out what to do, she and her friends decided to call the tow company. So we called the number,

and we actually had to call like multiple times to get the information we needed because like we'd call and then they would hang up or we'd call and sort of not get the right information. At one point, Kelly asked the tow company to confirm that they had her car by reading back the license plate number. And they're like, we can't give you the license plate. And at one point they were like, yeah, we have your car, but come back tomorrow. It was all extremely confusing, but eventually Kelly took a cab home to let her dog out for a walk, and her friends

decided to go get the car themselves. The impound lot was about a mile from the 7-Eleven, and they had to walk there. They eventually found the place, and through the holes in the front gate, they could see Kelly's car. They got there and there was a building that

was brightly lit up inside, indicating that perhaps the office was not actually closed, but they were brought in to this building and the guy was like it's going to be $350 to get your car back because the office is closed right now. Wow. That's a lot of money. Yeah, especially. I'm pretty sure the sign said 125. Like the sign had a pay scale on there and he was immediately like that's going to be 350. So there's sort of this, there's this negotiation going on. It's like. Oh yeah. Yeah, totally. There's

totally a negotiation. And it included like at first they said, oh, because I'm not physically there, that's an extra fee. And then they said, oh, the business is closed. It's after hours. So that's another fee. But there wasn't actually a fee structure. It was just like a negotiation, like a bartering. They were just making it up. Yeah. They kidnapped my car and then like ransomed it for an uncertain amount of based on how much cash my friends had on hand. Like, it's crazy they can do that. But according to Tom, the retired cop, tow companies do this all the time. They pretend they're closed so that people have to come back the next day, and that allows

them to inflate the storage fees they charge. They demand to see registration and insurance, which is often in the car that's been impounded, and so people have to run around gathering new documents. It might take them a day, it might take them two days to go get that information and bring it back to satisfy the tow company. Meanwhile, another 50 bucks a day, another 50 bucks a day for keeping your car. Often, these businesses don't disclose their fee structures. And even when they do, the fees can be manipulated. So, well, it came in on the second at 11 o'clock at night, and here it is the third, and it's 1 o'clock in the morning.

Well, that's two days' stories. $110. Well, wait a minute. My car's only been here for two hours. Yeah, but that's the way it is. Because it's technically touched two days, even if it was just a few hours in the middle of the night. I see. Exactly. Kelly's friends were lucky, if you can call it that, because they showed up that same night. They eventually paid $200 to get the car back. It's really, really sketchy. Like, none of this feels legal. you can just take someone's car, ransom it, figure out an amount of money between you, and then they said no receipt. So they just had to pay their $200.

How else you're going to get your car back? Like, these five guys have it. What else are you going to do? It almost seems like the towers don't want you to get your car back. Or at the very least, they might not mind if you don't retrieve your car. Well, what some of these tow companies do, they know good cars and bad cars. You know what I mean by that? Like, hey, that's an older car, but he's got good treads on it, good struts.

You know, it looks pretty okay. I could probably get some money for that. So they kind of pull that to the side of the auction that they have every 30 days. Cars are valuable. So this is another way they're making money. Exactly. They hold a person's car until the fees are so high the person can't afford to get it out.

Get it out. Yeah. And then they sell that car at all. auction, scrap it for parts, make money on the car itself. That's why it's a multi-million dollar business towing us. And people don't realize that. For that reason, Tom says bad toers might target cars that look a little bit junky or old, like Kelly's 2011 Mazda, cars that look like they might be underinsured,

or their owners might not have hundreds of dollars on hand to get them back. Because they're easy targets. And generally, those owners of those cars, don't squeak. They don't make complaints. I don't know if that's their reasoning, but it sounds reasonable to me. Go after the low-hanging fruit versus the high-hanging fruit. Toers can get away with this in part because there's very little oversight. The towing industry is regulated by a patchwork of laws across the country.

They vary state-by-state. According to research done by a consumer watchdog group, only about half of states set a cap on towing or embeds. more than 30 states don't require rates to be displayed or disclosed. 13 states don't even require the towing company to notify you that your car has been towed. And in 34 states, kickbacks are legal, all of which creates a massive gray area. Some of what they do just sounds like aggressive business practices. You know, like towing companies working hard, working proactively.

to tow illegally parked cars and to make money. And I guess I'm wondering, when do you think it crosses the line from, you know, going hard for business to something more like fraud? You know, I don't know where the line is, but there's certainly a wavy line there that nobody knows about it. It's interesting what you're saying, because it strikes me as part of the problem, which is that you hear about these tactics that bad towers use and they just seem unfair. And yet, it's not totally clear they're breaking some law. You're absolutely right. There's a big gray area

there that huge. So the only way to stop it is get a law, make a law or an ordinance in the city you can make it and prosecute them. And don't take your foot off the gas. And, And unfortunately, many cities don't fight it till it's so out of control that now they can't get it all back in the box. You know, the box has been open and that crap's flying all around. How are you going to get that box closed again? You know, it's difficult. And that's what happens when you let little things like the little toe. Hey, you charged your four days stone, you only had it one.

When you do that, if you don't stop it, it's just going to be six days, seven days, because that's what happens. That's just human nature. just going to keep growing. So the only way to stop it, in my opinion, is sort of nip it in the bud, you know, stop it when it's small so we can control it. Tom's advice is to pass regulations and then crack down. But some cities have tried a different approach. They've just cut private towers out entirely, and they've set up their own public towing operations. But getting that going can be a heavy lift. It requires a city to acquire land for the impoundment lot and trucks to do the towing and people to staff the operation.

How common is it for a city to have their own trucks, their own lot? I don't think it's common. I think it's a rarity. And why isn't it more common? It's a lot. Who's going to oversee it? You're going to have policemen oversee it. There's so many cost considerations, I think, for that. That they just don't want to do it. They want somebody else to do it, which I would I think that's what happens with the cities, is they don't want to deal with it. What's one piece of advice you have for someone whose car has just been towed?

Of course, it's a situation. If it was legitimate, you had an accident, and the police come out in a normal city, and they're going to tow it to their yard, that's the way it should go. If you got insurance on your car, let it run its course. Make your claim, call your company, make an insurance claim, But be aware of, especially in parking private property toes. It's extremely lucrative. When you pull into a lot, if you see a sign, you know, this area controlled by Tom's towing,

you know, violators will be towed. Pay attention to those signs because a lot of those places, they got somebody watching. And they're going to tow you. Be careful with your park. What I hear you saying when I say, you know, what's your piece of advice? it's basically don't get towed. Like, do not get yourself caught up in this situation. If you come out and they got the car on the hook, okay, pay the drop fee.

Pay it. Just pay it right down. You're saving yourself time, aggravation, trouble, problems, just pay it. Try to negotiate it down. Say, you know what? And this is what I tell people. Let's say it's 400. Say, oh, my God.

Would you take $250? barter, barter, barter. But get your car back. Yeah, get your car back. Don't leave it. Don't wait. Don't wait. We started with the question.

How is it that you can just park your car at a 7-Eleven, 15 minutes later it's gone, and you have to negotiate a ransom with some guy in a dark parking lot, and that is an actual business. And we have a pretty good answer. The reality is that towing regulation varies state by state. But in many places, towing companies have contracts with private businesses to monitor and tow illegally parked cars in their lots.

Some toowers use spotters. Those are people who keep an eye on parking lots and call the tow company as soon as they see someone park there illegally. Some tow companies don't post their fees and then bargain with people once they show up to try and reclaim their car. And in many states, there are few regulations governing how tow companies operate. With that, Kelly, consider your service request, resolved. Today on the show, you heard Kelly Prime, an editor with 99% invisible.

You also heard Tom Berry, a retired police officer who's now an investigator for the insurance industry. And Shane Nation, a tow truck driver in Detroit. What infrastructure mystery keeps you up at night? Is there something in your life that you use every day but you don't actually understand how it works? Submit your service request by recording a voice memo with your question and emailing it to service request at 99PI.org. And remember, if your car gets towed, try to negotiate the price down. Or better yet, don't get towed in the first place.

I'm Delaney Hall. Infrastructure is everywhere, and we're here to help you decode it. Service request is a production of 99% Invisible and Campside Media. The show is produced and fact-checked by Julia Case Levine and edited by Shoshi Shmulevitz. Mix by Iwan Li Trimuan. Theme song and music by Swan Reall. Additional editing by Emmett Fitzgerald and Vivian Lay. Show art by Aaron Nestor.

Roman Mars is our boss at 99PI. is our executive producer. Matt Cher is the executive producer at Campside. We are a part of the SiriusXM podcast family. You can find us on all the usual social media sites, as well as our Discord server. There's a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI.org.