NYC NOW - Special Investigation: How New York City Lost Control of the Tow Truck Industry

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

Across New York City, a largely unregulated ghost fleet of tow trucks is growing after years of lax enforcement. Many of these unlicensed operators rush to crash scenes in the hopes of lucrative payouts, but also put consumers and pedestrians at risk. In this episode, WNYC’s Liam Quigley explains how the towing system works and why the city has struggled to regain control. He also tells host Janae Pierre how to spot an unlicensed truck in case you find yourself needing a tow

I'm willing to make a really big statement here about you, Liam. May I? Please. You have an amazingly detailed knowledge of a very niche subject that not a lot of people know about. And that is New York City's tow truck industry. Nothing brings me more joy. Seriously? So tell me why.

Toe trucks are one of those things you probably only think about until you need one. Right. Like you're stranded, you're on the Bell Parkway, Atlantic Avenue, whatever that may be, it's not something you might expect a reporter to spend years covering. But what I found out in doing that is that the city's towing industry has undergone this really dramatic change over the past five or six years. And that's that the number of unlicensed tow trucks, you know, trucks not authorized a tow in New York City, has grown really rapidly.

And it puts consumers at risk, but there's also a public safety risk. And there's one woman I spoke to who kind of really distilled how this public safety issue can affect people. Come on. Thank you. Her name is Susie Delgado. I met her at her apartment, Ozone Park, Queens, a few years ago. Do you mind if I record while we talk? Yeah, of course.

Okay. This is a nice place. It's like kind of reminds me in my apartment growing up, but smaller. Scramed, cozy photos of her kids. Those are my husband's grandkids. Oh, my step-grandkids. Oh, my step-grandkids. So we sit down at her small kitchen table and I just asked her tell me about this traumatic experience.

What I've been doing is I've been following the tow truck industry for a long time. Right. So I was hoping that you would just, you know, I don't want to make you go through it all again. I trust me, whatever, no, I can never forget it. Because I had something that's not going to go away near. Yeah. So this is back in November 2021. It's November 6th. It's a Saturday. So it was like 4.30 in the morning? There was 4.30 naphton.

40th and then... Susie's off from work where she works at JetBlue, cleaning airplanes, so it's a day off. And she hears teenagers racing a range over through the neighborhood. They love racing. Yeah. And then she hears a crash. Right into her brand new 2018 Nissan Pathfinder.

So her car is really badly damaged. You know, it's pushed up into the curb. The wheel is... Looks like it's split from the axle. So it's not drivable. It's going to need... major body work. So she calls the cops.

I called 911. Police are saying, look, there's a lot going on right now. I'm sorry. There's nobody who got hurt. We got to wait. There's nobody coming, and she starts getting frustrated. I called 911 three times at that night. I even called the precinct.

But what does happen is that within two to three hours of Susie putting in this 911 call, there's people outside arguing from different towing companies over who, who's going to take her pathfinder? Wait, like fighting in the middle of the street? To the point that somebody took out a gun, shooting. Oh my gosh. When the first shot came, I turned around. Because she's outside taking this all in.

But when I turned around, that's when the second bullet, the second shot landed on me. Susie says she got shot through her thigh. My father, my lady, that was like, it was numb. And I like it to my husband, I just got shot, and I found my pants wet. Like touched it. And I was all bled her.

all over my fingers. Thank God they hit me here. They didn't hit me in my chest or my head because I probably still want to be here. For who's going to take my car? And of course, Susie was wondering why? Why did this happen? Why did this hit and run turn into a gunfight

over who's going to tow her car? And why didn't the police respond when her car was hit? When the cops went to go see me in the hospital, I go, why did I have to wait to get? get shot to see your faces. Why did I have to get shot to see your faces? This is NYC Now. Liam quickly has gone deep into the city's towing industry.

And what he's found is that the number of unlicensed tow trucks has skyrocketed in recent years. We're going to talk about the decisions city officials have made that have driven that growth, who's responsible for fixing it, and why it matters to you. All right, Liam, let's start with a user-friendly question here. If I'm in a car crash in New York City, I need my car towed, right? What's supposed to happen here? If your car needs to be towed, a police officer should respond to that scene when you call 911. Okay.

And then they're supposed to use a list of approved tow truck companies that are licensed whose drivers have gone through background checks. and the tow trucks have a blue medallion that they get from the city to tow anywhere legally in the five boroughs. And there's some tow truck companies that have contracts for specific highways. Why is it designed that way? This is a system that goes back like three decades. We did this years ago, so, you know, I would have to drill down on my memory bank to remember all the details. So I called up this guy, Sal Abin, he's been around a long time in New York City politics.

But back in the late 80s, early 90s, he's a city council member, and there had been several really high-profile wrecks involving licensed and unlicensed tow truck drivers racing to the scenes of crashes. In the industry, these people are known as chasers. We were seeing those chases on a regular basis back in the day. These guys were racing through the streets. And this was so they could be the first to get to the towing job. Because towing a car, you could really tap into a lucrative market insurance. insurance payouts, junk fees, and the more valuable direct car, the higher the potential return. So I hate to sound like Lloyd Banks here, but if an accident involves a beamer bins or Bentley,

that's music to a chaser's ears. Yeah. But at that time, there had been several really high-profile incidents involving licensed and unlicensed tow trucks, getting into serious, deadly crashes and killing people. You know, it was pretty dangerous. So that brings in a big effort to regulate things. Stop chasing. Stop the territorial disputes erupting from who's first, because it could be violent.

They were not nice guys to deal with. When we did this, I was a little bit on edge because I realized that there's a lot of potentially nefarious characters involved in this business. Did you ever get threatened? I got some nasty calls to my office. we were doing this. Yeah, I mean, I don't remember the exact nature of the threat, but yeah, definitely. The real genesis of like towing regulation, as we know it in New York City, that's supposed to be followed. It comes from Albany's in the late 80s, early 90s, creating this system requiring

the police when they're pulling up to a crash scene to call tow trucks from a specific list. What may you start paying attention to tow trucks in the first place? A lot of this is just being outside in the city. I started noticing there were more unlicensed trucks on the street, or at least I was getting a strong hunch that that was the case. And things were kind of feeling like there was going to be a return to the days when chasing was a much bigger problem. But the question that I had was, how am I going to prove something like that?

Let me guess. You figured out a way. Yeah, this was a big moment for me. There's an unknown number of trucks that are not authorized to operate in New York City, but they do have tow truck plates issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles, and those license plates, those trucks, they're getting caught all the time by the city's speed and red light cameras. That data is public, and what I also had was this list of authorized tow trucks in New York City,

because I've been asking the Department of Consumer Protection for that data, for like every year for almost nine years. Oh, y'all are buddies. They love me. But anyway, when you're comparing those two datasets, you get some really stark numbers. So in 2021, those cameras grab the plates of 54 distinct tow trucks that were not licensed to tow in New York City. Okay. But by the end of last year, that number was just over 700.

Damn, that's crazy. And now there's about the same number of licensed as unlicensed, trucks on the roads. It's probably an undercount because not all of these trucks are getting caught by cameras. And at the same time, the number of licensed tow trucks in the industry, I mean, they're vanishing. They've dropped by hundreds over the same time period. Wow. And really, you should say, many of these unlicensed trucks, they're not what you think of when you think of a typical tow truck. What do you mean? There's these hidden rig systems. You can convert a lot of regular pickup trucks into a tow truck. It can go totally in the bed of the truck. Others are

tucked under the bed of the truck. So unless you really know what you're looking for, you're not going to see it. It's a big shift in the industry over the past five, 10 years or so where you're seeing a lot more chase trucks that were born in a factory is just a regular big pickup truck. All right. But how do these unlicensed tow truck drivers know where the crashes are? A big thing for years in the industry has been police radios tuned to emergency frequencies to find out where the crashes are. That's been illegal for years for both licensed and unlicensed tow truck drivers. They'll also cruise areas where there are crashes, you know, Lyndon Boulevard in Brooklyn, for example. And the data showing that a lot of these unlicensed trucks are speeding.

They're running red lights and they're getting in serious crashes. There have been 15 people killed in crime. crashes with both licensed and unlicensed trucks since 2010, a Queensman who was killed in 2023 by an unlicensed truck that had a hitting towing setup we talked about. Police said a similar tow truck was involved in the death of a woman in the Bronx the next year, and the data showing the problem has grown dramatically over the past five or six years. What do we know about why this happened? So there's two things that are happening here.

The first, there was a big change during the height of the pandemic in 2020. Cops wanted to reduce their contact with the public and conserve police resources to speed up response times. So they stopped responding to many minor crashes, really thousands, in the city where there's no injuries. You may have seen these signs on LIE, on the BQE and say, look, if it's a minor accident, minor crash, move off the highway. Exchange info. Really, if there's no property damage, you're not required to report the crash of the police. And why does that matter that, you know, the police don't show up?

The front lines of enforcement were police officers on the scenes of crashes who were looking out for, you know, a tow truck driver pulling up that they didn't ask for them to be there. And that's a violation that could get unlicensed tow truck drivers in hot water. The police even had the power to seize unlicensed tow trucks whenever they saw them. But that's the second thing that changed in 2020. when the patrol guide gets updated. It's kind of like the handbook for how to police New York City.

It tells officers to stop seizing unlicensed tow trucks when they see them. Why? The NYPD told us that this was in response to city council legislation that was meant to reduce harsh penalties for local businesses. So where does that leave drivers like me? Yeah, I mean, whichever tow truck driver is there first is usually going to set the terms. And, you know, once your car's hooked up, you still have rights, but it can feel a lot harder to exercise them. I mean, look, we're talking about where your car's going to go, who's going to work on it, how long it's going to stay there, what they're going to charge you if you don't pick it up right away.

I've talked to people, they've had their car towed, and then it's just gone for months, that they've gone on this ordeal to get their car back, including from a body shop that was just recently shut down by the NYPD for these types of practices. We heard from Susie Delgado earlier. She was shot when people from two rival truck groups showed up to tow her car. How common is it for violence to erupt like that over a wrecked car? Look, I mean, not every car crash in New York City equals shootout in the street. Yeah. But there's real violence that we tracked here. I mean, last year, in a federal case, the owner of a Bronx tow truck company pled guilty to ordering the shooting of a rival tow truck company pled guilty to ordering the shooting of a rival tow truck company.

company owner. And look, when I met Susie a few years back, she was still dealing with the implications of this shooting. Sometimes I'm at work, the pain kills me. It's financially destabilizing for her. You know, she had to go back to work, cleaning airplanes at JFK. We got the carpet payments. We got rent to pay. We got other things to pay. And meanwhile, the police never found the people who shot her. It's a shame that a total company, companies have to hire people that.

carry guns. They shouldn't be carrying guns at the first place. Coming up, what are the signs a tow truck is illegal? And how can you spot one at a crash scene? Liam and I hit the road to find that answer. The truck had no license plate, no medallion, no US DOT number, no company name. And we'll meet the man who has made it his mission to take on unlicensed tow trucks. If I was just one second early, I would have been dead. I just wouldn't have been here. At this point, we've explained how unlicensed tow trucks operate, how they show up at a crash scene, how they pressure people into handing over their cars, and why it's been so damn difficult for the city to stop them. But there's still a basic question.

If you found yourself in an accident and you're standing on the side of the road, would you actually know an unlicensed tow truck when you saw it? To find out, Liam and I went for a ride on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn to walk through what to look for. So we're going to be looking out for a blue medallion. You need to have that on your truck if you want to tow cars in New York City with extremely rare exceptions. Moments after Liam explained that, we went zooming past a flatbed parked on the side of the road. Here's a tow truck on our left. This tow truck, you'll see it as the blue medallion. That company is Ben and Nino.

They have the contract for this portion of the highway. Wow. We passed by so quickly. I totally missed the blue medallion. Like, where am I looking for the blue medallion? Oh, it was on the utility box underneath the flatbed on the left side of the vehicle. They're typically on the left side. Oh, wow.

How did you see? Well, you know exactly what you're looking for. All right. So that was a legit licensed tow truck. Now, in addition to the blue medallion, Liam says you should look for a couple of, other things too. Yeah, there should be a number issued by the Department

of Transportation on the truck. There should be decals on the truck with the name of the towing company. And there should be, I know, it sounds crazy, a license plate on the truck. Now, how about an unlicensed tow truck? We got out of the car and stood

on the side of the belt. God damn, it smelled like urine. Ew. Not the nicest place in New York City. Okay, what about this truck? Oh, no. This is the next. traffic was flying by and then oh what is this no oh it's no oh it is a classic style straight up tow truck with that thing that looks like a cross on the back that Liam talked about goes whizzing

right past us all right that's a perfect example tell me what what you saw I didn't see a blue medallion but they they were driving at least 65 miles per hour I don't have your eye Liam did you see a license plate I didn't see a license plate so much to look for so much to look for so quickly. Did you see any lettering for the company? No, I don't recall. Damn. Okay. The truck had no license plate, no medallion, no U.S. DOT number, no company name, really no identifying information other than that's a tow truck. And it's, you know, driving here and out in the middle of the day on the highway in New York City, that's one of

hundreds of unlicensed tow trucks that are getting caught on speed cameras. That one probably not because it didn't even appear to have a license. Yeah. Before we went home, I wanted to see one of those tow trucks Liam mentioned earlier, the regular pickups that have been modified for towing. Now we are literally in the middle of the street, right? So we are standing on the median on Atlantic Avenue and I think I have spotted an unlicensed tow truck. It was a GMC Denali, so a pretty big pickup truck.

pickup truck. But in the back? So it's got this big T-shaped metal black apparatus sticking out of the bed of the truck. I mean, these are the exact type of hidden rig systems that are common, where you have a regular pickup truck that can now

move quickly to a crash scene. The driver can hook up a wrecked car and get out of there pretty quickly. All credit to you, you spotted this one. Yeah, yeah. Getting better. You trained up really quickly. Good teacher. But yeah, So if the number of these unlicensed illegal tow trucks has grown so dramatically,

is there anyone doing something about it? Not on a really fundamental level. I mean, I spoke to a legal expert who said, tow trucks are not exactly something that someone running for mayor or another elected official is going to go out and campaign on. It's usually like a reactive thing where something pops up, consumers get violated, and then big response from NYPD,

wait a couple years, you'll see it pop up again. It takes a series of high-profile crashes or violence or big consumer fraud to get a big reaction. It's kind of like what happened in the 80s and 90s. Things are spiraling out of control and then boom, you get some reforms. But there is one person

who's kind of made this a little bit of a mission. What's Katz? Dothamist, WNYC, right? Hey, how are you? Thanks for making this time. Okay, who's that? Bob Holden. The Bob Holden, former council member, until just a couple months ago.

He represented parts of Glendale, Middle Village, Woodside, other parts of Queens. He's had run-ins with tow trucks. I was almost wiped out by a company that was based in Glendale. I had a little mini-cooper before I became a counselor member. I was a college professor. Didn't take him for a mini-cooper guy. He tells me it's the worst move he ever made, because you can get wiped out easily. by bigger SUVs.

Yeah. But what happens is, he's around the corner from his house. And I hit a stop sign, and I was about to go on the gas, and you couldn't see because it was going up the hill. And this blur in front of me... It's a tow truck. It was going like 60 miles an hour

down a narrow one-way street, the wrong way. If I was just one second early, I would have been dead. I just wouldn't have been here. Later on, in the neighborhood, he sees the same truck. And I photographed it. He reports this to the cops, like, holding is not a guy who hesitates when he sees something like this. He's going to the cops.

Sure. And he starts photographing lots of other unlicensed tow trucks running red lights all over the place, tow truck companies and body shops, breaking other laws, you know, parking wrecked cars in the roadway while they're waiting to be repaired. So it's been like a mission for me. These tow trucks are endangering everyone. It was bad enough. We got lawlessness on our streets. with people passing red lights and motorcycles and mopeds and e-bikes on sidewalks.

But then when you add these rogue companies, this should be like a major story, except it's not. So I went out with Holden. I just see this guy in action, right? He's passionate about this stuff. And we go for a drive. And with us at the time, you'll hear his voice, is his chief of staff, Daniel Kuzina. And we're out there looking for unlicensed tow trucks. I thought you only did that with me. I'm sorry.

Now go down the right there. So we're out there, we start circling around these body shops that Holden has dealt with a bunch when we start to see a lot of unlicensed tow trucks And we're seeing these wrecked cars stored on the street, which is also by the way illegal No, they're all over the street look see this See we got to I'm gonna call the precinct get these towed and then within minutes we see a tow truck running a red light Another going the wrong way down a one-way street. You get a picture of him going out of on one way? No.

No, I want to give it to the CO. CO, meaning he's the commanding officer at the local precincts. This is what they do to the neighborhood. They bring down the quality of life. He called the traffic cop live while we were in the car, walking around with the neighborhood. Like, you got to come deal with this guy, you know, urging him to write some tickets, like, put some pressure on this social company that has these wrecked cars parked in parking spots. Gotta bang these guys out because they're using public streets as storage. And again, it's the quality of life.

We don't need all this on this. This traffic officer, he didn't know I was recording, so I won't play his tape. But he did not really seem like he wanted to be writing those tickets. And Holden, he's documented cases where towing companies, body shops, have come outside while he's photographing their trucks and just questioning like, what are you doing? And look at this one. At a high tree, look at that one. We got to get this towed.

We got to, I can't believe it. What's the solution here? Do we all need to be Bob Holden? I can say that if that was the case, 3-1-1 would be jam-pack constantly. No, seriously, though, what does Bob Holden say should be done? Holden really, you know,

he bangs on these city agencies that he says, you know, they're responsible for overseeing the towing industry. They're not forceful enough. And he says it's really difficult to get enforcement that's sustained. But again, the weak link, and this is the cops. Many times they look the other way the cops. And that's why we have to, I want the letter of the law.

Remember that policy change? We talked about NYPD stopping, showing up at a lot of crashes, and then a couple years later, stopping the seizure of unlicensed tow trucks. Yeah. Holden says, look, that just shows in the numbers that the unlicensed industry has been fueled by that change. What do the NYPD have to say about all of that? The NYPD told us, look, we have lost a big enforcement tool in terms of, of being able to see an unlicensed tow truck and sees it.

But they said at the same time, they can still issue some in Zista tow trucks. They're doing that on highways in the city. That they can still issue fines for tow truck drivers doing things that they're not supposed to do. And that they still respond to crashes if there's a dispute, where there's injuries, or where the car needs to be towed. But there's another agency in here. Remember this agency, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection? Yeah, DCWP.

They're responsible for licensing tow trucks in New York City. It's been that way for years. Many of the people I spoke with for the story, hold in Salabinies that other council member, they said the agency has been ineffective in regulating the tow truck industry. But look, if you look at the job that DCWP has to do, their portfolio is growing.

You may have seen them in the news for dealing with DoorDash, e-bike sales, the construction trades, the quality of gasoline at gas stations, the scale at your supermarket, the list goes on. They have about 62 inspectors to do all of this. That's ridiculous. It's very few. Officials with this agency, they say they're doing their best. And they've acknowledged before that the tow truck industry is constantly evolving the ways that it tries to get around their regulatory schemes.

But they say, look, if the NYPD tells us about an unlicensed operator, and they're really the ones supposed to be doing that, We'll issue fines, we'll check out licenses. We do background checks. But industry experts that I talk to, they say you can't really get results with such an overburdened agency. Liam, thanks so much for breaking down the tow truck industry for us. I know, unfortunately, I have a new hobby as well. I'll be out here looking for unlicensed tow trucks now. Thank you.

Thank you. Please send me those license, please. Sure. That's WMYCs, Liam, Liam Quickly.