How Much a Tow Company Can Legally Charge in MA: New Bedford

Published 18 September 2026

New Bedford Towing is asked what a tow company can legally charge in Massachusetts, and the answer starts with a question back: who ordered the tow? If the police or a property owner did, the state caps every line on the bill. If you called the truck yourself, it does not, and the price is what you agreed to on the phone.

Here is the Massachusetts schedule, each figure attributed to the regulation that sets it, then what it leaves out, how to check a bill against it, and where to complain when a bill runs over.

Massachusetts sorts every tow into two boxes. An owner-requested tow, sometimes called a consensual tow, is one you arrange yourself: the car dies on Rockdale Avenue, you call, and it goes where you say. An involuntary tow is one somebody else ordered - an officer clearing a crash on I-195, a landlord emptying a lot, or the city clearing a ban street in a snow emergency.

The Department of Public Utilities regulates only the second box, and its rate page says so plainly: "The Department does not regulate towing requested by a vehicle owner." The regulation, 220 CMR 272.00, covers tows ordered by the police or another public authority under M.G.L. c. 159B, § 6B and trespass tows under M.G.L. c. 266, § 120D - a trespass tow being, in the DPU's words, a removal "authorized, directed or requested by the owner or person in lawful control of real property."

One edge case: if an officer calls a truck at your request and the car goes anywhere but the tow company's own garage, 220 CMR 272.02 says the caps do not apply. That is your tow, priced like one.

For a passenger car, motorcycle, motor bike or motor scooter towed involuntarily, 220 CMR 272.03 sets the maximums below, effective December 13, 2023. They are ceilings a company may not exceed, not prices it must charge.

Two things follow. Because the base applies regardless of day or time, there is no night, weekend or holiday surcharge on a regulated bill. Because it includes an hour of service, a routine hook-up and short ride should carry no waiting-time line.

Commercial vehicles have their own schedule in 220 CMR 272.04: the same $132 base for the first five miles, then $6.60 per mile, figured on the round trip from the carrier's garage, with tolls the owner's responsibility. The passenger-vehicle lines:

• Base tow - $132 per vehicle "regardless of day of week or time of day," for up to five miles, including one hour of service or waiting time.
• Mileage - $4.40 for each mile over five.
• Extra waiting or service time - $51 per half hour beyond the first hour; not charged on trespass or snow-removal tows.
• Additional labor - $46 per man-hour or any fraction of one, with a one-hour minimum.
• A second service vehicle - $132 at most per additional truck, again not on trespass or snow-removal tows.
• Extraordinary services - a crane, a bulldozer, specialized labor or hazardous-material handling, at actual cost.

Storage after an involuntary tow is capped by statute. M.G.L. c. 159B, § 6B sets the maximum at $35 per 24-hour period for a non-commercial passenger vehicle, and only for a lighted outdoor lot enclosed by a secure fence or barrier at least six feet high; any other outdoor lot may charge at most half that. The meter runs by the 24-hour period, so the day you collect the car matters.

The other line that can appear is a fuel surcharge under 220 CMR 272.05: voluntary, monthly, and allowed only when the average New England diesel price on the federal EIA's on-highway series exceeds $3.196 a gallon for the first three Mondays of the month. The DPU posts the factor on the fourth Monday; it expires on the last day of that month.

Neither touches a tow you asked for: if a car is held after your own tow, the daily rate is whatever was agreed, so ask for it and for the release hours first.

A company cannot simply decide to do police-ordered or trespass tows: it must hold a DPU Certificate of Compliance, and the DPU keeps a public list of the companies that do. A car taken from a private lot by a company not on that list is worth raising.

Ask for an itemized bill and keep it. Each line - base tow, mileage, waiting time, labor, storage by the day - can be set against the figures above. If one runs over, or a charge appears that the schedule does not allow, the DPU's Transportation Oversight Division takes complaints at (617) 305-3559 or through the online form on mass.gov.

What the law does not yet require matters too. Massachusetts does not require a tow company to accept credit or debit cards or to post the hours when a stored car can be released; a bill that would require both, S.2779, was referred to Senate Ways and Means on December 8, 2025, and as of a May 2026 report had not become law. Ask how a yard takes payment before you go.

If the car is already gone and you do not know who took it, the yards are the wrong place to start; how to find a car that was towed in New Bedford begins with a call to the police.

None of the figures above prices the tow most people need: the one they call for themselves after a breakdown. That tow has no state maximum and no minimum, which cuts both ways - a company may quote what it likes, and you may decline. The protection is not a regulation but a complete quote before the truck moves.

That is how New Bedford Towing's own quotes work. We ask where the vehicle is, what it is and whether it is all-wheel drive or electric, what happened, and where it is going, and from those four answers we give one total - hook-up, mileage, any recovery time, tolls - and the arrival window. The number on the call is the number on the invoice unless the job turns out not to be the job described, in which case you hear the new number first.

So when a page quotes 'the Massachusetts towing rate,' read it as what a company may charge after a tow you did not order, not what your tow should cost. For what goes into the second kind of number, read the full cost page for a tow you call for yourself.