09/03/2026
Early yesterday morning, we responded to a solo-vehicle accident on SR-20 where a vehicle appeared to have collided with a guardrail.
The driver’s insurance did provide only towing coverage; however, when a disabled or damaged vehicle is creating a hazard on the roadway, CHP cannot always wait for an insurance company to call around, locate a tow provider, and determine who can respond at the lowest contracted rate. I’ve seen people wait up to 4 hours in certain situations! In these situations, CHP may request an approved rotation tow company that is equipped and prepared to respond promptly.
Rotation tow companies are held to specific standards. Our trucks are required to carry additional recovery and safety equipment, our operators must meet certain training requirements, and most importantly, we are expected to respond to CHP incidents within the required response time.
Rather than having the customer pay our full tow bill out of pocket and then hope to be reimbursed by their insurance company at a later time, I offered another solution. Since their insurance provider could not get one of its contracted tow trucks to the scene within the timeframe needed to safely clear the highway, I offered to simply relocate the vehicle from SR-20 to a nearby gas station for no charge.
Older vehicles like this are less likely to have full coverage and if you don’t know already, tow companies only get paid if they either A.) Have full coverage, or B.) The owner of the vehicle pays for the tow bill plus storage themselves. Towing and storage rates are an approved number through CHP and are held within a certain percentage from other companies on the rotation program to keep fairness and equality but are still on the higher end due to the cost of insurance, overhead, and since the fees are mostly implemented for insurance companies to pay.
This solution got the vehicle out of the hazardous location, allowed CHP to clear the roadway, and gave the customer a safe place to wait for the tow truck covered by their insurance.
Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t about getting the tow it’s about keeping the roadway safe and helping someone through an already stressful situation. Now this isn’t an every time type situation, but it is nice to help out every once in awhile and show kindness to others. Doing this every day won’t pay the bills obviously, but from time to time it is okay because what comes around goes around and I was taught that from a very young age myself.
In exchange of my kindness, the gentleman went into the store we went to and purchased me the largest red-bull possible which helped me early in the morning, and showed me he was thankful for I’ve done. Small acts of kindness go along way! That’s the moral of this post.
