Motor carrier classes by state
Ohio is one of the few states that publishes an actual dollar ceiling on a tow, and until January 1, 2026 that ceiling treated a loaded tractor-trailer exactly like a one-ton pickup. The rule that changed it added a heavy bracket for the first time — and a clause elsewhere in the Revised Code lets a municipality switch the whole schedule off.
Care, custody and control is what makes tow and recovery awkward to insure, and it is awkward in the same way in every state — the wrecker takes possession of a vehicle the operator does not own, the auto policy declines to respond to damage to it, and the on-hook form is the answer. That analysis does not change when the trucks cross into Ohio, so it sits on the tow trucking insurance page and everything below assumes it.
Ohio adds something most states do not: a published, weight-bracketed maximum adopted by the Public Utilities Commission as a rule, with a defined effective date and an archived version history. That makes Ohio unusually easy to read and unusually easy to read wrong, because the schedule that governed the state for seven and a half years bore almost no relationship to what heavy recovery costs.
The version effective January 1, 2026 is the first that acknowledges a vehicle above twenty-six thousand pounds exists. Before it, the rule had two brackets and one of them ran from ten thousand one pounds upward with no ceiling on the vehicle — so a Class 8 combination and a heavy-duty pickup answered to the same removal maximum. The 2023 amendment, despite being a full re-adoption, did not change a single dollar amount from 2018.
Every figure below is quoted from the authenticated rule text or the Revised Code section that sets it, with the effective date of that version. Ohio publishes prior versions as authenticated PDFs, which means the history is checkable rather than asserted — and the history is the part of this page that most operators have never seen.
Running heavy recovery in Ohio? The January 1, 2026 fee rule finally rates your class of work separately — send us the equipment list and where the trucks run.
The starting point is jurisdictional and it is broader than operators expect. Ohio Revised Code § 4921.25(A), effective April 6, 2017 under House Bill 341 of the 131st General Assembly, provides that any person, firm, partnership, association, company or corporation engaged in the towing of motor vehicles is subject to regulation by the Public Utilities Commission as a for-hire motor carrier. There is no size threshold and no carve-out for a one-truck operation.
Ohio Revised Code § 4513.67, also effective April 6, 2017, turns that status into something visible on the equipment. No towing service may permit a towing vehicle to operate on its behalf unless the service holds a valid certificate of public convenience and necessity and the certificate number and business telephone number are visibly displayed on both the left and right sides of that vehicle. The certificate must be available for public inspection during normal business hours, and the certificate number must appear on all written estimates, contracts, invoices and — subject to a rule exemption the Commission may adopt for small formats — advertising.
The penalty structure is the part worth reading twice. A first violation of the certificate requirement is a minor misdemeanor, and the statute forbids the towing service from pleading guilty in writing and waiving trial; an agent must appear in person to answer the charge. A second violation is a misdemeanor carrying a $500 fine, and the court is directed to require disclosure of the license plate number of every vehicle used to tow on the company’s behalf and to order a law enforcement agency to seize and impound all of them until a certificate is produced.
The section then states plainly that the offense is a strict liability offense. For an insurance conversation that reframes a lapsed certificate: it is not a paperwork problem with a fine attached, it is a fleet-immobilization exposure with no mental-state defense. The loss it produces is business income and contract default rather than a claim any auto or general liability form was written to answer, and it belongs in the risk conversation on its own terms.
Ohio Administrative Code 4901:2-24-03, effective January 1, 2026, sets maximum fees for the removal and storage of motor vehicles towed under Revised Code sections 4513.60 and 4513.601. Each paragraph is drafted the same way: the fee shall not exceed the reasonable cost of complying with those sections, but in no instance shall exceed the stated figure. The dollar amount is a ceiling on top of a reasonableness test, not a scheduled price.
Paragraph (C) closes the schedule: no other fees may be charged or collected by a towing service or storage facility under those two sections beyond what the rule provides or the law otherwise allows. Paragraph (D) attaches the consequence — a towing service or storage facility found in violation may be liable to the state for a forfeiture assessed under Revised Code § 4923.99.
For a heavy operator the practical reading is that the $410 removal ceiling and the $82 daily storage ceiling now exist as separate line items rather than being folded into a light-truck number, and that they still sit below what a genuine recovery costs. The rule caps removal and storage under those two Revised Code sections. It does not purport to price winching, uprighting, load transfer, traffic control or the second and third units a rollover needs, and an operator who reads $410 as the value of a heavy job has read the wrong sentence. Nor does the schedule have anything to say about the equipment doing the work — physical damage on a rotator is rated against the replacement cost of the unit, and that number moves independently of anything the Commission publishes.
Ohio publishes prior versions of its rules as authenticated PDFs, so this is checkable rather than remembered. The version effective June 8, 2018 had two towing brackets and two storage brackets. Removal was capped at one hundred twenty-nine dollars for a vehicle rated less than ten thousand one pounds and at two hundred sixteen dollars for a vehicle rated greater than or equal to ten thousand one pounds. Storage was capped at seventeen dollars per day and twenty-nine dollars per day across the same two brackets.
The rule was re-adopted with an effective date of July 10, 2023. That version carried the same two brackets and the same four dollar amounts — $129 and $216 for removal, $17 and $29 per day for storage. A re-adoption that changes no figure is easy to mistake for a rate increase simply because the effective date moved, and an operator working from a 2023-dated schedule was working from 2018 economics.
The structural point is larger than the amounts. Between June 8, 2018 and December 31, 2025, the highest removal maximum available anywhere in the schedule was $216, and it applied identically to a vehicle rated ten thousand one pounds and to a fully loaded Class 8 combination, because the upper bracket had no ceiling on vehicle weight and no bracket above it existed. The heavy end of the market was not underpriced by the rule; it was invisible to the rule.
One drafting detail is worth flagging for anyone quoting the current version from memory. As published, paragraph (A)(2) describes the middle removal bracket as a vehicle rated greater than ten thousand one pounds and less than twenty-six thousand pounds, while paragraph (B)(2) describes the middle storage bracket as a vehicle rated greater than ten thousand one pounds or less than twenty-six thousand pounds. On their face the removal brackets also leave a vehicle rated at exactly ten thousand one pounds, and one rated at exactly twenty-six thousand pounds, outside all three descriptions. None of that is a reason to charge outside the schedule — it is a reason to read the authenticated text of the rule rather than a paraphrase of it before pricing a borderline unit.
We work with Ohio operators holding PUCO certificates — private tow-away zone contractors, law enforcement rotation companies, and heavy recovery fleets running their own storage lots.
The most commonly missed provision in Ohio towing is not in the fee rule at all. Revised Code § 4921.25(B)(4), effective April 6, 2017, is the grant of authority under which the Commission set those maximums, and it carries its own limit: with respect to vehicles removed under section 4513.60 of the Revised Code, the fees established under that division do not apply to a vehicle that is removed or stored within a municipal corporation that has established fees for vehicle removal and storage.
Read the scope precisely, because it is narrower than the way it is usually summarized. The displacement is written for removals under § 4513.60 — the law-enforcement-ordered removals from private residential or private agricultural property and from repair garages. It does not on its face extend to the private tow-away zone removals governed by § 4513.601. An operator who treats the whole rule as switched off inside a city has over-read the clause; one who treats the schedule as universal has under-read it.
The same displacement appears again in the operative sections. Revised Code § 4513.60(D)(1)(a), effective November 25, 2025 under House Bill 434 of the 136th General Assembly, requires payment of the Commission-established fees or, if the vehicle was towed within a municipal corporation that has established fees for removal and storage, payment of the fees established by that municipal corporation. And § 4513.601(B)(2) adds a licensing layer: where a municipal corporation requires tow trucks and tow truck operators to be licensed, no private property owner may cause a removal by an unlicensed truck or unlicensed operator.
Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati each administer towing regulation at the municipal level. This page publishes no municipal dollar figure for any Ohio city. Local schedules are adopted by ordinance on each city’s own calendar, and we could not confirm a current one at its own primary source while writing this; the adopted municipal schedule is the document to read. Two further pieces of § 4921.25(B) are worth knowing: division (B)(5) requires the Commission to review the established fees every five years, beginning on the five-year anniversary of the date the initial rules were adopted, and to adjust any fee it finds not just, reasonable or compensatory; division (B)(6) directs it to establish an after-hours retrieval fee, chargeable only where the entity holding the vehicle is not open to the public and is not required to be.
Ohio runs the custody sequence on a set of short, specific intervals, and a towing service is measured against every one of them. Under § 4513.60(A)(1), effective November 25, 2025, a sheriff or law enforcement chief may order into storage a motor vehicle left on private residential or private agricultural property for at least four hours without the permission of the person entitled to possession. Paragraph (A)(2) then requires the towing service to deliver the vehicle to the designated location not more than two hours after removal, unless prevented by an uncontrollable force, natural disaster or other event outside its power.
Section 4513.61, also effective November 25, 2025, governs vehicles ordered into storage from public roads and from law enforcement possession, and it contains the provision most relevant to a trucking audience. Where a vehicle constitutes an obstruction to traffic it may ordinarily be ordered into storage immediately — but not if it is a commercial motor vehicle. In that case the officer must allow the owner or operator the opportunity to arrange for removal within a specified period of time, and may order removal only after determining the vehicle cannot be removed within that period. A motor carrier whose unit goes down in Ohio has a statutory window to send its own recovery contractor. For the recovery company on the receiving end of that call, the work happens in a live traffic lane, which is where auto liability limits on a heavy division are genuinely tested.
The rest of § 4513.61 is a notice and disposal timeline. The sheriff, chief or department must cause a records search within five business days of the removal to identify the owner and any lienholder, then send notice by certified or express mail with return receipt, certified mail with electronic tracking, or a commercial carrier service requiring a signed receipt, informing them the vehicle will be declared a nuisance and disposed of if not claimed within ten days of the date the notice was sent. Where the place of storage conducted the search and sent the notice, the owner or lienholder pays that facility a processing fee of twenty-five dollars in addition to removal and storage charges. If no claim is made within the ten days, the clerk of courts issues a salvage certificate of title free and clear of liens on presentation of an affidavit showing compliance.
Private tow-away zone work under § 4513.601, effective April 7, 2023 under House Bill 507 of the 134th General Assembly, adds its own set. The property owner must post a sign at least eighteen inches by twenty-four inches, visible from all entrances, carrying the tow-away statement, who may park, the enforcement hours if not continuous, and the telephone number and address of the place from which the vehicle may be recovered at any time of day or night. The storage location must be within twenty-five linear miles of the zone unless that is not practicable, well-lighted, and on or near a public transportation route where public transportation exists. The towing service must photograph the violation and retain the images and their time and date record for at least thirty days after recovery or two years after the tow, whichever is earlier; must deliver the vehicle within two hours; must notify law enforcement within two hours of removal; and may not remove any vehicle except under a written contract with the property owner. Everything after the delivery is lot exposure rather than road exposure, and damage to a customer vehicle sitting on the operator’s own well-lighted lot is a premises and garage question that the wrecker’s own auto policy will not answer.
Revised Code § 4513.611, effective March 23, 2022 under Senate Bill 162 of the 134th General Assembly, gives a vehicle owner a civil action against a towing service or storage facility and then tells the court what to award. It sorts conduct into minor violations and major violations, and the award escalates with the company’s record over the preceding year rather than with the owner’s loss.
The minor list is procedural: missing the two-hour delivery window, failing to give a receipt, taking a vehicle to a storage location that does not meet the § 4513.601 requirements, failing to comply with a photograph requirement, failing to send owner and lienholder notice, failing to provide the estimate required by § 4513.68 with the information that section requires, charging a fee that does not comply with the required reduction under § 4513.68(C), and failing to post the fee-limitation notice under § 4513.68(D). The major list is about refusals: failing to tell an owner who arrives before removal that he may pay not more than one-half of the removal fee, failing to release the vehicle on payment of that half fee, refusing to let an owner reclaim on payment and proof of ownership, refusing personal-item retrieval, missing the two-hour law enforcement notification on a tow-away zone removal, failing to send the tow notice within thirty days, and failing to display the certificate number under § 4513.67(B)(1).
The awards are fixed by statute. A first minor violation is one hundred fifty dollars; a second within one year is three hundred fifty dollars; a fourth is one thousand five hundred dollars; a fifth is two thousand dollars; a seventh or eighth is two thousand five hundred dollars — and the third, sixth and ninth are each converted into major violations by operation of the section. A first major violation is one thousand dollars, a second within a year is two thousand five hundred dollars, and a third is three thousand five hundred dollars plus a court order directing the Commission to revoke the certificate of public convenience and necessity for six months, which the Commission is required to carry out.
That last consequence is the one to plan around. A six-month certificate revocation is not a fine, and it is not a loss that a liability policy is built to indemnify — it is the company being unable to operate, arriving through a civil action brought by a customer over a receipt or a half-fee release. It also interacts with the disclosure duty in § 4513.60(D)(1)(b): when the owner retrieves a vehicle, the towing service or storage facility must give written notice that a disputed tow may support a civil action under § 4513.611. Ohio requires the operator to hand the claimant the roadmap. Whether any given policy responds to a scheduled statutory award or to a § 4923.99 forfeiture is a wording question, and it is one worth asking before binding rather than after the first summons.
The state minimum is a licensing threshold. The program an operator actually needs is built from these lines:
We write tow and recovery as a named class rather than as an exception to general trucking, and we read each account against the licensing regime of the state it operates in. For a Ohio operator that means starting from the permit list, sizing on-hook to the heaviest class actually recovered rather than to a state floor, and treating the storage yard as its own exposure rather than an extension of the wrecker.
If the operation also runs freight under separate authority, the Ohio trucking insurance page covers the state’s broader motor carrier picture, and the tow trucking insurance page covers the class mechanics that apply wherever the operator runs.
Under Ohio Administrative Code 4901:2-24-03(A)(3), effective January 1, 2026, the removal fee for a vehicle rated above twenty-six thousand pounds may not exceed $410, and storage under paragraph (B)(3) may not exceed $82 per day. Both ceilings apply to removals under Revised Code sections 4513.60 and 4513.601, and both sit on top of a reasonableness test rather than functioning as a scheduled price.
No. The version of rule 4901:2-24-03 effective July 10, 2023 carried the same amounts as the version effective June 8, 2018 — $129 and $216 for removal and $17 and $29 per day for storage, across the same two weight brackets. The re-adoption moved the effective date without moving a single dollar figure. The first change to the amounts, and the first bracket above twenty-six thousand pounds, came with the version effective January 1, 2026.
Not necessarily. Revised Code § 4921.25(B)(4), effective April 6, 2017, provides that with respect to vehicles removed under § 4513.60, the Commission-established fees do not apply to a vehicle removed or stored within a municipal corporation that has established its own removal and storage fees. Section 4513.60(D)(1)(a) directs payment of the municipal fees in that case. The clause is written for § 4513.60 removals; it does not on its face reach § 4513.601 private tow-away zone removals.
Yes. Revised Code § 4921.25(A) makes anyone engaged in towing motor vehicles subject to regulation by the Public Utilities Commission as a for-hire motor carrier, and § 4513.67(B) forbids operating a towing vehicle without a valid certificate of public convenience and necessity displayed by number on both sides of the truck. A second violation carries a $500 fine and a court order to seize and impound every vehicle used to tow on the company’s behalf.
Where the owner or operator arrives after the vehicle has been prepared for removal but before it has actually been removed, § 4513.60(B) and § 4513.601(C) require the towing service to tell the owner he may pay not more than one-half of the applicable removal fee to obtain release, and to give a receipt showing both the full amount normally assessed and the amount received. If the tow is within a municipality that has set its own removal fee, the half is taken from that fee.
Under Revised Code § 4513.61, effective November 25, 2025, a records search to identify owner and lienholder must be caused within five business days of removal, notice must then be sent, and the owner or lienholder has ten days from the date the notice was sent to claim the vehicle. If no claim is made and the vehicle is to be sold at public auction, the clerk of courts issues a salvage certificate of title free and clear of liens on presentation of an affidavit showing compliance.
Fixed statutory amounts that rise with the company’s record. Effective March 23, 2022, a first minor violation is one hundred fifty dollars and a second within a year is three hundred fifty dollars, rising to two thousand five hundred dollars at seven or eight priors. A first major violation is one thousand dollars, a second is two thousand five hundred dollars, and a third within a year is three thousand five hundred dollars plus a court-ordered six-month revocation of the PUCO certificate.
Yes. Revised Code § 4513.61(A)(2), effective November 25, 2025, allows immediate removal of a vehicle obstructing traffic, but carves out commercial motor vehicles. For a commercial motor vehicle the officer must first allow the owner or operator the opportunity to arrange removal within a specified period, and may order removal only after determining it cannot be removed in that time. A motor carrier therefore has a statutory window to dispatch its own recovery contractor.
Every figure on this page was read at the source below on August 11, 2026, with the effective date of the version read. Treat each as current as of that date rather than as permanent.
Send the permit inventory and the heaviest class you recover. We will structure on-hook and garage limits against the work rather than against the state floor.
