Towing Quote Software That Speaks Your Rate Card

What the Smart Pricing Engine Is

Towing quote software only helps if the number on the phone matches the card on the shop wall. Tow Deputy’s Smart Pricing Engine is that card, read by an AI towing dispatcher that answers in under two seconds. It calculates from the variables you already use — not a generic “average tow” — and says the total before the caller hangs up to dial the next listing.

According to TheKeyBot, 85% of emergency callers will not leave a voicemail and will call the next listing within about 90 seconds. A vague “we’ll get you a price” loses the job. Operators on this site report an average local job around $150. Quoting that number — or your real number, which may be higher once night and class fees land — is the job of this feature, not a human callback.

Live quoting is on Starter at $99/mo and Growth at $199/mo. There is no free plan. Both include a 14-day free trial. This is the same engine described on the AI towing receptionist page: hook-up, mileage, class, after-hours — live, from a card you control.

How It Works

1. You enter your rate card in the dashboard: base hook-up, per-mile from the yard to pickup, optional tiered mileage breakpoints, vehicle type and weight-class surcharges, luxury upcharges, vehicle-issue premiums (accident, ditch recovery), night-time surcharges with your night hours, and after-hours fees.
2. On the call, the AI collects year, make, model, drivetrain, problem type, and pickup. Location Intelligence turns a landmark into a distance from headquarters.
3. The engine applies zone-based hook-up fees if you use zones, then stacks mileage and surcharges. The caller hears one total.
4. If they book, the quoted total rides with the job on SMS and the dashboard. On Growth, deposit collection can take a percentage of that same number.
5. A public instant-quote form link is available so some customers self-quote online without calling. Same card, same math.

Worked Example (Sample Rate Card)

The numbers below are an example only — they are not Tow Deputy’s prices and they are not a recommended rate card. They show how the engine stacks fees the way a dispatcher would on paper.

Example shop: light-duty wrecker, yard in a mid-size city. Pickup is 12 miles from headquarters. It is 11:20 PM (night hours set 10:00 PM–6:00 AM). Vehicle is a luxury sedan in a ditch, not blocking a lane. Destination is a shop 8 miles past pickup; this example prices hook-up plus loaded miles from the yard to pickup only, the way many local cards are written.

Without the engine, a tired owner-operator on a winch job either guesses $150 or says “I’ll call you back.” With it, the caller hears $257 and can accept or decline. If they decline, the call ends as a price-shopper instead of a wasted roll. If they accept, the driver sees the same total on the dispatch alert.

Tiered mileage is the same idea with a second breakpoint. Example: $3.50/mi for the first 15 miles from the yard, $4.25/mi after that. A 22-mile recovery would be (15 × $3.50) + (7 × $4.25) plus the zone hook-up and any surcharges. You set the breakpoints; the AI does not invent them.

Settings You Control

• Base hook-upThe starting fee before distance and add-ons
• Per-mile from HQMileage-based pricing from your yard to pickup
• Tiered mileageDifferent dollars per mile after set distances
• Zone hook-up feesA different hook-up for each distance zone from the yard
• Vehicle classType and weight-class surcharges
• Luxury upchargeExtra for high-end vehicles you price differently
• Issue premiumsAccident, ditch recovery, and similar job types
• Night hoursCustom night window and the night-time surcharge that applies
• After-hours feeSeparate from night if your card splits them
• Instant-quote linkPublic form that uses the same card without a phone call

All of it is fully editable from the dashboard. No code. Change a night window on Friday afternoon and Saturday’s 1 AM caller hears the new fee.

What It Does Not Do

The engine does not negotiate motor-club or account rates on the fly. Those calls still belong on a person, and you can route them with the call menu. It does not invent a price when you left a field blank — garbage in, garbage out. It does not push the quote into Towbook or Omadi. Tow Deputy works alongside those systems via SMS and dashboard handoff; you enter the job manually. Native two-way sync is on the roadmap and is not built yet.

It also does not replace judgment on a wreck where the caller is hurt or the scene is a police rotation. The AI classifies, quotes what it can, and escalates what you told it not to handle. Hiring a human dispatcher still costs on the order of $48,447 a year according to Salary.com. This feature is the quoting slice of that job, not the whole radio room.

Related Features

• How zone-based hook-up fees are quoted
• Collecting a towing deposit on the quoted total
• Caller location capture that feeds mileage
• How to set zone-based hook-up fees
• All Tow Deputy features

Smart Pricing FAQs