Need a tow? Emergency towing in Boulder, CO

Boulder Towing Company runs around the clock, and a call at 2 a.m. gets the same questions as a call at noon: where the vehicle is, what it is, where it needs to go. The rest is described under towing in Boulder; this page is for the calls that cannot wait for daylight.

Where comes first, because the truck has to enter a divided highway on your side. On US 36, the Denver-Boulder Turnpike, give your direction and the last interchange - Table Mesa, Baseline Road, Foothills Parkway; in town, the street and nearest cross street. In Boulder Canyon, fifteen twisting miles of CO 119 between town and Nederland, say what you passed last - Magnolia Road, Sugarloaf Road.

The four questions

• Where you are. Highway, direction and last interchange, or street and cross street.
• What you drive. Year, make and model; front-, all- or four-wheel drive, or electric; does it roll and steer.
• What happened. Will not start, a flat, a crash, or stuck in a drift or a ditch.
• Where it goes. Home, your mechanic, a body shop or a dealership, and whether anyone is there for the key.

Those four answers choose the truck, wheel-lift or flatbed, and set the total and arrival window, both given before the call ends. The window is a window, not a promise of minutes - snow on the Turnpike or a closure in the canyon moves it - and the driver phones when close. If the vehicle is beyond a light-duty truck's tow rating, we say so.

The total is quoted before the truck rolls, and it rolls when you say yes. The cost page covers what moves the price of an emergency tow line by line; briefly:

• Distance - truck to vehicle, then vehicle to destination; Gunbarrel to 28th Street is one quote, Nederland to Broomfield another.
• The truck - a front-wheel-drive sedan rides a wheel-lift; an all-wheel-drive wagon, an electric car or anything crash-damaged needs the flatbed.
• Time on scene - a car that rolls is a quick load; one buried in a drift or needing dollies is not.
• Recovery work - winching a car off a soft shoulder or out of a ditch is priced separately, before we hook up.
• The destination - a closed shop's key box tonight, or home now and the shop in the morning, are two different quotes.

The hour is not a line on the quote. Night, weekend or holiday, the total we tell you is the total.

Colorado caps the price of two kinds of tow, neither the one you are calling us for: the Public Utilities Commission sets maximums for nonconsensual tows - a private-property impound or a tow ordered by a law enforcement officer - under its towing rules, 4 CCR 723-6. A tow you ask for yourself is consensual, priced by the quote you agree to; what the law asks of us is to disclose every rate and charge, mileage and storage included, first.

The tow is mostly loading, and loading is where a car gets damaged or does not. Our light-duty trucks come two ways: the wheel-lift picks up one axle in a cradle and pulls the car on its other two wheels; the flatbed, or rollback, lays its deck down to the road and winches the vehicle up it, all four wheels off the ground.

Which truck comes

Front-wheel drive is the simple case: the wheel-lift picks up the front axle, the rear wheels roll free, and the smaller truck fits where a flatbed does not. All-wheel drive changes the answer, because lifting one axle and rolling the other works the center differential or the transfer case; Subaru's own guide warns that improper towing can damage the system and points to a flatbed. Tesla's Model 3 manual names the flatbed as the recommended transport and warns that tires left free to spin can overheat. Low cars, motorcycles and anything with a bent wheel also need a flatbed for a vehicle that cannot roll.

Straps, hooks and the key

Wheel straps hold the car on the deck, one over each tire and ratcheted down, so the body is never touched; where a tire strap will not fit, soft straps on a rated point or J-hooks in the frame slots do the job, never a suspension arm. We ask for the key because the transmission has to be in neutral, the parking brake off and the steering unlocked before the winch line goes on; a dead car stuck in park, parking pawl holding the drive wheels, goes up on dollies.

Your belongings, and where the car ends up

Before the car goes up, take out what you need for the night - wallet, phone, medication, garage opener - because once it is strapped down the doors stay shut. Say where it goes and the driver leaves the car and key there. An impound is the other kind of tow, nonconsensual, to a storage yard that bills per 24 hours; if your car has vanished from a Boulder street or lot, ask the Boulder Police non-emergency line, 303-441-3333, who has it.

Colorado's Move Over law, C.R.S. 42-4-705, tells drivers to move a full lane away from a stopped vehicle with its hazards on, or slow down if they cannot; since 2023 that covers any vehicle on the shoulder, and fines and surcharges apply. Do not count on it. A car with a wheel in the travel lane is a police matter before it is ours, and the officer who orders it cleared picks the truck.

Snow, wind and the canyon

A normal Boulder season brings close to 90 inches of snow, most of it in upslope storms from February through April; the March 2021 storm fell at two to three inches an hour, and a car that slides off the Diagonal in that is a recovery first. Chinook winds - 137 mph at NCAR in January 1982 - will take a door out of your hand. In Boulder Canyon, where CO 119 climbs at grades up to 10 percent, rock comes down; five truck-sized boulders closed the road in April 2021, so say if it is blocked behind you.

After a crash

When you are able to choose and the car is not blocking a lane, the choice is yours: a body shop, your driveway, the dealership. When an officer orders the tow to clear the roadway, the car goes where the officer sends it, and that is a tow the PUC rate-regulates by the hour as law-enforcement-ordered tow and recovery. Either way, photograph the damage before the car is loaded.

When a tow is not the call

Not every 2 a.m. call needs a truck. A car that clicks and goes quiet is most often the battery - AAA puts one 35 percent weaker at 32°F and 60 percent weaker at 0°F - and a flat with a usable spare is a tire change; either is a jump start or tire change instead of a tow, and the smaller bill. Stuck is not broken: pulling a car out of a snowbank or off the shoulder is winch work, and the car drives away afterward. A tow is the call when it cannot: a wheel that will not turn, a drivetrain that will not pull.

Boulder Towing Company works every part of the city, from the Pearl Street Mall and The Hill to Chautauqua, Table Mesa, Martin Acres and Shanahan Ridge, Gunbarrel to the northeast, every ZIP from 80301 to 80305. Around it: Superior and Broomfield along the Turnpike, Louisville and Lafayette to the east, Erie, Niwot, Longmont at the end of the Diagonal, Lyons on US 36, Nederland up the canyon, Golden down CO 93.

Two places produce more night calls than most: the Park-n-Ride at US 36 and Table Mesa, where a car that sat all day in the cold will not start after the last Flatiron Flyer, and the CU campus lots, where one of 38,808 students finds a battery that quit in October. Name the lot and row.

A car left overnight on a county road, clear of the travel lane - nosed into a bank on Magnolia Road, say - is not abandoned by morning: Boulder County counts it abandoned after 72 hours on county public property, and the Sheriff's Office then gives notice and 72 hours more before removal. In the city, an abandoned vehicle in the right of way is removed on report, within up to 10 business days. The Sheriff's non-emergency line is 303-441-4444.

Past those towns - the Peak to Peak beyond Nederland, DIA at about 42 miles, Denver at about 30 - we quote by the mile as a long-distance transport. Eldora, 21 miles up the canyon, is a mountain tow; in a storm the window stretches with the road.