Need a tow? Roadside assistance in Boulder, CO - or a fix on the spot

Boulder Towing Company answers roadside assistance calls in Boulder around the clock, and the job gets sorted in the first minute on the phone: what the car is doing, and exactly where it sits.

What the car is doing tells us what goes on the truck. One click and fading dash lights point at the battery. A hard crank that never catches is fuel or spark, and no jump pack fixes that. A thump that grows with speed is a tire. A door that ignores the fob is a lockout.

Where it is tells us how to reach you. In town, a street and a cross street does it: Broadway and Canyon, 28th and Arapahoe, 13th on The Hill. On US 36, the Denver-Boulder Turnpike, give the direction and the nearest interchange - Baseline Road, Foothills Parkway or the Table Mesa Park-n-Ride. In Boulder Canyon on CO 119, a mile marker if you can see one, or the last turnoff, tells us which side of the Narrows you are on.

On the shoulder of the Turnpike or the Diagonal, put the hazards on and stay belted in: since 2023 Colorado's Move Over law, C.R.S. 42-4-705, has told passing drivers to move a lane away from any vehicle stopped with its hazards flashing, or slow down. We work on the side away from traffic and tell you when to step out.

Then we give you the arrival window and the price, and the truck leaves with the roadside kit on board: a jump pack, a jack and impact tools for the lug nuts, fuel and the lockout tools. The first visit is usually the fix; when it is not, the wheel-lift or flatbed behind the kit turns it into a tow without a second phone call.

A roadside visit is priced as a service call: the trip to the car, the time on scene and the work done there. A tow is priced as a tow: the hook-up, then the miles on the truck. The same dead battery costs less to jump in a Martin Acres driveway than to carry to a shop.

Colorado's Public Utilities Commission regulates towing carriers under 4 CCR 723-6 and caps rates for nonconsensual tows - private-property impounds and police-ordered tows. A roadside call, or a tow you ask for yourself, is consensual: the PUC sets no schedule for it, and the price is the quote you agree to, disclosed in full before the truck rolls, as Colorado requires. The cost page lays out what a roadside call costs compared with a tow.

What moves the price of a roadside call:

• Distance to reach you. Pearl Street is one thing; Nederland is 17 miles up Boulder Canyon and Lyons 16 miles out US 36, and road time counts both ways.
• Fuel delivered. On a fuel run you pay for the gas or diesel itself on top of the visit.
• Time on scene. A jump is quick; a seized lug nut, keys shut in a trunk or a wheel buried in a plow berm takes longer, and we say so.
• A fix that will not hold. If the battery quits again at the end of the block, the visit becomes a tow, quoted as a tow, before the car goes on the truck.

Jump start

A jump start is the most common roadside call we take in Boulder. AAA puts numbers on why: at 32°F a car battery loses about 35 percent of its strength, at 0°F about 60 percent, while the engine may need up to twice its usual current. The average battery lasts three to five years; one that was fine in October has less by January.

Boulder winters swing: warm, dry Chinook winds are common in the winter months, and upslope storms bring the heavy snow - March 2021 put 15 to 20.7 inches on the Boulder stations. A marginal battery lives through the warm afternoons and quits on the cold morning after.

We put the jump pack on the terminals, start the engine and check the charging system before we leave; then drive a while, not around the block, so the alternator can put something back. If the car stalls or the battery light stays on - a frozen cell, a bad alternator - the visit becomes a tow.

Flat tire change

With a spare on board we jack the car, swap the wheel, torque the lug nuts and check the spare's pressure, because it loses air sitting in a trunk for years. A compact spare is built for a short distance at reduced speed, so the next stop is a tire shop, not Denver.

When CDOT activates the traction law on a Boulder-area highway and the signs go up (it is automatic only on the I-70 mountain corridor), AWD and 4WD vehicles need 3/16 inch of tread on winter, all-weather or M+S tires, or chains, and fines and surcharges apply. A compact spare is not a winter tire, so in a storm the car may ride to the shop.

Run-flats can be driven a short way after losing pressure, so the TPMS light may be the only sign, and an inflator kit seals a small tread puncture, not a sidewall cut. Boulder Canyon sheds rock - five truck-sized boulders closed CO 119 near the Narrows in April 2021 - and a sidewall cut on a rock is a tow, not a plug. With locking lug nuts, find the key before we arrive.

Fuel delivery

Running out of gas needs no apology. We bring enough fuel to reach a station, not a full tank, and ask whether the car takes gas or diesel, because the wrong one means a shop visit. The one that repeats is the ski morning: Eldora is 21 miles and about 35 minutes up the canyon, and a quarter tank can run dry before the Nederland roundabout.

Most cars carry the fuel pump inside the tank, where the fuel keeps it cool, so a dry tank is a habit to avoid; we stay until the engine catches. An electric car out of charge rides a flatbed to a charger.

Vehicle lockout

Keys locked in the car, keys shut in the trunk, a fob that died - we open the door with tools made to spare the paint, the weather strip and the lock, and we ask the year, make and model because the method depends on the car. The Hill and the campus, with CU Boulder's 38,808 students, send us plenty.

Have your license ready and, once the door is open, the registration. We open a car for the person it belongs to.

Some calls come in as roadside and go out as a tow. We send a tow truck from the start for:

• A warning light with a rough engine. A flashing check-engine light or an oil pressure light means stop, not jump.
• Overheating. A gauge in the red or steam from the hood is a cooling system problem the roadside kit cannot fix.
• A battery that dies again within minutes of a jump: the charging system has quit, and a second jump goes as far as the first.
• A car off the road. Nosed into a snowbank on Magnolia Road or off the shoulder on Sugarloaf Road is a winch job; past a light-duty truck's tow rating, we say so on the phone.

In those cases we send an emergency tow when the roadside fix will not hold. An all-wheel-drive, electric or low car rides on flatbed transport to a shop with all four wheels off the pavement, as the manufacturers ask: Subaru's 2020 Legacy guide warns that improper towing can damage its all-wheel drive and calls for a flatbed, and Tesla's Model 3 manual recommends a flatbed and limits dollies to 35 miles.

The reverse holds too: one click on the coldest morning of the year, a tire gone soft in the driveway, keys in plain sight on the seat - those are roadside calls, and a tow would be paying for a truck you do not need.

The roadside kit rides the same routes as our towing service across Boulder: downtown and Pearl Street, The Hill, Chautauqua, Table Mesa, Martin Acres, north and east Boulder and Gunbarrel, then Superior about 8 miles out, Louisville and Niwot 9, Lafayette 11, Broomfield 13, Erie 14, Longmont 16 up the Diagonal, Lyons 16 on US 36, Nederland 17 up the canyon and Golden 20 down CO 93.

The calls that repeat come from where cars sit: the US 36 and Table Mesa Park-n-Ride, where a car that sat all day in the cold while its owner rode the Flatiron Flyer comes back to a dead battery; the Chautauqua lots after a hike; and the campus, where a car that has not moved all semester is the same call.

In a garage, tell us the level; ceiling height decides which truck can reach the car. On Flagstaff Road's hairpins with slim to no shoulders, or on Magnolia Road where the pavement turns to dirt, tell us the last switchback you passed, because the truck has to fit there too.