Cheap towing starts with the price the state has already set

A guide to what a tow may cost

Cheap Towing is a guide to the regulated price of a tow in Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, written and published by Dotto. It reads each state’s schedule of charges from the official page that publishes it, and gives every figure with the date it was read.

General information. The figures here change: Victoria’s regulated accident towing fees moved each year after 2019, and Western Australia raised its maximum charges from 1 July 2026. Check the state’s own page, linked at the foot of each guide, before relying on a number.

Where the price is capped, and where it is not

Each state draws its line in a different place. In Victoria the set charges cover vehicles under four tonnes towed after a crash in metropolitan Melbourne; regional Victoria, heavy vehicles and the self-managed towing area around Geelong have no set figure. Queensland caps crash towing, and the towing of cars from private property, inside a list of regulated areas based on council boundaries from before March 2008. In Western Australia the cap covers towing a light vehicle away from a crash in Perth or Peel, and storing it afterwards.

Outside those lines the price is not a free-for-all. For towing, storage and salvage or recovery of a crashed vehicle, Victoria and Western Australia both require charges they do not cap to be reasonable, and both list what goes into a reasonable charge, such as when the work was done and what other operators nearby charge for similar work.

One kind of tow sits outside all three schedules: the breakdown. Victoria’s set charges do not apply to trade towing, the name for towing a car that has broken down, and Queensland’s scheme does not regulate breakdown or trade towing at all.

The five schedules

Three guides take one state each. Two read across all three: what happens once the car is in a holding yard, and where a complaint goes.

Four questions that decide which line applies

A towing bill makes sense only against the right line of the right schedule. These four questions find it.

1. Was it a crash or a breakdown? In all three states the caps cover towing after a crash, not after a breakdown; Queensland also caps towing from private property.
2. Where did it happen? In Western Australia, the place of the crash decides whether the towing cap applies, and the place of the yard can bring in the storage cap.
3. How far did it go? Melbourne’s base charge covers the first 8 kilometres; the base tow in Queensland and in Perth and Peel covers the first 50.
4. When was it? Melbourne and Perth and Peel both allow an after-hours charge, and in Western Australia it depends on the time the authority to tow is signed.