Accident towing fees in Victoria

The Melbourne schedule

The department’s charges apply only to accident towing: a vehicle that cannot be driven away after a crash. They do not apply to a tow after a breakdown.

Salvage is the work of getting a vehicle back onto the road or a road-related area such as a nature strip or footpath, or upright, before it can be towed. The department’s leaflet says the authority to tow lists the salvage done, and that the driver must photograph it, with copies of the photos free from the operator.

What the base charge already pays for

The base charge is not only the drive. The department lists work folded into it, so none of it is an extra on top:

• waiting at the crash scene
• clearing away debris, spills included
• cleaning the tow truck afterwards
• phone calls, photographs and the paperwork
• releasing the vehicle from storage later
• what the department lists as unpaid tows.

How the kilometres are counted

The distance is not only crash to destination. The department measures it from the authorised depot to the crash scene, and then from the scene to the address written on the authority to tow. In the Melbourne Controlled Area each depot covers its own boundary, and the department publishes a map for each one with some of the suburbs it covers.

The address on the form is the owner’s or driver’s choice. The department says a damaged vehicle can be towed up to 125 kilometres away, and that the owner or driver may call people for help in deciding where it goes.

Who sends the truck

In metropolitan Melbourne, the Mornington Peninsula and Geelong, an accident allocation centre assigns a tow truck to a crash and the driver is given a job number; elsewhere, depending on the crash, the police may allocate one or the owner may need to choose. The department lists 13 11 76 as the accident towing contact for the Melbourne region.

Only accredited towing companies may tow a crashed car, and their trucks carry number plates starting with TOW, or HTT for the heavy ones. Before the tow, the owner or driver signs the authority to tow, which sets out what is being paid for; if they cannot sign, a police or department officer may sign instead.

Paying on the day

The schedule assumes the tow is paid for when it happens. If the owner cannot pay at the time, the department says the driver may refuse to take the car to the chosen destination; if the owner agrees to pay later, the car goes to the towing company’s depot instead, where storage charges can apply.

Repairs are a separate decision. Victorian law bars a tow truck driver, or anyone else, from touting for repair work at the scene, and the department’s leaflet says there is no need to choose a repairer at the time of the tow. Any repairs the owner does approve are paid for on top of the towing and storage charges.

Who sets the numbers

The Minister for Roads and Road Safety sets the fees, and may do so only after a recommendation from the Essential Services Commission and a separate report from the department’s Secretary; that rule still stands in the Act as amended in 2026. The last determination was made in July 2019, and the regulated fees then moved each year with Melbourne transport prices.

The commission’s 2025 review found the towing and storage fees appropriate, recommended that they rise only through that yearly adjustment (Melbourne transport inflation less a productivity factor, kept at 0.5 per cent), and advised against setting a fee for basic salvage. The commission now says it no longer reviews these charges after the 2026 amendments, which ended its regular reviews; the Act still lets the minister direct it to review a fee. Under the Act as amended in 2026, each charge is varied every financial year by Melbourne’s all-groups consumer price index, and never downwards.

Outside Melbourne: the reasonable charge

For regional Victoria, heavy vehicles of four tonnes or more and Geelong’s self-managed towing area, the Act sets no amount. Section 212I requires the charge to be reasonable instead, and the department lists what a reasonable charge must take into account:

• the service actually given, and when it was given
• the operator’s administration costs
• what a comparable tow, such as a breakdown tow, costs
• what other accident towing operators nearby charge for similar work.

Whatever the region, the department says the person paying for an accident tow must be offered cash, credit card or debit card.