Heavy stories
Charlotte: $9,000 for 30 minutes
Charlotte, North Carolina — 30 minutes over a parking limit
Donald Hicklin Jr. parked 30 minutes too long in Charlotte. The bill was $9,000: $7,000 for the tow and impound, $500 of storage, and $1,500 of “administrative fees.” His review was short: “Oh, it's beyond excessive. It's predatory! They just take advantage of the laws.” Charlotte produced a second exhibit the same season: $6,000 for a truck the ELD showed was moved 0.7 miles — $3,000 for the tractor, $3,000 for the trailer, cash only, $100 a day of storage. The driver's video of the encounter was viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
Here is the part the outrage misses: the $9,000 bill broke no North Carolina rate cap, because North Carolina has none for heavy private-property tows. What North Carolina has done since — SB 311, effective December 1, 2025 — is different and real: booting a commercial truck is now a crime, and cargo must be promptly returned on request.
That is the honest shape of most of the heavy map: no cap, but not no law. The checker prints both halves — the release and cargo rules that bind today, and the reasonableness path (the industry's own ATRI averages) for the dollars.
Run your state: the heavy checker.