How verdicts are computed
Cite-or-silence: a number prints only with its instrument attached. Everything else is a standard, a right, or an honest silence.
The discipline
Every numeric cell in the dataset carries four things: the value, the instrument (code section, rate card, manual, or tariff), the layer that issued it (state, county, or city), and the month it was checked. Layer conflicts resolve downward and say so — Houston's $232 city rate prints as the operative maximum under the $272 Texas ceiling, because the lower number is the one the yard may charge.
Where the law is a standard instead of a number — California's comparison to the CHP-approved rate, Virginia's ban on knowingly excessive fees — the checker prints the standard and the documented comparables, never an invented cap. Where a rule could not be confirmed in the sources checked, the page says that, in those words, and prints the neighbouring truths.
When we find a wrong number
It is corrected and re-stamped within one week. Two wrong car cap cells in a quarter pause car-track kit sales until the covered rate cards are checked end to end again; one wrong cargo cell plus one wrong rate cell does the same for the heavy track; a second pause anywhere within a year pauses kit sales across the site. Jurisdictions also pause at their known reset dates — Houston on January 1, Colorado's CPI card each March, Florida county cards each October 1 — until the new card is loaded.
The watch list — proposed law, never printed as law
These bills are tracked and shipped only when enacted:
- Missouri: HB 1741 / SB 1426 — MoDOT oversight, a Towing & Recovery Review Board with a mandated owner-operator seat, a per-pound ban, and release-while-disputed rules. Proposed — not law.
- Illinois: SB 2040 — tow-truck impoundment, plate suspension, and license bans for predatory operators. Advanced in 2025 — not yet law on the heavy side.
- Arizona: HB 2305 — the light-duty side advanced; the heavy/commercial side was expressly deferred to a study committee. Not law.
- North Carolina: HB 199 — a Towing & Recovery Commission, fee caps, and a ban on charging for cargo storage/handling. Proposed — not law.
The upkeep, stated now
Keeping every card and manual current takes 7–11 hours a quarter, every quarter, on known reset dates. If that work is ever not done, the correct move is pausing jurisdictions — not letting stamps slip.
Rules checked October 2026