An investigation by Gothamist examines a network of unlicensed tow trucks responding to crash scenes across New York City, a practice that residents and former elected officials associate with unsafe driving and disputes among operators. The reporting highlights a July 29, 2023, crash in Middle Village, Queens, in which a tow-equipped pickup truck struck 88-year-old Chung Lun Shao, who died a month later. Community members say the increase in pickup-based tow vehicles, along with reduced on-street enforcement, has contributed to concerns about oversight and safety.
The scale of the problem is not small. A Gothamist analysis found at least 712 unlicensed tow trucks operating in the five boroughs, up from just 54 in 2021, while the number of city-authorized tow trucks dropped from about 995 to roughly 764. Reporters matched state Department of Motor Vehicles “TOW” registration codes in the city’s speed- and red-light camera datasets with the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection’s roster of authorized medallions to flag pickups that behave like tow trucks, and they found thousands of camera violations tied to those plates. The investigation traces the rise of this so-called “ghost fleet” to policy shifts and resource gaps that regulators and officials say have dulled the bite of enforcement.
How Reporters Counted the Ghost Fleet
State vehicle registrations tag tow trucks with a “TOW” class code, which gave reporters a way to track tow-style plates inside publicly available camera data, according to the New York DMV. One pickup tied to the Middle Village crash had 13 speeding-camera violations in the four months before the collision, and prosecutors quoted the driver as saying, “Thank God I wasn’t going fast. I just tapped him with the truck,” a line that appeared in Gothamist. The pickups are often outfitted with low-profile wheel-lift kits that manufacturers advertise can hook a car “in as little as 35 seconds,” according to product pages from Lift and Tow.
Enforcement Frayed as Rules Changed
City regulators and consumer advocates say enforcement has struggled to keep up with the industry’s shift toward quick-strike tow pickups. In 2019 the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection announced that it had moved to notify roughly 130 tow-truck licensees, about a quarter of all licensees at the time, of its intent to revoke their licenses after uncovering widespread insurance and workers’ compensation fraud, and the agency said it conducted thousands of inspections and issued hundreds of violations, according to DCWP. Advocates point to Local Law 80 and other post-pandemic regulatory changes as having reduced penalties and created new pathways for companies to reapply, which critics argue has opened up wider enforcement gaps.
Corruption, Prosecutions and Violence
The tow business in New York has been a magnet for criminal scrutiny before. In May 2023 a former NYPD officer was sentenced to 33 months in prison for his role in a bribery scheme that steered wrecked cars to a private tow and repair shop, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors also brought a sweeping 2018 indictment that described an alleged “violent monopoly” in which operators were accused of damaging vehicles and intimidating competitors…