TowingBossPro Blog — Driver App & Routes

Access Notes That Save a Tow Driver Twenty Minutes in a Parking Garage

Parking garages are where tow time goes to die. The car is on level three, the entrance clearance is too low for the truck, the gate needs a code, and the security desk is closed. A driver can lose twenty minutes before they even see the vehicle.

Year, Make, Model, Color, Plate, VIN: Finding the Right Car Before You Hook It was about identifying the vehicle. Access notes are about reaching it.

What Belongs in an Access Note

An access note answers one question: what does the driver need to know to get to this vehicle and get it out? Common examples:

• Gate or garage code
• Garage level and stall number
• Clearance at the entrance and whether a wheel lift is needed to pull it out first
• Where the keys are: with the customer, in the vehicle, at a front desk, in a shop drop box
• Who to ask on site: a property manager, a service writer, a security guard
• Hazards: steep driveway, soft shoulder, narrow alley

Keep it short. The driver reads it on the phone, not on a desk.

Lead with the thing the driver needs first. If the gate code is needed to get in, it goes at the top, not buried after three lines about where the keys are.

Writing Notes the Driver Can Use

"Car is in the garage" is not a note. "Level 3, stall 314, entrance clearance is low, call the customer for the garage code" is. The office should write the note while the caller is still on the line, because the caller knows things the driver will need and will not be reachable once they hang up.

A good habit is to read the note back to the caller. If it sounds confusing on the phone, it will be confusing in the truck.

Ask specific questions instead of "anything else we should know?" Ask what level, what stall, is there a gate, where are the keys, will someone be there. Callers rarely volunteer the detail that matters most because they do not know it matters.

Repeat Locations

Some places you visit every week: a dealer, a body shop, an apartment complex you patrol under contract. TowingBossPro keeps customers and their locations, so notes about a location can be reused instead of rewritten. Commercial accounts keep their calls under the account, which makes it easy to see how past calls at that location went.

When a code or a contact changes, update it once. The next driver should never be the one who discovers the old code does not work.

Notes From Drivers Back to the Office

Drivers know things the office does not: the side gate is faster, the security desk opens at 7, the alley behind the shop is too tight for the flatbed. That knowledge belongs in the record, not just in the head of the driver who went last time.

Make it routine for drivers to tell the office when something on site is different from the note. The office updates the location, and the next call goes smoother.

Over time this turns into a real advantage. A company that has been to the same garage fifty times and wrote down what it learned is faster there than a competitor going in cold.

Access Notes on Roadside Calls

Roadside calls have their own access details: which side of the highway, whether the car is in a travel lane, whether the customer is waiting in the car or somewhere safe nearby. For lockouts, note where the customer is waiting and whether they have ID with them. For fuel delivery, note fuel type.

The note does not have to be long, but it has to be there.

For winch-outs, a quick note on how far the vehicle is off the road and what it is stuck in tells the driver what to expect before they see it. Mud, sand, a ditch and a snow bank all call for different gear.

The Time Payoff

Twenty minutes saved in one garage is twenty minutes the next customer is not waiting on the shoulder. Across a day of calls, good access notes can be the difference between a driver who finishes the list and one who hands two calls back to dispatch at the end of the shift.

See how notes fit with the rest of the driver's screen on the Tow Truck Driver App page.