AI Towing Dispatcher Pricing and ROI

By the Tow Deputy team · Updated September 10, 2026 · 7 min read

Tow Deputy's AI towing dispatcher costs $99/mo on Starter Receptionist or $199/mo on Super Receptionist, each with a 14-day free trial, no contract, and no hardware. Lead Engine is $3,000/mo if you want Super Receptionist plus 60 guaranteed jobs a month. The ROI case is missed calls: according to TheKeyBot, a missed inbound service call averages about $119 and 85% of emergency callers will not leave a voicemail. Tow Deputy's own published average for a local job is about $150. As an illustration, a handful of those a week covers the subscription — not a typical or guaranteed result.

The published price list

Visible pricing and JSON-LD on this site use the same numbers. Best-for: Starter Receptionist for single operators; Super Receptionist for small fleets. All published plans are paid.

See the pricing page for the same cards. Sales is (615) 430-2081 if Lead Engine is the conversation you actually need.

1-truck and 5-truck ROI, written as a dispatcher would

Assume after-hours plus mid-job misses — the calls that hit voicemail while you are strapping or sleeping. Use $150 as Tow Deputy's average local job, and show TheKeyBot's $119 next to it so you can pick the conservative column.

As an illustration, five extra completed calls a week at $150 is about $3,250 a month (5 × $150 × 52 ÷ 12) against a $99–$199 subscription — not a typical or guaranteed result. Operators using Tow Deputy report servicing roughly 30% more calls per shift because inbound calls are answered instead of dumped to voicemail. Plug your own missed-call count into the missed-call ROI calculator — the methodology on that page uses the same sourced figures.

“I'm a one-man operation. I drive the truck. When I'm winching a car out of a ditch or strapping a vehicle down, I can't answer the phone if a call comes in. Before Tow Deputy, those calls just went to voicemail and I'd lose the job. Now the AI picks up, gets all the details, and texts me the summary. I just glance at my phone and decide if I can take it.”

Compared with a dispatcher salary and an answering service

According to Salary.com, the average towing dispatcher salary in the United States is about $48,447 per year (~$23/hr). One seat covers about 40 hours. A week has 168 hours, which is about 4.2 full-time equivalents for true 24/7 — wages only, before any loaded-cost multiplier for payroll taxes and benefits (if you use 1.3× as an assumption, 24/7 wages-plus-load is on the order of $265,000 a year). Tow Deputy is not that person. It is the phone: intake, quote, optional deposit, driver alert. Keep a human for motor club, police rotation, and the messy recoveries.

Traditional answering services bill per minute or per call. They take messages. They do not quote your card or collect a deposit. On storm nights the invoice moves; Tow Deputy's bill does not. Details live in towing answering service cost and on AI towing dispatch.

Getting paid on the call

Super Receptionist and above can collect a deposit during the call via a secure SMS payment link connected to your Stripe merchant account (Stripe Connect). You are paid before the driver leaves the yard, which cuts no-shows. That is a separate ROI from “answered the phone”: it is “did not roll for a ghost.” Most companies go live in under 24 hours. Test the AI on (615) 205-9369 first.

What is in a “call,” and what happens when you run over

A call is an inbound conversation the AI handles, not a completed tow. Starter Receptionist includes 290 a month; Super Receptionist includes 590. Extra calls are $0.30 each or $30 per 100. A one-truck shop that forwards only after hours rarely sees 290. A five-truck shop that forwards always, including daytime overflow, might. Watch the dashboard for the first month before you guess. Spam and wrong numbers still consume a call if the AI has to triage them; that is still cheaper than a person, and cheaper than a per-minute invoice. There is no surprise overage format — the two extra-call prices are on the public cards.

A week you can actually measure

Do not wait for a quarterly report. Forward after hours only for seven nights. Count three things in the dashboard: calls answered, jobs quoted, jobs you accepted. If you used to guess at voicemail, you now have a transcript. For a one-truck operator, a typical first week is not “the phone exploded.” It is three or four overnight lockouts you would have slept through and one daytime call that rang while you were under a car. At $150 each, four jobs is $600 against $99. For a five-truck shop, look at simultaneous rings on the wet night — the second and third callers are the ones a single dispatcher puts on hold, and hold is how you lose them.

Jay D.'s published result is a 100% call answer rate on the 12 AM–6 AM window he configured. Anthony G. published +12 jobs/week as a one-man shop. Eric A. published a 90% cut in dispatch overhead and an 8-minute drop in average response time on a 14-truck, three-county operation. Use those as proof that the phone can be covered. Use your own week as the ROI number you take to a partner. Lead Engine at $3,000/mo is a different conversation — Super Receptionist plus 60 guaranteed jobs a month — and you book a call to talk it through, not guess on a web form.

AI towing dispatcher pricing FAQs

Related reading

• All pricing, coverage, and dispatch articles
• Tow Deputy plans: Starter Receptionist $99, Super Receptionist $199, Lead Engine $3,000
• Towing missed-call ROI calculator
• What AI towing dispatch includes at those prices
• What a missed tow call costs