The Memphis Police Vehicle Storage Lot charges $30.00 per day in storage, on top of a $135.00 impound fee, at 465 Klinke Avenue. Those are the city’s published charges, not a private-yard rate and not a number this brand sets. If a wrecker’s lot has the car, call that facility for its own daily amount, because no single private-yard rate is posted across Memphis.
Confirm which lot is holding the car
You cannot price a day of storage until you know which fence the car sits behind. A downtown MPD tow, a Hickory Hill apartment tow, and a DeSoto County recovery do not share a cashier.
If Memphis Police, the Shelby County Sheriff, or Housing and Community Development ordered the move, the car processes through one city lot. There is no separate Shelby County impound. That lot is at 465 Klinke Avenue, Memphis, TN 38127, in Frayser. It runs seven days, 24 hours. The phone is (901) 636-8200. That line is the only public contact. The city does not offer an online lookup, so you read them the plate or the VIN.
A car pulled from a shopping center, apartment lot, or other private property often goes to the wrecker’s own yard. That is a different address and a different daily rate. A private property tow from Berclair, Nutbush, or a Lamar Avenue retail lot is the usual path into that kind of yard. If you still cannot place the car, use how to find a towed car in Memphis and call the Klinke line anyway. They can tell you whether it is on their books.
A tow that started in Southaven or elsewhere in DeSoto County is a Mississippi job. Southaven Police’s non-emergency number is (662) 393-8652, at 8691 Northwest Drive. Southaven publishes no impound-lot page and no fee schedule, so call and ask where the car is. West Memphis and Marion follow Arkansas law. The $30 city-lot day does not apply across those borders.
If the car was part of a crime or an investigation, call (901) 636-8200 before you travel. A hold means storage and release are not the same conversation.
Separate the city lot from a private yard
The city lot publishes a daily number. A private yard may not.
On the Memphis Police Vehicle Storage page, the city’s fees are $135.00 to impound and $30.00 per day to store. Cash and credit are accepted. Winching and other extra work sit outside that pair, so the $30 line is storage, not the whole ticket. Those dollars are the city’s charges. They are not ours.
That posted $30 is why people look up a daily impound charge in Memphis and land on Klinke. It is a real figure for cars at the city lot. It is the wrong figure for a wrecker yard in Whitehaven, a lot near the airport, or a storage row in East Memphis.
Tennessee does not set one statewide dollar cap on the tow itself. A garagekeeper may not charge more than the maximum the Tennessee Highway Patrol district has approved for the same service. The Memphis-district dollar schedule was not confirmed here, so it is not printed here. Two hard statewide limits do apply to vehicles towed or stored without the owner’s express written authorization: a release fee of more than $100 is prohibited, and no gate, access, or release fee may be charged during normal business hours on any day daily storage is also charged. Those limits are not a daily storage price.
City wrecker rules add a local overcharge path. If a wrecker overcharges, it reimburses all money paid, or it releases the vehicle free. Complaints go to the Permits Administrator / Wrecker Coordinator at (901) 636-6735, or permits@memphistn.gov.
For the broader cap-and-complaint map, see whether towing fees are regulated in Tennessee. This page stays on the daily storage line.
Quick Tow Memphis is a referral service. We take the call and match you with a local operator. We do not run Klinke, we do not own a yard, and we do not set storage rates.
What starts the daily storage clock
The rate is one number. The start date is the other.
Under the City of Memphis wrecker rules, storage rates begin 24 hours after impound. Ask the lot that has your car how they apply that. Some desks talk in calendar dates. Some talk in 24-hour blocks. Get the start date, in their words, before you do the math.
Tennessee’s current towing law, the MOTION Act as re-enacted in 2025 Public Chapter 457, also limits how storage can run. Storage may not be charged past 21 days without the owner’s or lienholder’s consent, unless the owner was told the vehicle is ready and refused to collect it. No storage fee is due for any day the vehicle was not available for release, unless law enforcement placed a hold. To charge past 21 days, the owner and all lienholders must be notified at least 10 days before that extra fee begins.
Notice has its own pace. Ownership has to be verified within 3 business days. The owner and all lienholders have to be notified within 3 more business days, by a nationally recognized overnight carrier, not USPS, with proof of delivery requested. The reclaim window is 20 days from the notice date. If a garagekeeper misses that verification or that notice, it may not receive more than six days of storage-related expenses.
A dispute on the phone does not, by itself, stop the clock. If the car is sitting and available, days can still add. If a hold is on the file, you may be paying for days you cannot collect. Ask which of those is true before you wait through a weekend.
How to verify the current daily amount
Call the lot. Ask for today’s daily storage, the days already billed, and the running total.
For a city-lot car, that call is (901) 636-8200. Ask them to read the $135.00 impound fee, the $30.00 daily storage, and any winching or extra lines. Confirm the numbers still match the Vehicle Storage page. You pay what the lot posts when you arrive, not what you saw last week.
For a private yard, ask the same questions of that yard. A metro-wide average daily rate is not confirmed. Out-of-state round numbers are not Memphis figures. Do not take another state’s posted rate and apply it to a car stored off Summer Avenue or in Cordova.
Ask your insurer only after you have the lot’s number. Tennessee does not require auto policies to cover towing. Roadside and towing coverage is an optional add-on, priced by each carrier. Whether this bill is reimbursed depends on your endorsements, not on a state rule.
If you are not the registered owner, say so on the call. The city lot will want a notarized statement from the owner naming you, a legible copy of the owner’s photo ID, and the plate or VIN plus make and year. A rental needs the rental agreement and the matching ID. A quote you cannot complete still burns a day.
What to ask before you travel to pay
A missed document is another night of storage.
Ask for an itemized total, not just the daily rate. Ask what would change it between this call and the time you pull up. Ask how they count a partial day. Ask whether they take cash, credit, or both. The city lot takes cash and credit. A private yard may not.
Ask whether a licensed driver has to drive the car off. At Klinke, a licensed driver must drive it, or a tow has to be arranged for an added fee. If the battery is dead or the car will not start, that second move is a separate job. Our standard light-duty hookup starts at $95. That floor is our published hookup rate, not the lot’s storage. Distance, vehicle size, time of day, truck type, and hookup difficulty still move the operator’s full total. Ask for that total in writing, with mileage included, before anyone is dispatched.
Ask about a police hold. Ask about bags, work tools, and child seats inside. In Memphis, personal property and cargo not physically attached to the vehicle must be released to the owner or designee on request, unless MPD orders otherwise.
Pack the city-lot baseline before you leave: proof of ownership, plate or VIN, and a valid photo ID. The full stack is in what to bring for a Memphis impound release.
If the lot adds a gate or after-hours access fee on a day it is also charging storage, and the car was towed or stored without the owner’s written authorization, ask them to square that with the statewide no-gate-fee-on-a-storage-day rule. If the total still looks wrong, Memphis complaints go to (901) 636-6735.
Confirm the street. Klinke Avenue in Frayser is not a wrecker row in Whitehaven. An East Memphis yard is not the city lot. Leaving Midtown or Germantown for the wrong fence costs you another day.
When to call us
If the lot will release the car but it cannot be driven off the property, that haul belongs to a working operator, not to a jump on the lot’s gravel. Call us at (901) 557-8700. The line takes calls 24/7, and your call routes to the operator covering your zone.