Buncombe County Vehicle Impound Guide

Asheville Police doesn't run its own impound lot anymore. Routine tows after an arrest go through AutoReturn, a digital dispatch platform that rotates the call among the city's approved private towing vendors automatically — which means there's no desk sergeant to call for a straight answer about where a car ended up. The only way to actually find it is the AutoReturn portal itself (search.autoreturn.com) or its 24/7 phone line, searchable by license plate or VIN, which returns the current lot location, the towing company responsible, and the stated reason for the tow.

One status in that system matters more than any other: "On Hold." If the car shows that status, the private lot is legally barred from releasing it no matter how much cash the owner shows up with — it typically means the case involves serious injury, habitual DWI, or an active search warrant, and getting it released requires contacting Asheville Police Records or Evidence Division directly for a release authorization rather than just paying the bill.

Asheville caps towing fees by ordinance to blunt the worst of private-lot pricing, but the caps are still real money: $165 for a standard tow, $30 a day in storage starting essentially on arrival, a $50 after-hours release fee if the lot closes before retrieval, and a separate $50 dolly or flatbed charge that frequently lands on AWD vehicles that can't be towed with two wheels down. A Friday-night arrest followed by a weekend in custody is the classic trap here — three days of storage plus the base tow and an after-hours fee can add up to $300 or more before a defendant even gets back to District Court. And if the car's insurance lapsed, or got cancelled the moment the arrest hit the insurer's radar, the lot legally can't let it be driven off — the owner has to pay for a second tow just to move it from the impound lot to a private driveway, effectively doubling the cost.

A separate and much harder track applies if the driver was already revoked from a prior impaired-driving offense, or wasn't validly licensed and had no insurance. North Carolina's statutory seizure law treats the vehicle in that situation as contraband rather than a routine impound, and in western North Carolina the state's single contracted vendor for these seizures is Eastway Wrecker Service, reachable at 1-877-DWI-TOWS. A seized vehicle under this track is effectively frozen — no amount of cash gets it back without a court order or a formal petition to the Clerk of Court. An owner who wasn't the one driving (a spouse, a parent) can petition as an "innocent owner," but has to prove to the Clerk they had no reason to know the driver was revoked, a separate legal process that can add days or weeks of accruing storage before the car comes back.