Chesterfield County Vehicle Impound Guide

Burch's Towing & Recovery, on Burch Road in Chesterfield, is the primary rotation lot handling most DUI tows in the county, though the exact location can shift to a secondary yard elsewhere in the county depending on where the stop happened. Calling the Chesterfield County Sheriff's Office non-emergency line or SCHP Troop 4 dispatch with the license plate or VIN is the fastest way to confirm which lot has the vehicle.

The first 24 hours of storage are free by law, full stop. Getting to the lot within that window avoids storage fees entirely. Miss it, and daily charges start accruing, capped at $47 a day for a standard passenger vehicle under the 2026 state fee schedule. Arriving at 4:30 on a Friday is genuinely risky: missing the weekend closure means the vehicle sits until Monday, racking up two extra days of storage plus a possible weekend release surcharge.

There's a real consumer protection buried in the regulations that most people don't know about: a lot can't charge storage for any day it was the one that made retrieval impossible, whether that's the office being closed during required hours, nobody answering the phone, or no staff on-site to process a release. Documenting every attempt to reach the lot during business hours matters here, because those specific days can be formally contested.

Burch's sits in a rural industrial stretch with a heavy footprint of storage trailers and commercial wreckers that can make the actual administrative office hard to spot from the road; following the posted signage rather than wandering through the equipment yard gets a visitor to the right door faster.

Only the registered owner, or someone with a properly notarized power of attorney, can retrieve a vehicle if the arrested driver isn't the owner listed on the title. Law enforcement is required to notify the registered owner within two days of the tow, but that notification doesn't stop the storage clock from running.

Disputes over an unlawful tow or improper charges go to the Chesterfield County Magistrate Court on West Main Street, the jurisdiction where the vehicle is physically stored. Rate caps for 2026 are strict and worth knowing before paying anything: $272 flat for a standard Class A tow, $47 a day in storage, and $162 an hour for special recovery work like winching a car out of a ditch, billed in half-hour increments. Every rotation wrecker is required to keep a printed copy of that fee schedule inside the cab. A vendor charging above those numbers should still be paid to get the vehicle released, but get an itemized receipt and file a grievance with SCHP Troop 4 headquarters afterward.