Fayette County Vehicle Impound Guide

Fayette County has no central impound lot. When a deputy or a state trooper arrests you for DUI, dispatch calls the next private wrecker on the rotation, and your car goes to that company's yard, which could be anywhere in the county or just over a county line. Call the Fayette County Sheriff's dispatch at (901) 465-3456 to find out which company has it.

The state caps what a rotation operator can charge: $375 for a standard light-duty tow and $40 a day for storage. But the real problem is not the towing company. It is the release paperwork.

A private lot will not hand over a car impounded on a DUI without an official release authorization from the Sheriff's Office, and that has to be issued at the Criminal Justice Center in Somerville. Those administrative offices are open only Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. A Friday-night checkpoint arrest means your car sits all weekend, running up $40 a day, because nobody can issue the release until Monday morning.

To claim the car, the registered owner has to be there in person with a valid license, current registration, and active insurance. If you were driving someone else's car, that person has to handle it, or send a notarized authorization letter naming a proxy along with copies of their ID.

You can challenge the tow itself. State law lets a vehicle owner request a tow hearing through the General Sessions Court within 14 days of the impoundment. But the storage clock keeps running during the wait, and in a standard DUI arrest with probable cause the court almost always upholds the tow, leaving you on the hook for every day of storage that piled up. In practice, paying the fees and getting the car out right away costs less than fighting it.