Denton County Vehicle Impound Guide

There's no county impound lot in Denton and no website to look up where your car went. Police and the Sheriff use a rotation of private storage yards, and you won't get a card for the tow truck that showed up after you were already in the patrol car. You come out of jail 12 to 24 hours later and have to call the non-emergency police line or Sheriff's dispatch, during business hours, to find out which company has it.

The usual operators are Puckett's Inc. Towing, which covers the city of Denton and the I-35E corridor, Uni-Tow around the university district, and All American Towing for heavy recoveries and the northern part of the county. B&O Towing, Randy's, and Brown & Sons also run the rotation. You don't get to pick.

A DCTA parking lot adds a second tow

If you were arrested at an A-Train station, the transit authority enforces a 24-hour limit on its lots. A Friday-night arrest there means the car gets towed by Monday as a parking violation, a separate tow from the arrest, with its own fees and its own company to track down.

Hold versus impound

A standard first-offense DWI is a safekeeping impound: pay and go. But if there was an accident, a felony charge, or a fatality, the car becomes evidence and gets a police hold. The tow yard legally cannot release it, cash in hand or not, until a detective signs a written release. Detectives work Monday to Friday. A hold placed Friday night means no car until Monday or Tuesday while storage runs all weekend.

The fees

Expect a tow fee near the state cap of $272 for a standard vehicle, $22.85 a day of storage, a $50 notification fee once the car sits past 24 hours and the letter goes out, and a $15 City of Denton administrative fee on every non-consent tow. Storage resets at midnight, but if the car is on the lot under 12 hours even across two calendar days, they can only bill one day. Many lots charge two anyway, and you have to know the rule to push back. A slow jail release easily puts you past that 12-hour line.

What it takes to get it out

You need a licensed driver, since yours was taken at the arrest, or the car doesn't leave. You need the registration or title; if it's locked in the car, state law lets you retrieve ownership documents before paying anything, though yards often resist and try to charge a gate fee first. Bring cash. Most yards here, Puckett's included, run cash-only for impound releases and will claim the card machine is down. If the owner is still in jail, a proxy needs a notarized power of attorney, and getting a notary into the jail takes days.

Two timing traps: the release window closes for lunch, roughly noon to 1, and many lots stop processing paperwork around 4:30 or 5:00 even though the law requires release availability until midnight. After that it's a gate fee or a next-morning appointment.

Fighting the tow

You have 14 days from the tow to file a request with the Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1, at 401 W. Hickory Street, Suite 227. The filing fee is $41. Even a losing hearing forces the tow company and the police to produce documentation of the vehicle's condition and the exact tow timeline, which can help your DWI defense.