Guadalupe County Vehicle Impound Guide

Seguin has no city-owned impound lot, and neither does the county. Every non-consent DWI tow goes to whichever private storage yard is next up on the police rotation, so the arresting officer, not the driver, decides where the car ends up. Finding it means skipping the tow companies entirely and calling the arresting agency's own dispatch line: Seguin PD's non-emergency number for anything inside city limits, the Sheriff's Office for county roads and state trooper stops. Only they can tell you which yard actually has the vehicle.

Call before you drive out there

State rules require a storage facility to release a car within an hour of a request made between 8 a.m. and midnight Monday through Saturday, or 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. The catch is that a lot of the rotation yards in the rural parts of the county are small operations, often really auto-repair or salvage shops on the side, and they can be unstaffed over lunch or after hours unless someone's specifically dispatched. Call ahead to start that one-hour clock rather than showing up unannounced and finding the gate locked.

The 12-hour math

Storage fees can be charged for any part of a calendar day the car is on the lot, capped at $22.85 a day. But if the total time on the lot stays under 12 hours, even if it spans two calendar dates, only one day can be billed. A car towed at 10 p.m. and picked up at 8 a.m. the next morning is 10 hours, one day's storage, not two, no matter what the invoice says at first.

Who's allowed to pick it up

A spare key isn't proof of anything at a VSF window. Release requires a government photo ID plus documentation showing the right of possession, an insurance card in the retriever's name, the title, a current lease agreement, or a notarized power of attorney from the registered owner. When that owner is the one sitting in the county's Adult Detention Center, getting a notarized release usually means working through jail staff or a bondsman, which can add days and a few hundred more dollars in storage before anyone gets near the car.

No insurance, no problem (for release, anyway)

Texas law bars a VSF from demanding proof of insurance before releasing a vehicle. If your card is locked in the glovebox, that's not grounds for the lot to hold the car hostage.

If the tow itself was wrong

An owner who believes the tow lacked probable cause has 14 calendar days to request a hearing at any Justice of the Peace court in the county. It costs $54 to file, and filing it doesn't pause the storage bill, you still have to pay the lot and get the car out while the hearing is pending. If the JP finds the tow was invalid, the reimbursement comes from the agency or tow company after the fact, not before.

A rare escape hatch

An obscure but real option: a police lieutenant or higher can order a vehicle released with no towing or storage fees at all, if the circumstances genuinely warrant it. It's an edge case, mostly useful when a blood test comes back clean enough to eliminate probable cause for the arrest outright, but it exists.