2:10 in the morning. Shoulder of I-65, hazards going, rain coming in sideways. A pickup with a shredded rear tire and a jack that folded in half. Your driver has it on the hook in fifteen minutes.
Then the customer says the thing. "I don't have any cash on me. Can I pay you tomorrow?"
Your driver has two choices and they're both bad. Take a name and a phone number and hope the office can collect. Or take the truck to the lot, start a storage bill, and have the same argument at the gate next week.
There's a third choice now, and it's already in the driver's pocket.
Why Roadside Collection Fails and What Fixes It
Roadside collection usually fails for three reasons: the customer has no cash, the card reader is dead or paired to somebody else's phone, and the vehicle gets dropped before anyone asks for the money. The fix is taking the card on the driver's own phone with CoreMobile, over cellular, before the truck leaves the scene.
None of those are driver problems. They're setup problems:
- No cash. Plenty of people don't carry enough to cover a tow.
- Hardware that isn't ready. A Bluetooth reader has to be charged, paired, and in the right truck. At 2am, one of those is off.
- Bad timing. Once the vehicle is dropped and the customer is gone, you're not collecting anymore. You're invoicing.
- No terminal where the work is. The countertop terminal is at the lot. The breakdown is forty miles away.
Every unpaid call turns into office time, which we broke down in how service businesses can stop chasing invoices. The fix is taking the card while the customer is standing there. That's the whole idea behind CoreMobile for towing.
Get paid before you pull away.
CoreMobile turns every driver's phone into a card terminal. No readers to mount or charge.
The Phone in Every Driver's Pocket Is the Terminal Now
Modern iPhones (XS and newer) and most Android phones from the last five years already have the NFC chip that reads a contactless card. CoreMobile turns that chip into a payment terminal, so the customer taps a card or phone on the driver's screen and the payment goes through in 2 to 3 seconds.
That changes what a driver carries. No reader to mount on the dash. No charging cable. No Bluetooth pairing that drops when the truck starts. If the phone works, the truck takes cards.
It also changes where you can take payment. CoreMobile runs on cellular data, not Wi-Fi, so the shoulder of the interstate and an apartment lot at 1am work the same as the office. A power outage at the yard doesn't matter as long as the phone has signal, which we covered in taking card payments when the power is out.
iPhone setup is in how to set up tap to pay on iPhone. Still deciding between a phone and a reader? Our comparison of nine payment apps for towing lays them out side by side. This guide goes deep on running the phone setup.
Setting It Up: Application to First Tap
CoreMobile setup is four steps: apply online with your EIN and bank account, add your trucks and drivers, enter your service types with prices, and run one test sale. Nothing ships to your yard, and there is no hardware to install.
What you need on hand to apply
The application is short. Have this in front of you so you don't stop halfway through:
- Legal business name, plus your DBA if you tow under a different name
- Business address, phone, and email
- Federal Tax ID (EIN)
- When the business started, your estimated monthly card volume, and your average ticket
- The authorized signer's name, title, home address, phone, and date of birth
- The bank account you want deposits to land in
Most accounts are approved. You'll get an email when the account is active.
Adding your trucks and drivers
Once you're approved, the owner or office manager signs in and adds each person as a user. Every driver gets their own login on their own phone, and all of them run under one account.
Add everyone who touches money, not just drivers. That's the person working the gate at the lot, the dispatcher who takes a card over the phone with manual card entry, and the part-timer who covers weekends.
Setting up service types and amounts
CoreMobile lets you build a list of products and categories. For a tow company, that list is your rate sheet. Set it up once and drivers pick from it instead of doing math on the shoulder.
A service list for a tow company usually covers something like this. Use your own rates:
- Local tow and hook-up fee
- Mileage
- Winch-out, by difficulty
- Lockout
- Jump start
- Fuel delivery
- Tire change
- Storage, per day
- Release or after-hours gate fee
Put tow services and storage in separate categories. That one choice is what keeps tow revenue and storage revenue apart when you read the reports.
If a city, county, or state sets the rates for some of your work, like police rotation or PPI tows, enter those exact amounts and keep them current. Who sets those rates, and how often they change, varies by location.
Your first test transaction
Before a driver takes a stranger's card, run one small sale on your own card. Pick an item, turn the phone around, and tap.
Then check three things in the dashboard. The sale shows up. It's tagged to the right user. It landed under the right item. The next business day, confirm the deposit hit the right bank account.
Walk each driver through one sale on day one. Better in the yard than at 2am in the rain.
The Call-to-Cash Playbook
Call-to-cash runs through four checkpoints: dispatch confirms how the job gets paid, the driver takes the card at the scene, the lot collects storage and release fees at the drop, and the office checks every driver's sales at end of shift. The payment itself is a 2 to 3 second tap. The routine around it is what gets you paid.
On dispatch
Payment starts on the phone call, before a truck rolls. Dispatch should pin down three things:
- What kind of call it is: a customer paying direct, a motor club job, a police call, or a PPI tow
- Roughly what the customer will owe, based on your rate sheet
- Whether the customer will be with the vehicle when the driver gets there
On a direct-pay call, tell the customer the driver takes cards at the scene. That one sentence heads off a lot of "I didn't know I'd have to pay now."
At the scene
Do the work, secure the vehicle, then collect before you pull away. The customer is standing right there. That's the best chance you'll get.
- Driver opens CoreMobile and picks the services, for example a local tow plus mileage. The total shows on screen.
- If you've turned surcharging on, the fee shows as its own line before the customer pays.
- Driver turns the phone around. "Tap your card or phone right here."
- Customer taps a card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. It goes through in 2 to 3 seconds.
- If you've turned on signature capture, the customer signs on the screen.
- The receipt goes out by email or text, or gets skipped.
If a card won't tap, CoreMobile supports manual card entry, so the driver can key it in. If the phone has no signal at all, move to where it does before running the card, or settle up at the lot.
At the drop
If the customer rides along or meets you at the shop, collect when the vehicle comes off the hook. If the vehicle goes to your lot, the release process takes over, and payment happens at the gate.
Whoever works the gate rings up the release on their own phone. It lands in the same dashboard as the roadside calls, tagged to that person.
End of shift
There's no cash box to count on a card sale. Before drivers clock out, the office checks each driver's sales in the dashboard against the calls they ran. Anything that didn't get paid gets flagged now, while the driver still remembers the call.
Every driver's totals sit in one place, and the money lands next business day.
Run your next shift on the phones your drivers already carry.
See how CoreMobile is set up for tow operators, from roadside calls to releases at the lot.
Scenario by Scenario
The phone setup is the same on every call, but when you collect moves. Roadside, lockout, and jump start customers pay at the scene, PPI and impound owners pay at the lot, and motor club jobs usually bill through the club, so CoreMobile only comes out for what the customer owes directly.
Roadside breakdown and accident recovery
A breakdown is the cleanest collection you'll get. The customer called you, they're standing at the vehicle, and they want to get home. Quote before you hook up, run the card before you pull away, and send the receipt while they're still in your cab.
Accident recovery is messier. The owner may be hurt or already gone, law enforcement may be running the scene, and insurance may be involved. When that's the case, the vehicle goes to the lot and payment happens at release.
Private property impound (PPI)
PPI is the most regulated money in towing. Depending on where you operate, your state or city may set the maximum tow and storage rates, release hours, signage and notice rules, and which payment methods you have to accept. Those rules vary a lot from place to place, so check your state and local regs before you enter a single price in the app.
Once you know your rules, enter the allowed rates as items so every driver and gate attendant charges the same amount. A card payment with a digital receipt is a cleaner record than cash when an owner disputes the tow.
Storage fee and release at the lot
Storage is where the total surprises people. When storage is billed by the day, the owner who waited a week to pick up sees a number they weren't expecting, and they're standing at your counter when they see it.
Set storage up as its own item and ring up the days at release. The paperwork you need before letting a vehicle go depends on local rules and your policy, so handle that first, then take the card.
Lockouts, jump starts, and fuel delivery
These are small tickets and fast jobs, and the customer is standing right next to the driver. Set each one up as a flat-price item so the driver picks it, turns the phone around, and collects.
Winch-outs and recovery
Winch-outs are priced on conditions: how far off the road, how deep, how long it takes. Set up the tiers you actually use, like standard, difficult, and off-road, and have the driver quote the tier before starting.
Take the card before you leave the scene, while the customer can still see what came out of the ditch.
Motor club and insurance jobs (what you can and can't collect on)
On a motor club call, the club usually pays you under your service agreement, and that agreement decides what, if anything, you can charge the member at the scene. Some agreements let you collect for work outside the member's coverage. Read yours before a driver runs a card on a club job.
Insurance jobs vary by carrier and by claim, and many get billed after the fact. When you need to invoice a motor club, an insurance carrier, or a fleet account instead of tapping a card, that's a different tool. CoreGateway, CoreCommerce's payment gateway, handles that with a virtual terminal and recurring billing.
What It Costs, Line by Line
CoreMobile costs $15/mo per account plus interchange + 0.50% + $0.15 per transaction, with no setup fees, no contract, and no hardware. A card reader setup adds a reader for every truck, published at $49 to $79 each, and a countertop terminal is priced by your processor and stays at the lot.
| Traditional Card Reader | Countertop Terminal at the Lot | CoreMobile (Tap-on-Glass) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardware Cost | $49 to $79 per reader, one per truck | Priced by your processor | $0, runs on the driver's phone |
| Monthly Cost | Published plans start at $0 | Priced by your processor | $15/mo per account |
| Per-Transaction Cost | Flat rate, 2.29% + $0.09 to 2.6% + $0.15 published | Priced by your processor | Interchange + 0.50% + $0.15 |
| Works at the Scene | Yes, if charged and paired | No, it stays at the counter | Yes, on cellular |
| Multiple Trucks | One reader per phone | One terminal per counter | Many phones, one account |
| Setup | Reader ships, then pair it to a phone | Terminal ships, then connect it at the lot | Apply, get approved, download the app |
| If Hardware Breaks | Order another reader | Repair or replace through your provider | Use another driver's phone |
Reader prices and flat rates come from the published pricing for Clover Go, SumUp Air, Square Reader, and PayPal Zettle, checked September 2026, and they change. Countertop terminal pricing varies by processor.
One thing the table doesn't show: the $15/mo is per account, not per truck, so adding a driver doesn't add a monthly fee. A reader setup's hardware cost grows with every truck you add.
To see what interchange-plus looks like on your own volume, run it through the savings calculator. The full breakdown is on the CoreMobile pricing page.
No reader to buy for the next truck you add.
See how CoreMobile works for tow operators, or apply and start setting up your drivers.
Passing the Fee to the Customer: Surcharging for Tow Operators
CoreMobile has optional built-in surcharging that adds a credit card fee to the customer's total, shown on screen before they pay. It's off by default, it only applies to credit cards, and whether you can use it depends on where you operate, because some states restrict or prohibit it.
Here's how it works in CoreMobile:
- Off by default. You decide whether to turn it on, and you can turn it off anytime.
- Credit cards only. The app detects the card type. Debit and prepaid cards aren't surcharged.
- Disclosed up front. The fee shows on screen before the customer authorizes the payment and appears as its own line on the receipt.
- Capped. Visa caps surcharges at 3%, and a surcharge can't be more than your actual cost of accepting the card.
- Your state's rules come first. Some states prohibit surcharging and some set lower caps. Check yours before you turn it on.
Towing adds a wrinkle most businesses don't have. If a city, county, or state sets the rate for a tow, like a PPI or police rotation tow, a card fee on top of that rate may or may not be allowed. That varies by location, so check before you surcharge regulated work.
On direct-pay roadside work, it's a judgment call. The rules, the disclosure, and the math are all in credit card surcharging explained.
Multiple Trucks, Multiple Drivers, One Dashboard
One CoreMobile account covers every driver's phone, and every transaction is tagged with the user who ran it, a timestamp, and the amount. The owner sees sales by driver and by item in one dashboard instead of adding up separate readers and paper tickets.
Knowing which driver collected what
Every card sale carries the driver's login, so "did Truck 6 collect on that lockout?" takes seconds to answer. Pull a per-user report for any driver, any day.
Line that report up against your call log. A call with no matching payment is a motor club job, a lot release that hasn't happened yet, or something that needs a phone call today. Catching it the same week is a lot easier than catching it at month end.
Separating tow revenue from storage revenue
This is why the service list matters. When tows and storage are set up as separate items in separate categories, the dashboard shows sales by item, and storage income doesn't disappear into one big number.
What your bookkeeper sees Monday morning
CoreMobile deposits next business day, so weekend calls typically land Monday. Instead of a stack of tickets and a cash count, the bookkeeper gets a CSV export of the weekend's sales, and the dashboard shows the same weekend by driver and by item.
The Cash and Check Problem at the Impound Lot
Cash and checks at the impound lot create three problems: money sitting on site overnight, a count that has to match the release log, and a check that can bounce after the vehicle is already gone. Taking cards with CoreMobile at the gate cuts down all three, though you should check whether local rules require you to accept cash too.
Cash at a lot means a safe, a bank run, and a count at shift change that has to come out right.
Checks are worse in one specific way. Once the owner drives off with their vehicle, a bounced check leaves you with a collection problem and nothing to hold.
A card payment is authorized before the vehicle leaves. The receipt is digital, it's tied to the person who ran it, and it sits in the dashboard with a timestamp. When an owner disputes what they paid, you have a record that isn't a carbon copy.
That doesn't mean you stop taking cash. Some jurisdictions set rules about which payment methods a tow or impound operator has to accept. The goal is making cards the easy default, so cash becomes the exception.
Getting Set Up in 24 Hours
For most tow operators, 24 hours from application to first tap is a realistic target: apply online, get the approval email, download CoreMobile, add your drivers, and run a test sale. Approval is a real review, so it can take longer, but nothing has to ship to your yard either way.
- Apply online. Fill out the application with your EIN, business details, signer information, and the bank account for deposits.
- Watch for the approval email. Most accounts are approved, and the email tells you the account is active.
- Download the app and sign in. Get CoreMobile from the App Store or Google Play, sign in, and add every driver and lot employee as a user.
- Enter your service list. Tows, mileage, winch-outs, lockouts, storage, and release fees. Use your rate sheet, and double-check any rates your city or state sets.
- Decide on surcharging. Leave it off, or check your state's rules and turn it on.
- Run your test sale. One small sale on your own card, checked in the dashboard.
After that, drivers can take payment on the next call. If you'd like to see the towing setup before you apply, it's all on CoreMobile for towing.
The Bottom Line
Getting paid at the scene comes down to one habit: take the card before the vehicle leaves your hands, on the phone the driver already carries. CoreMobile does that for $15/mo per account plus interchange + 0.50% + $0.15 per transaction, over cellular, with next-business-day deposits.
Check your state and local rules on PPI, storage, and surcharging, set up one truck, and run a week of calls on it. More guides for tow and field service operators are on the CoreMobile blog.