Legacy Insurance Group writes tow truck insurance for Texas operators — wreckers, rollbacks, heavy recovery units, service trucks and repossession fleets — out of a Frisco office, with the same agent answering the phone every time you call. Licensed in eight states, more than twenty years in commercial transportation. If you want a real number rather than a form response, call 469-252-4001.
What Texas requires before a permitted truck can run
Texas licenses the company and permits the trucks separately, through the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. The insurance floors are set by the kind of towing you do, not the size of the truck — which catches out operators who assume a bigger wrecker carries a bigger requirement:
- Incident management towing — $500,000 liability per tow truck per incident, plus $50,000 cargo or cargo-on-hook per truck.
- Private property towing — $300,000 liability per tow truck per incident, plus $50,000 cargo or cargo-on-hook per truck.
- Consent towing — $300,000 liability per tow truck per incident. The rule sets no cargo-on-hook figure for consent work.
Coverage has to stay in force for the whole permit period, so a lapse is a licensing problem and not only an insurance one.
Treat those numbers as the floor for a permit rather than a plan. One heavy recovery on I-35 can run past a $300,000 limit before anyone asks about the customer’s vehicle, and the rule says nothing at all about your own truck, your boom, or the cars sitting in your yard.
The coverages that decide a towing claim
Auto liability pays for the injury and property damage you cause to other people, and it is the coverage your permit is measured against. Its two halves are bodily injury liability and property damage liability.
On-hook — and what it is called here. In Texas, the coverage most carriers sell nationally as On-Hook Towing is written as Garagekeepers Legal Liability, and the coverage for vehicles parked on your lot is called Storage Location insurance. The two exposures are the same everywhere — the vehicle on your hook, and the vehicle in your yard — but the names are swapped in this state, so read your own declarations page for which one it actually names. A policy that covers the yard and not the hook is a bad thing to discover on a highway call. Our on-hook towing insurance page covers how the limit and deductible work.
Physical damage covers your own unit — and on a wrecker the unit includes the boom, the wheel-lift and the bed, which is most of what the truck is worth. Ask what value the policy actually carries on the body, not just the chassis.
Motor truck cargo matters the moment you haul something that is not a disabled vehicle — equipment moves, salvage and auction runs.
General liability covers the part of the business that is not the truck: the office, the lot, and work performed away from the vehicle.
Medical payments covers you and anyone riding with you, and uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage answers the driver who hits your truck with no policy behind them — including hit-and-run.
Who we write
- Roadside assistance and motor-club contract work
- Rotation and police-call towing
- Private property towing and repossession
- Heavy recovery and rotator operations
- Body shops, mechanical repair and full-service stations running their own truck
- Salvage and auction haulers
Repossession revenue narrows the market, not the answer
Many carriers restrict or decline towing accounts with meaningful repossession income, and the cut-off is a carrier decision rather than a rule — it differs from one market to the next. That does not make the account uninsurable; it means fewer carriers will look at it and the submission has to be built for those that will. Tell us the repossession share of your revenue up front and we will shop it as a repo account, instead of it surfacing halfway through underwriting.
Where we write
We are based in Frisco and write throughout Texas. If your operation runs mainly out of one metro, our Houston commercial truck insurance and Laredo commercial truck insurance pages cover what is specific to those markets.
Texas tow truck insurance questions we get
What does tow truck insurance cost in Texas?
There is no honest number to put on a web page. Premium moves on your radius, the number and type of units, driver records and experience, the limits you choose, the on-hook and storage values you need, and the repossession share. Two single-truck operators in the same ZIP code can differ by double on driver records alone. We will quote it; we will not pretend to estimate it.
Is on-hook the same thing as garagekeepers in Texas?
Effectively yes, and the naming is inverted from the rest of the country. What is sold nationally as On-Hook Towing is written here as Garagekeepers Legal Liability, and what is nationally called Garagekeepers is called Storage Location insurance in Texas. Ask which exposure a quote is actually covering — vehicle in tow, vehicle in storage, or both.
Do I need cargo-on-hook coverage for consent towing?
The state rule sets no cargo-on-hook figure for consent towing, but that is not the end of it: motor clubs, property owners and the carriers themselves routinely require it by contract. In practice most consent operators carry it anyway, because the vehicle on the hook is the claim most likely to happen.
Can you write a single truck?
Yes. One truck, one driver, one policy is a normal account, not an exception.
What do you need to quote it?
- Company name, DBA and TDLR numbers if they have been issued
- A unit list — year, make, model, VIN, and the value of the body or boom as well as the chassis
- Your operating radius and the type of towing you do
- Driver list with licence numbers and dates of birth
- Three years of loss runs, if you have them
- The limits you carry now, including on-hook and storage limits
- The percentage of revenue that comes from repossession work
That is enough to reach a real quote rather than an indication.
Talk to a Texas agent about your towing operation
Call 469-252-4001 or request a quote online.
Sources
- Texas Administrative Code, Title 16, Part 4, Chapter 86, §86.400 Insurance Requirements — Tow Truck Permits — the liability and cargo-on-hook minimums by towing category.
- Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, Vehicle Towing and Booting program — company licence and per-truck permits.
- Progressive Commercial, On-Hook Towing insurance — the Texas and Virginia naming difference.
