Your Car After a DWI Arrest in Texas: Impound, Towing Fees, and Getting It Back

Where Your Car Went

Nobody at the jail tells you where your car is. You are released, you walk outside, and the vehicle that was on the shoulder of the highway a few hours ago is somewhere you have never been.

Here is what happened to it. When an officer arrests the driver and there is no licensed, sober person present who is authorized to take the vehicle, the agency has it towed. The tow goes to a lot the arresting agency uses, which is chosen by that agency and not by you. A Dallas police arrest, a Denton County sheriff’s arrest, and a DPS trooper’s arrest on the same stretch of interstate can send three cars to three different lots.

That is the first thing to understand about impound: there is no single system. Tow and storage in Texas is municipal and county business, run under local contracts with private operators, and the operator sets the hours, the paperwork, and the price. Which is why the useful move is not reading a general article, it is making one phone call.

To find your car, call the arresting agency’s non-emergency number and ask which lot your vehicle was towed to. Have your license plate number and the date of the arrest ready. The agency dispatcher can usually tell you the lot name and phone number in under two minutes. Then call the lot directly and ask three questions: what do I need to bring, what will it cost today, and what are your release hours.

What the Lot Requires to Release It

Requirements vary by lot, but the pattern is consistent enough to prepare for. Expect to be asked for three things.

Photo identification. A driver’s license is standard. This is worth thinking about before you go, because if your license was surrendered or you are unsure of your driving status, you may be able to present the ID without driving yourself to the lot. Bring someone.

Proof that the vehicle is yours. The title, the registration, or current insurance in your name usually satisfies this. Lots want to see a name that matches your ID. If the registration is in a spouse’s name, or the car is financed and the lienholder is on the title, ask the lot specifically what they accept before you drive across the county.

Payment. Tow fee plus storage for every day the vehicle has been there, and often an administrative or release fee on top. Many lots do not take personal checks, and some are cash or card only. Ask what forms of payment are accepted when you call, because being turned away at the counter costs you another day of storage.

Two practical points people learn the hard way. First, many lots keep short release hours and are closed on weekends, which means a Friday night arrest can mean a Monday release and two extra days of storage. Second, if your driver’s license situation is uncertain, do not plan to drive the car off the lot yourself. Bring a licensed driver with you.

Why the Fees Add Up Daily

Impound is the one consequence of a DWI arrest that gets worse while you do nothing about it.

The structure is simple: a one-time tow charge, then a storage charge that renews every day, or in some cases every partial day, the vehicle sits on the lot. The daily rate is not large compared to the rest of a DWI case. It is the multiplication that hurts. A car left for three weeks while its owner deals with the criminal case and the license deadline can accumulate storage charges that approach or exceed what the car is worth, and at that point the owner is choosing between paying to retrieve a vehicle and abandoning it.

So treat the car as a day-one errand. Not because the vehicle is the most important thing happening this week, but because it is the only thing on the list that charges you for the delay. The 15-day license deadline is more consequential, and the two are not in competition: retrieving a car takes an afternoon.

There is one situation where you should pause. If you have been told the vehicle is being held as evidence, or that a forfeiture proceeding is being considered, do not go to the lot yet. Both are unusual in an ordinary DWI case, and both are reasons to call a lawyer first.

If the fees have already run past what you can pay, call the lot and ask directly what happens next and on what timeline. Lots generally have a process for vehicles that go unclaimed, and knowing the date that process starts is better than discovering it afterward.

The Inventory Search of Your Vehicle

Before a vehicle is towed, officers typically go through it and list what is inside. This is called an inventory search, and it is worth understanding because it is both routine and, in some cases, challengeable.

The legal theory is caretaking, not investigation. An inventory search is permitted so the agency can document what was in the car, protect the owner’s property, and protect itself from later claims that something went missing. That is why it does not require a warrant or probable cause the way an investigative search would. But that same theory is what limits it: the search is lawful because it serves the caretaking purpose, and it is supposed to be conducted according to the agency’s own standardized written policy.

Which means the policy matters. Texas courts have suppressed evidence found during an inventory search where officers departed from their department’s standardized procedure. In one Texas appellate case, officers impounded a vehicle and found a firearm during what they called an inventory. The court found the search deviated from the department’s policy in several ways: the officers did not give the owner a chance to remove valuables, did not search the vehicle comprehensively, and did not complete a proper inventory report. Those deviations undermined the caretaking justification, and the appellate court held the evidence should have been suppressed.

Read what actually mattered there. Not that the search was too thorough. That it was too sloppy to be a real inventory. A partial search with no completed report is not a caretaking exercise, it is a look around, and the law treats those differently.

That turns into five specific questions, all of which the paperwork can answer:

• Does the department have a standardized written inventory policy?
• Was it actually followed?
• Were you given the chance to remove valuables?
• Was the search comprehensive, or selective?
• Was a proper inventory report completed?

This matters most where something other than the DWI was found in the car. In a straightforward DWI with nothing recovered, the inventory is mainly a cross-examination document. Where a second charge came out of the vehicle, whether the inventory search was lawful may be the whole defense to that charge.

The practical takeaway for you is short. If anything was found in your car, the inventory paperwork and the agency’s written inventory policy are both discoverable, and the question of whether the officers actually followed their own policy is a real one. Keep any property receipt or inventory sheet you were given at the jail. If you were not given one, note that, because a missing inventory report was part of what defeated the search in the case above. What happens to evidence and video from the night of the stop is covered on The Stop and the Arrest.

Your Phone, Wallet, and Anything Else That Was in the Car

Property splits into two piles the night of an arrest, and they come back through different doors.

What was on you, phone, wallet, keys, went into the jail’s property inventory at booking and comes back when you are released. If something is missing from that envelope, raise it at the release desk before you leave, and keep the receipt.

What was in the car mostly stays in the car, and you get it back when the car is released. Two exceptions matter. Anything the officers treated as evidence is held by the agency, not the tow lot, and it follows the case rather than the car. And some lots will let you collect personal items from the vehicle before the full release bill is paid, but that is lot policy rather than law, so call ahead and ask instead of assuming either way.

If a firearm was in the car, expect it to have been taken by the arresting agency for safekeeping rather than left in the vehicle. Getting it back is a written-request process with that agency, not the tow lot, and it usually waits until the case is resolved. How the case resolves matters here, because some outcomes affect whether you can lawfully possess the weapon at all. And if the weapon produced its own charge, do not start the retrieval process without talking to your lawyer first.

If Someone Else Owns the Car

A significant share of DWI arrests involve a car the driver does not own outright. The rules do not change, but the logistics do.

If the car belongs to a spouse, parent, or friend. The registered owner is generally the person the lot will release the vehicle to, and they will need their own ID and proof of ownership. The owner does not need to have been present at the arrest, and they are not in trouble for the arrest. They do usually need to appear in person.

If the car is financed. You are still the registered owner even though a lienholder is on the title, and registration or insurance in your name normally satisfies the lot. Worth knowing separately: extended impound and unpaid storage can create problems with a lender, so retrieving a financed vehicle promptly matters more than retrieving one you own free and clear.

If the car is a rental or a company vehicle. Call the rental company or your employer the same day rather than waiting to be asked. Rental agreements typically make the renter responsible for tow and storage charges, and a company vehicle towed after an employee’s arrest is a conversation that goes better when you start it. The employment side of a DWI arrest is covered on DWI and Your Job.

If you were not the driver. An owner whose car was towed after someone else was arrested in it still retrieves it the same way, with ID and proof of ownership.

Make Sure Whoever Drives It Away Has a Valid License

This is the point that catches people at the gate, after everything else has gone right.

Whoever drives the vehicle off the lot needs a valid license. If yours has been suspended, or you are not certain whether it currently is, do not drive it yourself. Driving while license invalid is a separate criminal offense, and on conviction it extends any existing suspension by the same length as the original term.

Part of why people get this wrong is the paperwork. The notice of suspension you were handed is not a temporary driving permit. It stopped functioning as one in September 2023, and officers no longer take your plastic license, so you can be holding a license that looks perfectly normal and still not be allowed to drive. Where your license actually stands is covered on Texas DWI License Suspension Periods.

One more. If an ignition interlock was ordered as a condition of your bond, and this is a vehicle you own or regularly drive, that obligation attaches to it. On a bond condition there is no exception for an employer’s vehicle, and you may not operate any vehicle that does not have a device. The installation deadline and the one way out of it are on bond conditions.

Bring a licensed driver. It is the simplest fix, and it keeps an errand from turning into a second case.

Can Texas Keep Your Car Permanently?

Almost never. The threshold is far higher than most people fear, and the two words that frighten people get mixed up constantly, so here is the difference.

Impound is storage. Your car was towed, it is being held, and it is released when the paperwork is right and the bill is paid. It is an administrative and financial problem, and it ends when you pay it.

Forfeiture is the State moving to take ownership of the vehicle. It is a separate legal proceeding, and in the intoxication context it requires two things at the same time:

• The offense is one under the intoxication chapter punishable as a third degree felony or a state jail felony, under Code of Criminal Procedure Article 59.01, and
• The defendant has previously been convicted three times of an offense under that same chapter

Because both have to be true, most cases sit well outside it:

• A first offense. Not exposed.
• A second offense. Not exposed.
• A third offense charged as a felony. Generally not exposed, because the three-prior threshold is higher than the two priors that make the charge a felony in the first place.
• A fourth or later offense. Potentially exposed.

That offense-level test is narrower than it sounds, and it cuts both ways. DWI with a child passenger, a state jail felony, and intoxication assault, a third degree felony, both sit inside it, and the three-prior requirement applies to them the same as to a repeat DWI. Intoxication manslaughter is a second degree felony, which is above the range this provision names, so this rule does not reach it at all.

So if you have read that Texas can take your car for a DWI and it frightened you, the towing of your vehicle was not that. Pay the lot, get the car, and put your attention on the two cases that actually decide the outcome, mapped on After a DWI Arrest and Getting Someone Out of Jail.

If forfeiture genuinely has been raised in your case, that is a serious development, and it is not something to resolve at a tow lot counter.