Immediately following an accident, undrivable cars are typically towed away from the scene to temporary holding locations such as an impound lot or storage facility.

There they remain until an insurance adjuster evaluates the vehicle and declares it a total loss or requests to have it towed to another facility to be repaired. This process could take several days, and, each day, storage costs are adding up.

Moving the vehicle to a repair facility — whether a DRP (direct repair program) facility or somewhere else — is referred to as a ‘secondary tow,’ and, as any claims adjuster in the auto insurance business will tell you, the secondary tow process is ugly.

The current system is outdated, chaotic and excruciatingly inefficient.

In fact, it’s so awful that the only reasonable solution is to rethink the secondary tow process altogether and start over from scratch. Let’s take a look at the process as it stands today.