If you do private property impound work in Anne Arundel County, there is something you need to know. As of January 1 of this year, all private tow companies operating in the county are required to log their private property impounds through the Autura PPI portal, which stands for Private Property Impound. This is a web-based reporting system that the county uses to track vehicles towed from private property and to give vehicle owners a way to locate their car and get an estimate of fees.
Anne Arundel County has been using Autura for its police-initiated towing dispatch since 2018, when the county awarded Autura a contract to manage dispatch and impound services for the Anne Arundel County Police Department. The extension of that system to private property impounds is a newer development and it changes the administrative side of doing nonconsensual tows from parking lots and private roads in the county.
The way it works is that when you tow a vehicle from private property in Anne Arundel County, you are now required to log into the Autura PPI portal and enter the tow. The county published instructions for towing companies along with a letter explaining the procedure changes. Vehicle owners can then go to autura.com or call a customer service line at 301-468-7342 to locate their vehicle and see a fee estimate before they even show up at the lot. Complaints and questions from the public about towing in the county go to towing@aacounty.org or to the Department of Inspections and Permits Licensing section at 410-222-7788.
I have mixed feelings about systems like this. On one hand, the transparency piece is useful. When someone can look up their vehicle online and see what the fees are before they drive over, it tends to reduce the confrontation at the window. That part I do not mind. Nobody enjoys an argument with someone who was not expecting the number they are about to pay.
On the other hand, adding a required digital reporting step to every private property tow means more time on the administrative side of each job. If you are doing volume, that adds up. The portal has to work correctly and the county’s system has to be accessible, and like any software it is not going to be perfect every time.
If you are operating in Anne Arundel County and have not yet gone through the setup process for Autura PPI reporting, that is now overdue. The county’s towing page has the instructions and a link to the web portal. Getting your account set up properly before you need it is a lot better than trying to figure it out after you have already completed a tow and need to log it.
This kind of digital reporting requirement is probably going to spread to other Maryland counties over time. Anne Arundel is not the only county using Autura, and the push toward electronic record-keeping in towing has been building for a few years now at both the county and state level.
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