Anne Arundel County passed Bill 77-24 in late 2024, and it took effect in early 2025. The bill reorganized how police-initiated towing works in the county by formally separating heavy duty and light duty towing into two different rotation lists with different equipment requirements for each.
Before this change, the county’s rotation list did not draw as sharp a line between light and heavy duty calls. Bill 77-24 introduced formal definitions for both categories and set specific equipment standards that a company has to meet in order to qualify for each list. Light duty covers vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating under 26,000 pounds. Heavy duty covers larger vehicles and situations that require specialized equipment.
For heavy duty towing in Anne Arundel County, the requirements in the new bill are specific. Companies applying for the heavy duty list need the right equipment to handle those calls, and the police department has discretion to determine what equipment is required for a specific recovery. If the department decides that specific equipment is needed for a job that a heavy duty applicant does not have, it can make that determination and the company has to work with it.
There is also a piece in the bill about debris cleanup at collision scenes. The bill puts in writing that tow truck operators are required to clean all debris from a collision scene, including glass, auto parts, and any absorbents used during the cleanup. This is not a brand new concept. The Anne Arundel County Police Department’s own written directives already made the officer on scene responsible for ensuring that the tow company cleaned up the debris. But having it codified in the county ordinance makes it a formal legal requirement rather than just a department policy.
I want to say something about the separate rotation lists because I think this is a change that makes sense operationally but creates a real barrier for smaller operators. If you are a small company that has been doing light duty police calls in the county, the new structure is fine for you as long as you stay on the light duty list. But if you want to get on the heavy duty list, the equipment requirements are not cheap. You are talking about trucks with significant boom ratings and the capacity to handle commercial vehicles and recoveries that are not standard.
Baltimore County already had something similar in place. Baltimore County’s 2025 police towing regulations specify that for heavy duty, an applicant needs at least two trucks, with one having a boom rating of 25 tons or more. Light and medium duty companies in Baltimore County have a 20-minute response window for police calls, while heavy duty has a 40-minute window, with an extra 10 minutes allowed for traffic or weather. Anne Arundel’s new structure is moving in a similar direction.
If you are thinking about getting onto the Anne Arundel heavy duty list under the new framework, the first step is to look at exactly what equipment the county requires and then honestly assess your fleet. The police department has discretion over what it determines is needed for any given call, and if you show up without what is needed you are not going to stay on that list for long.
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