Need a tow? 24/7 towing in Boulder, CO

Boulder Towing Company answers the phone around the clock, and the call is short: where the vehicle is, what it is, what happened, and where it should go. From those four answers we pick wheel-lift or flatbed, quote the job as one figure, and give you the arrival window before you hang up.

That window is not a number we print here: the shoulder of US 36, a driveway in Martin Acres and the snow halfway up Boulder Canyon are three different drives for the same truck, so we say it on the call.

What we ask on the call

• Where the vehicle is. Street and cross street, the lot, or the highway, direction and nearest exit. In the canyon, the last thing you passed.
• Year, make and model, and whether it is all-wheel drive, four-wheel drive or electric. That answer decides which truck leaves.
• What happened. Breakdown, collision, stuck in snow or a ditch, flat, dead battery, keys locked inside.
• Where it should go - a shop, a dealer, your driveway. If you do not know yet, say so.

Which truck comes

Most two-wheel-drive cars and light trucks ride behind a wheel-lift: the boom slides under the drive wheels, wheel straps hold them, and the other two wheels roll on the pavement. It is the smaller truck, the one for a tight garage on The Hill or a side street off Pearl, and a poor choice for anything low.

All-wheel-drive, four-wheel-drive and electric vehicles, and anything that cannot roll, go on a flatbed: the bed tilts to the ground, the winch line brings the vehicle up on soft straps, and all four wheels ride off the road. Subaru's 2020 Legacy guide warns that improper towing may damage the AWD system and recommends a flatbed; Tesla's Model 3 manual says the same. The reasons are under flatbed towing for all-wheel-drive and electric vehicles.

Not every call needs a hook. AAA puts a battery about 35 percent weaker at 32°F and about 60 percent weaker at 0°F. That, a tire cut on a curb, an empty tank and keys on the seat are roadside assistance for a dead battery, flat or lockout, and we would rather send the jump pack than the hook. When the vehicle cannot be made drivable where it sits, it is emergency towing at any hour.

We are a light-duty operation: cars, SUVs, pickups, vans and motorcycles, on wheel-lift and flatbed trucks with dollies, a winch, straps and chocks. If a job is beyond a light-duty truck's tow rating, we say so on the phone.

Boulder sits at 5,430 feet where the plains meet the Front Range: one highway in from Denver, a canyon road out to the west, and a wind that comes down off the mountains. US 36, the Denver-Boulder Turnpike since January 1952, meets Foothills Parkway on the south side, passes the CU campus as an expressway to the Baseline Road interchange, and runs through town as four-lane 28th Street.

Boulder Canyon and CO 119

CO 119 leaves downtown as Canyon Boulevard and climbs Boulder Canyon alongside Boulder Creek for 15 miles to Nederland, at 8,235 feet, on grades of up to 10 percent. CDOT scaled rock in the canyon during the rebuild after the 2013 flood, and it still closes: on April 27-28, 2021, five truck-sized boulders came down at the Narrows near mile point 32, with CO 72 as the detour. A car that leaves the shoulder up there is a winch job before it is a tow, and that is winch-out and recovery from snow, a ditch or the canyon shoulder.

CO 93, the Diagonal and the lots

CO 93 comes into town as Broadway and runs 18.8 miles south to Golden through the wind: NCAR measured a 137 mph Chinook gust in the January 1982 windstorm, and on December 30, 2021, the day of the Marshall Fire, gusts reached 115 mph at Highways 93 and 72. CO 119 leaves 28th Street as the Diagonal Highway, an expressway from Foothills Parkway to Longmont and I-25 exit 240. CU Boulder enrolled 38,808 students in fall 2025, and the lots around campus, The Hill along 13th Street, the downtown lots off Pearl Street and the Table Mesa Park-n-Ride on US 36 are where the dead batteries, lockouts and tight-spot tows come from.

Snow

Boulder's normal seasonal snowfall is 89.71 inches by NOAA's 1991-2020 figures, and the big ones are upslope storms, Gulf moisture pushed up against the Front Range: March 13-14, 2021 dropped 15 to 20.7 inches in town, with drifts to seven feet. What a storm brings us is cars buried by the plow pile, nosed into a bank, or off the edge of a steep driveway in Shanahan Ridge. Colorado's traction law, C.R.S. 42-4-106, is automatic on I-70 from September 1 to May 31; on US 36, CO 93 and CO 119 it applies only when CDOT activates it and the signs are up, and then AWD and 4WD cars need winter, all-weather or M+S tires with 3/16-inch of tread, or chains - fines and surcharges apply, higher if you block a lane.

Boulder Towing Company gives you one number on the call, before the truck leaves, and that number is what you pay. It changes only when the job on the ground is not the job on the phone - a sedan that is really a Subaru, a flat that is really a car in a ditch - and you hear the new figure before we do the extra work.

Colorado regulates the tows you did not ask for. The Public Utilities Commission sets maximum rates under 4 CCR 723-6 for nonconsensual tows - a private-property impound, or a police-ordered tow. A tow you call for yourself is consensual and is priced by the quote you agree to; the carrier must disclose every rate and charge for it, including estimated mileage and storage. The caps are on the cost page.

What moves the quote

• Distance - loaded miles from where the car is to where it goes.
• The truck - flatbed for all-wheel drive, electric and anything that will not roll; wheel-lift for the rest.
• Time on scene and recovery - a clean hookup on a dry street, or winching, a snatch block or dollies first.

The whole list is under how we quote a tow before the truck rolls.

Boulder counted 108,250 people at the 2020 Census on 26.33 square miles, in ZIP codes 80301 through 80305 - 80301 for Gunbarrel and the northeast, 80302 downtown, 80303 east, 80304 north and 80305 south. We work all of it: Pearl Street and downtown, The Hill and the campus, Chautauqua under the Flatirons, Table Mesa, Martin Acres and Shanahan Ridge in South Boulder, and Gunbarrel, an unincorporated community of 9,554 to the northeast.

Past the city line we cover the neighboring towns and the canyon. Distances are by road and approximate, and they are why a Louisville call and a Lyons call are quoted differently:

• Gunbarrel - 7 miles
• Superior - 8 miles
• Niwot - 9 miles
• Louisville - 9 miles
• Lafayette - 11 miles
• Broomfield - 13 miles
• Erie - 14 miles
• Longmont - 15 to 16 miles
• Lyons - 16 miles
• Nederland - 17 miles, up the canyon
• Golden - 20 miles
• Denver - about 30 miles; the airport about 42

Outside these towns, ask anyway; we say on the call whether we come and what the distance adds.