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Tow Truck Driver Salary

A Tow Truck Driver whether working for themselves or for another company as a tow contractor or employee will be faced with the US DOT mandate that anyone driving a truck over 26,001 pound or towing anything greater than 10,000 pounds must hold a a commercial drivers license. The CDL that covers a tow truck driver is a Class A which makes sure that a tow operator will have the qualifications for anything they may come up against in the field. As well as having a CDL a tow truck driver’s salary and job opportunities can be increased by getting certifications in the Industry from places like Towing and Recovery Association of America and the International Institute of Towing Recovery.

Tow Truck Driver Training To Increase Salary

Things that a tow truck driver can expect to learn when getting certifications at training facilities like the International Institute of Towing Recovery are broken down into sections that will help a future tow truck driver be knowledge and ready for all types of situations they’ll face in the field. Programs and courses in tow truck driving are things like:

  • Customer Service & Field Operations
  • How Light Duty Tow trucks Work
  • Towing with a Wheel Lift
  • Sling Towing
  • Tow Dollies
  • Using Light Duty Carriers
  • Recovery with Light Duty Tow Trucks

Tow Truck Driver & Similar Career Salary Comparisons

If you’re serious about making tow truck driving a career that you’ll be doing, you may want to look at the industry as a whole and other jobs that are similar to see how the salaries compare. We used the Indeed Salary Comparison tool to take salaries shown for Tow Truck Drivers, Roadside Assistance and Transfer Drivers to see how the salaries compare side by side. The data shows that the average Roadside Assistance salary for job postings nationwide are 54% higher than average Tow Truck Driver salaries for jobs that are listed nationwide. You also see that a Transfer Driver can make about $5,000 more a year in their annual salary. This doesn’t mean you can’t find better pay tow truck jobs but if you’re looking at the average salaries, it might be worth looking into owning your own tow truck.

The BLS doesn’t really have any specific salary or career growth information around tow truck drivers but have a more general category that covers Heavy & Tractor-trailer truck drivers. The growth statistics for this part of the sector are at 21% which are faster than most other careers. Another place that had some interesting statistics was the IBIS World Research Firm where they expect to see 2.7% in Annual Growth from 2008 – 2013 for Automobile Towing. The growth was detailed to have some relation to the economy and how more people are holding onto older cars. The theory is that older cars will need to be towed more often and the rates of tow truck requests will keep growing. The other parts of the analysis state that the Automobile Towing industry will see around $6 Billion in Revenue and total employment looks to be around 51,243. The total amount of 51,243 tow truck drivers are reported to be working at around 8,223 tow businesses.