You have about eight weeks before the first freeze. Here is what to fix

By Steve Meitler · 2026-09-02 · 4 min read

The first hard cold snap generates a month of tow revenue in a few days. What a tow yard should fix in September and October to actually capture it.

The first hard freeze of the season is the single biggest revenue event on a northern tow yard's calendar. Batteries that were fine at 45 degrees die at 12. Cars slide into ditches. Every driver who ignored a slow crank in October discovers it at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday in November.

The yards that make money that week are not the ones with the most trucks. They are the ones whose phone gets answered and whose Google listing says they are open. Both of those are decided now, in the quiet weeks, not on the morning of the freeze.

Here is the list, in the order it should be done.

1. Fix the hours on your Google profile

This is the highest-return thing on the page and it takes four minutes.

Across 23,074 towing listings, 30.7% have no hours listed at all and 50.7% claim to be open 24 hours. Both groups have a problem in a freeze week. A profile with no hours gives Google nothing to show a person searching at 5 a.m., and Google is reluctant to surface a business whose availability it cannot confirm. A profile claiming 24 hours that rings out at 5 a.m. gets the call and then gets the one-star review.

Decide honestly which of the three configurations you are running this winter: genuinely staffed around the clock, daytime dispatch with an on-call driver, or daytime only. Then make the listing say that. If you are adding overnight coverage for the season, update the hours the day the coverage starts, not the week after.

Test it. Call your own listed number at 3 a.m. from a phone that is not on your account. Once. Most operators have never done this and a meaningful number would not like what they hear.

2. Turn on missed-call text-back before you need it

A freeze morning does not produce a steady stream of calls. It produces forty calls in ninety minutes, and even a well-staffed office will have people ringing out during the surge.

Missed-call text-back costs $20 to $80 a month and fires within about fifteen seconds of an unanswered call. During a surge it is the difference between a caller waiting for you and a caller dialing the next name in the pack. Set it up in September, not on the morning it snows, so ordinary days catch the configuration mistakes.

Run your own volume through the calculator. For most single-yard operators the annual number attached to unanswered calls is larger than the entire marketing budget, and a freeze week is when most of that loss happens.

3. Bank reviews now, spend them in January

Review velocity takes weeks to move and the pack position it buys arrives late. Reviews earned in September and October are what put you in the top three when the searches spike.

The industry median is 31 reviews and 27.1% of towing companies have fewer than ten. If you are anywhere near that, a disciplined eight weeks of asking at every retail drop will move you further than any ad budget will. Use the drop-off script in the reviews guide, and keep the ask strictly to retail customers, never impound or rotation calls.

While you are in there, reply to every unanswered negative review from last winter. Calm, three sentences, no argument.

4. Check what your website does on a bad connection

Your freeze-morning customer is outside, cold, on a weak signal, with a phone at 20%. Open your own site on cellular data, standing in your yard, and count the seconds. Then try to dial from it with one thumb.

If it takes more than three seconds to load or the number is not a one-tap dial, fix those two things and ignore everything else about the site. The full checklist is in the website guide, but those two items are 80% of the value.

Worth noting: 36.7% of towing companies have no website at all. If that is you, a five-page site is a week of work and this is the week to start it, not December.

5. Set the ad schedule to match the coverage you are actually adding

If you are moving to overnight coverage for the winter, your Google Ads schedule should change on the same day. Overnight tow searches convert well and cost less per click because most competitors turn off in the evening.

If you are not adding coverage, turn the overnight ads off. Paying for a click that rings out is worse than not advertising at all, because you also collect the review. The Google Ads guide covers the day-parting in detail.

6. Decide your storm-week priorities in advance

During a freeze week your constraint is trucks, not demand. That changes what you should do.

Write down now, while it is calm, which calls get priority when everything comes in at once. For most yards the answer is retail first, because a $65 motor club call occupying a truck for ninety minutes during a surge costs you a $250 retail call. Tell your dispatchers before the week, not during it.

Turn ad budgets down during the surge rather than up. There is no point paying for demand you cannot serve.

7. Get the trucks and the people ready

Not marketing, but it decides whether any of the above matters. Batteries, chains, fuel, jump packs, driver gear, and the on-call rotation agreed and posted before anyone has to negotiate the 4 a.m. shift.

The order that matters

If you only do two things, do the hours and the text-back. They cost almost nothing, they take an afternoon, and together they decide whether the busiest week of your year turns into revenue or into somebody else's revenue plus a handful of one-star reviews.

Everything on this list can be set up for you at no cost for two weeks through the free 14-day trial. Text or call (385) 832-6175.