Every two years, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation is required to review what vehicle storage facilities can charge and adjust the rates to match inflation. In 2019, TDLR did it. In 2021, it did it again. In 2023, same thing.
Then in 2025, nothing. No rulemaking. No public notice. No vote. No explanation.
The Consumer Price Index rose 11.93% over the preceding state fiscal biennium. Licensed VSF operators across Texas absorbed every cent of that increase while being prevented from adjusting their prices to account for inflation until TDLR authorized the change.
TowShark requested comment from TDLR’s Director of Strategic Communications, Caroline Espinosa, on April 8, 2026, asking whether the 2025 biennial review was conducted and, if not, why it was not brought before the commission. TowShark requested a response by April 11. TDLR did not respond.
The Math on Your Lot
The current maximum daily storage rate, set by TDLR’s 2023 adjustment, is $22.85 for vehicles 25 feet and under and $39.99 for vehicles over 25 feet.
After applying the 11.93% CPI-U increase that should have been calculated for 2025, those rates should be $25.58 and $44.76.
That means every standard-size vehicle sitting on your lot today is billed at $2.73 less than it should be. Every heavy vehicle is $4.77 short. Per vehicle. Per day. Every day TDLR doesn’t act.
Here’s what that looks like over a month, depending on how many vehicles you’re storing:
Standard Vehicles (25 ft and under): $2.73/day lost per vehicle
| Avg. vehicles on your lot | Lost per day | Lost per month | Lost per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | $13.65 | $409 | $4,982 |
| 10 | $27.30 | $819 | $9,965 |
| 25 | $68.25 | $2,048 | $24,911 |
| 50 | $136.50 | $4,095 | $49,823 |
| 100 | $273.00 | $8,190 | $99,645 |
| 175 | $477.75 | $14,333 | $174,379 |
Heavy Vehicles (over 25 ft): $4.77/day lost per vehicle
| Avg. vehicles on your lot | Lost per day | Lost per month | Lost per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $4.77 | $143 | $1,741 |
| 2 | $9.54 | $286 | $3,482 |
| 3 | $14.31 | $429 | $5,223 |
| 4 | $19.08 | $572 | $6,964 |
| 5 | $23.85 | $716 | $8,706 |
| 6 | $28.62 | $859 | $10,447 |
Find your lot size. That’s the money TDLR left on the table for you.
If you store a mix of standard and heavy vehicles, add the two numbers together. A mid-size operator running 50 standard vehicles and 4 heavy vehicles is losing roughly $56,800 a year. That’s a full-time employee’s wages. A larger operator running 100 standard vehicles and 6 heavy vehicles is losing roughly $110,000 a year. That’s a new rollback. That’s your liability insurance premium.
And that number grows every day the 2025 adjustment remains undone. Since the adjustment was due, the losses have been accumulating. They do not get recovered retroactively. The money is gone.
The Law TDLR Didn’t Follow
In 2019, the Texas Legislature passed HB 1140, creating Occupations Code Section 2303.1552. The statute directs the TDLR commission to review non-consent VSF storage fees every two years and adjust them based on changes in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).
The language is deliberate. If the CPI goes up, the commission “may” increase fees. If it goes down, the commission “shall” decrease them. The Legislature gave the commission discretion on whether to increase fees when costs rise. It did not give the commission discretion to skip the review entirely. The distinction matters: exercising discretion requires putting the question on the agenda, examining the data, and voting. No record indicates any of those steps occurred.
The base rates are set in Section 2303.155: $20 per day for vehicles 25 feet and under, $35 for vehicles over 25 feet, plus a $20 impoundment fee. The 2023 CPI-adjusted rates of $22.85 and $39.99 reflect three successful biennial reviews. The 2025 review would have been the fourth.
This Wasn’t Optional
TDLR’s enabling statute, Occupations Code Section 51.203(a), states that the commission “shall adopt rules as necessary to implement each law establishing a program regulated by the department.” The biennial CPI review under Section 2303.1552 is one of those laws. There is no carve-out that allows the commission to skip a cycle.
Section 51.105 draws a clear line between commission policy decisions and staff management functions. Rate-setting is commission policy. If TDLR staff decided on their own that the 2025 adjustment wasn’t worth pursuing, that raises a question about whether the commission itself was ever consulted.
There is also a distinction in the statute that narrows TDLR’s options for defending the omission. When the Legislature wrote Section 2308.0575, governing private property towing rates, it included explicit “public health and safety” language authorizing regulatory discretion. When it wrote Section 2303.1552 for VSF storage fees, it left that language out. Under the expressio unius canon of statutory construction, the Legislature’s decision to include consumer protection authority in one section and exclude it from the other indicates the CPI adjustment mechanism was designed as an economic tool, not a consumer protection measure.
Texas Is Already Near the Bottom
A 50-state comparison of regulated non-consent storage rates puts the numbers in context. Among the 36 states that publish standard-vehicle non-consent storage rates, Texas ranks 30th. All rates below are for standard passenger vehicles and light trucks (under 10,001 lbs GVWR), non-consent tows only.
| Rank | State | Daily rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Washington | $75.00 |
| 4 | New Hampshire | $50.00 |
| 7 | Colorado | $39.18 |
| 9 | Alabama | $35.00 |
| 10 | Massachusetts | $35.00 |
| 11 | Wisconsin | $35.00 |
| 12 | Georgia | $33.00 |
| 14 | Florida | $30.00 |
| 17 | Minnesota | $30.00 |
| 23 | New York | $25.00 |
| 24 | Illinois | $25.00 |
| 28 | Pennsylvania | $25.00 |
| 29 | Louisiana | $24.00 |
| 30 | TEXAS | $22.85 |
| 31 | Ohio | $22.00 |
| 32 | Oklahoma | $20.00 |
| 33 | Wyoming | $20.00 |
| 35 | Nebraska | $15.00 |
Texas is $1.15 above Oklahoma and Wyoming. It is $12.15 below the median. Even after the CPI adjustment that should have happened, Texas at $25.58 would still rank below 23 other states.
For heavy and oversize vehicles (over 25 ft or 10,001+ lbs GVWR), Texas ranks in the bottom third among states with published rates at $39.99 per day. Ohio allows $82 for vehicles over 26,000 lbs. Colorado allows $48.32 for vehicles over 10,000 lbs. Texas is below both.
All rates verified against current state statutes and administrative codes with full citations available.
What the Commission Spent Its Time On Instead
A review of every Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation meeting agenda and set of published minutes from 2025 shows that the biennial VSF fee adjustment was never agendized. Not in February. Not in April. Not in July, August, or October. Not in the February 2026 meeting either.
The commission regulates more than 40 industries and its agenda is prepared by staff. Whether the omission reflects a staff-level decision, a scheduling oversight, or a deliberate policy choice is not clear from the public record. TDLR did not respond to TowShark’s request for an explanation.
What the public record does show is that the commission met six times in 2025 and conducted substantial business at each meeting. At its July 8, 2025 meeting, the commission voted unanimously to increase the executive director’s salary to $235,000, effective September 1, 2025. The same meeting covered contested cases, rule repeals for the barbering program, a penalty matrix for speech-language pathologists, and a delegation of authority to the veterinary medical board. In October, the commission discussed Dallas Cowboys trademark licensing agreements, charitable bingo audit plans, and legacy systems contracts. In February 2026, it took up the Financial Crimes Intelligence Center and dyslexia therapy enforcement plans.
The biennial CPI adjustment to VSF storage fees did not appear on any of these agendas.
The Political Context
TDLR Commissioner Dr. Ray Callas won the March 3, 2026 Republican primary for House District 21, the seat vacated by former Speaker Dade Phelan. He ran unopposed with endorsements from Governor Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. His campaign platform centers on limited government, less regulation, and support for small business.
According to the published minutes for the July 8, 2025 commission meeting, Dr. Callas was absent. Commissioners Sujeeth Draksharam and Vice Chair Tom Butler were also absent. The remaining four commissioners conducted the meeting with a quorum.
Whether the fee adjustment was ever raised with the commission informally, or whether TDLR staff decided independently not to bring it forward, is not reflected in the public record.
Governor Abbott has built his administration’s economic platform on Texas being the best state in the country to run a business.
The Price Control Problem
Section 2303.1552 is, by design, a price control. The Legislature set a ceiling on what VSF operators can charge and created a mechanism to adjust that ceiling for inflation. When the mechanism works, the ceiling rises with costs and operators stay whole. When it doesn’t, the ceiling becomes a trap.
That is the situation Texas VSF operators are in now. The state caps what they can charge. The state is required to adjust those caps every two years. The state did not do it. And the operators have no legal ability to raise their own rates until the state acts.
This is not a free-market outcome. In an unregulated market, a storage facility that faces an 11.93% increase in operating costs raises its prices. In Texas, a licensed VSF operator cannot. The rate is set by TDLR. The only path to a higher rate is through the commission.
Texas ranks 30th out of 36 states with published non-consent storage rates. The states ranked above Texas include Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Colorado, which operates under a regulatory framework that automatically adjusts towing rates when diesel exceeds $2.60 per gallon, charges $39.18 per day for standard vehicles. Texas charges $22.85.
The gap between what Texas projects and what Texas allows is visible in the numbers. The state’s economic brand is built on low regulation, low taxes, and room for businesses to operate. Its VSF storage rate structure is the opposite: a government-set price ceiling, administered by a commission that regulates 40 industries, adjusted on a schedule that the commission itself did not follow.
The CPI adjustment mechanism in Section 2303.1552 was the Legislature’s answer to this tension. It acknowledged that price controls require maintenance. It built in a clock. It assigned the responsibility to the commission. For three cycles, the system worked. Then it stopped, and the public record does not explain why.
Whether the omission was deliberate or administrative, the effect is the same. Texas VSF operators are absorbing inflation they were never supposed to absorb, under a rate structure that was supposed to keep pace with costs, administered by an agency that is required by statute to act and, according to the public record, did not.
TDLR did not respond to TowShark’s request for comment.
Statutory citations have been verified against current Texas Occupations Code and Government Code provisions. CPI-U data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Series CUUS0000SA0. Rate comparisons are based on published state statutes and administrative codes as of April 2026.