The True Cost of Roadside Assistance for Dealerships

The visible costs: what's on your invoice

Most dealership managers look at their motor club invoice and think they know what roadside assistance costs. The typical breakdown includes the monthly subscription or membership fee ($500-2,000/month for active dealerships), per-incident charges for calls that exceed plan limits ($75-200 each), and administrative fees that appear as line items on the monthly statement.

For a mid-size dealership dispatching 20-30 tow-related jobs per month, the visible invoice cost runs $800-2,500 monthly, or roughly $10,000-30,000 annually.

This is the number that gets reported to the GM and controller. It's the number used in budget planning. And it represents only about 40-60% of the actual cost of roadside assistance.

Hidden cost: service advisor time

Every tow job that doesn't go through an automated dispatch system requires service advisor involvement. In a phone-based or motor-club-based system, the advisor spends time explaining the situation to the motor club or tow company (3-5 minutes), following up when the truck is late or the customer calls for an ETA (5-10 minutes per follow-up), handling post-job issues like disputed charges or complaints (15-30 minutes per incident), and documenting the job for internal records (5-10 minutes).

Conservatively, each tow job consumes 15-25 minutes of advisor time. At an average service advisor cost of $25-35/hour (salary plus benefits), that's $6-15 per job in labor.

At 25 jobs per month, that's $150-375 in monthly advisor labor — time that could be spent on higher-value activities like selling service work, handling customer pickups, or managing repair orders.

Automated dispatch platforms reduce this to about 2-3 minutes per job: create the job, confirm the details, done. The platform handles notification, tracking, and documentation. That's a 70-85% reduction in per-job advisor time.

Hidden cost: undocumented damage claims

This is the cost that keeps dealership managers up at night. When a vehicle is damaged during towing and there's no photographic evidence of the vehicle's condition at pickup, the dealership often absorbs the repair cost — even when they weren't at fault.

The average vehicle damage claim related to towing runs $2,000-5,000 for common issues like bumper scrapes, undercarriage damage, and transmission problems from improper towing. More severe damage (dropped vehicles, winch cable scratches on paint) can exceed $10,000.

Without timestamped, GPS-tagged photos showing the vehicle's condition at the moment of pickup, these claims become "your word against theirs" situations. Most dealerships settle rather than fight, absorbing costs that proper documentation would have prevented.

A dispatch platform that requires pickup and drop-off photos with GPS and time stamps transforms these disputes from costly settlements into clear-cut evidence reviews. Even preventing one damage claim per year justifies the platform cost many times over.

Hidden cost: slow response times and customer impact

When a customer's vehicle is stranded and the response time is 60-90 minutes (common with motor club dispatch), the customer satisfaction impact is real — even though it's difficult to quantify on a spreadsheet.

Studies in the broader service industry show that customers who experience service failures that are resolved quickly (under 30 minutes) often rate their experience higher than customers who never had a problem. Conversely, slow resolution (over 60 minutes) creates lasting negative impressions.

For dealerships, this translates to CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) scores, which directly impact manufacturer bonuses and incentive allocation. A dealership with consistent towing complaints may lose $10,000-50,000 annually in manufacturer performance bonuses.

Platform-based dispatch with GPS proximity matching typically delivers 15-25 minute response times in well-covered metro areas — a significant improvement over the 30-60 minute motor club standard.

Calculating your true total cost

To calculate your dealership's true roadside assistance cost, add up these components.

Direct costs: your motor club invoice (monthly subscription plus per-incident charges). This is the number you probably already know.

Labor costs: multiply your average number of tow jobs per month by 20 minutes of advisor time, then multiply by your advisor's hourly cost (salary plus benefits divided by working hours). Most dealerships find this adds $150-500 per month.

Damage claim costs: review your records for the past 12 months and total any vehicle damage payouts related to towing or transport. Divide by 12 for a monthly average. Even one incident per year adds $170-420 to the monthly average.

Opportunity costs: these are harder to quantify but include CSI score impacts, repeat customer losses from poor towing experiences, and the value of advisor time redirected from sales-generating activities. A reasonable estimate is 20-30% on top of your direct and labor costs.

For most mid-size dealerships, the true total cost is 2-3x the visible invoice amount. A dealership paying $1,200/month to a motor club often spends $2,400-3,600/month in total roadside assistance costs when all factors are included.

How dispatch platforms reduce total cost

A modern dispatch platform attacks every cost category simultaneously.

Direct cost reduction: $39/month plus $3/job versus $500-2,000/month motor club contracts. At 25 jobs per month, that's $114 versus $800-2,500 — a 60-85% reduction in direct costs.

Labor cost reduction: automated dispatch, real-time tracking, and self-service status updates reduce per-job advisor time from 20 minutes to 3 minutes. That's $150-500/month in recovered advisor productivity.

Damage claim prevention: mandatory photo documentation at pickup and drop-off creates an evidence trail that either prevents claims from being filed or resolves them quickly. Even preventing one $3,000 claim per year saves $250/month.

Response time improvement: GPS-based dispatch to the nearest available driver reduces average response time from 30-60 minutes to 15-25 minutes, improving customer satisfaction and protecting CSI scores.

The net result: most dealerships that switch from motor club dispatch to a platform-based system reduce their total roadside assistance cost by 40-60% while simultaneously improving service quality. The ROI typically pays for itself within the first month.

Frequently Asked Questions