North Carolina officially dissolved Jack’s Towing and Recovery Service last November. The company kept towing cars anyway.
On March 19, a teenager attending a community worship event at Fuse baseball park in Gastonia parked across the street at a Taylor Smith Appliances lot. Jack’s Towing hauled her car to impound and handed her mother, Audra Cline, a bill for $1,195, plus $100 for every additional day the vehicle sat on the lot. The receipt carried a Better Business Bureau logo, but Jack’s Towing isn’t accredited with the BBB.
Cline posted the receipt on Facebook. It detonated.
Within days, the city of Gastonia filed a lawsuit against the company. Congressman Tim Moore shared the post and said he’d ask the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Jack’s for fraudulent predatory towing. The company’s Yelp rating sits at 1.6 stars, and Reddit and Facebook are littered with complaints.
Here’s where the story curdles. The State of North Carolina administratively dissolved Jack’s Towing’s LLC on November 21, 2025, after the company failed to file its annual report. A dissolved LLC has no legal authority to operate.
Jack’s kept operating, towing vehicles, collecting cash, slapping logos on receipts. On March 20, the same day Gastonia filed its lawsuit, Jack’s filed for reinstatement and submitted the overdue annual report. Pure coincidence, apparently.
The city’s lawsuit also targets ordinance violations beyond the company’s zombie corporate status. Gastonia requires towing outfits to accept both cash and credit cards. Lisa Montgomery, whose car was towed from the same lot on March 18, says she was forced to pay cash only.
City code also mandates that “no parking” signs be posted prominently at lot entrances. The signs at the Taylor Smith Appliances lot weren’t.
But the lawsuit only seeks an injunction, a court order telling Jack’s to follow the rules going forward. No fines. No penalties for past conduct. No restitution for the customers already squeezed.
That’s because North Carolina law gives cities almost no real authority over towing companies. The state sets no limits on what towers can charge. A bill proposed in 2025 would have capped fees, restricted towing distances, and required companies to log every tow in a statewide database.
It went nowhere. The only towing legislation North Carolina has managed to pass in recent years bans the booting of commercial motor vehicles. That’s it.
Gastonia City Attorney Eric Edgerton told WBTV that the city has been pushing state lawmakers for years to allow municipalities to regulate towing more aggressively. “While we wait on those types of legislative changes, we will continue to enforce our own ordinances,” he said. Translation: we’re doing everything we legally can, and it’s not much.
WBTV’s own reporting over the years has linked North Carolina towing operations to car chases, kidnappings, drug trafficking, and interstate theft. The industry operates in a regulatory vacuum that the legislature has shown almost no appetite to fill.
Jack’s Towing declined to comment when contacted by WBTV. The person who answered the phone wouldn’t address the lawsuit, the social media firestorm, or the congressman calling for a federal investigation.
So a company that didn’t legally exist was still seizing private property and demanding over a thousand dollars to return it. The state’s remedy is an injunction that amounts to asking nicely. The legislative fix remains stuck in committee.
And the customers who already paid? They’re out the money.
North Carolina doesn’t have a towing problem. It has a governance problem dressed up as a towing problem. The tow trucks just make it easier to see.
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