In general it is not as profitable as you may think, those trucks are very expensive, the insurance is unbelievable since they can be responsible for a VW bug to a Mercedes, lot costs, fuel, security, etc, etc. Even if they tow for the police most are on a rotation basis and is the main reason you pay big money in CA. The few exceptions like LA, tow only for the police and solely for a specific area. LA has one of the lowest rates in the state due to this and the towing is controlled by the city. LA City tows can't even charge a gate fee, that being said you won't get it back after hours either. As to notification it was the police depts. responsibility to send that notification, not the tow yards. We do them here since we are connected with the police dept. The lien notification must be processed and sent to all interested parties between 7 to 10 days from date of impound, not 72hrs. What they can't do is charge you for starting the lien if you pick up your vehicle within 72hrs of it being impounded, once 72hrs has passed they can start the lien an apply it to the bill. If they don't start the lien within the prescribed time they can no longer charge you for storage of the vehicle until they do. Most lien companies only visit the yard once a week processing the vehicles that came in to that point, we do ours daily since we send the 48hr notifications for the police dept.
Now that is what the law states but good luck on enforcing that, most would tell you to either pay it or go away, beyond that it is a civil matter. Again if you'd have been towed by LA City all the guidelines are followed to the letter since it is all governed by the city, outside of that the sky's the limit.
And FYI this is a very good reason to make sure you have your current address with the DMV, we get all of our owner info from them so if you didn't do a change of address you won't get notification that we have your car, that means it will get sold at auction without you ever even knowing it happened.
