Need a tow? Towing in Camarillo, CA

Camarillo is about 13 miles from Thousand Oaks by road, and nearly every run goes the same way: west on the 101, down the Conejo Grade, and off at the Camarillo exit nearest you. The Grade itself is covered in what happens when a car quits on the Conejo Grade; for Camarillo, what matters is that most of our trucks come over it, so a crash up there moves the arrival window we give you.

Camarillo's exits start at the foot of the Grade: Camarillo Springs Road, then 52 for Pleasant Valley Road and Santa Rosa Road, SR 34 at Lewis Road, 54 for Carmen Drive, and Las Posas Road on the west side. Give us the exit and your direction, or the street and cross street, and say whether the car is in a lot or at the curb.

There is a second way in. Moorpark Road drops down the Norwegian Grade, a two-mile stretch into the Santa Rosa Valley with little in the way of shoulders, and at its foot Santa Rosa Road heads for Camarillo, meeting the 101 at exit 52. That is the road we take when the freeway is not an option.

Most days the calls come from parking lots. Camarillo Premium Outlets, at 740 East Ventura Boulevard between the Carmen Drive and Las Posas Road exits, has nearly 160 stores, and a car that sat in that sun all afternoon is where dead batteries and keys locked inside turn up. That is usually roadside help in the outlet parking lot, and the car drives home.

We also go out to Camarillo Airport, the county-run field three miles west of the business district that was Oxnard Air Force Base until 1970, with a 6,013-foot runway and the Commemorative Air Force museum in its hangars. Tell us the lot or the hangar row.

The hills around town burn. The Springs Fire started beside the southbound 101 at Camarillo Springs Road at 7:01 in the morning on May 2, 2013, and burned 24,251 acres; in November 2024 the Mountain Fire crossed SR 118 into Camarillo Heights and destroyed 243 structures. On days like those, the roads the CHP keeps open decide our route, and the quote and the window follow it.

The 101 through town has its own Freeway Service Patrol beat, 20.3 miles from Camarillo Springs Road to the SR 33 junction, Monday through Friday only, mornings from 6:30 until 9:30 and afternoons from 2 until 6. It moves a stalled car to a safe spot off the freeway and stops there; nights, weekends and the drive on to your mechanic are private tows.

Camarillo has contracted its policing to the Ventura County Sheriff's Office since the city incorporated in 1964, and the deputies work as the Camarillo Police Department from the station on East Las Posas Road. Crashes and tows on city streets are theirs. On the freeway the dividing line is Camarillo Springs Road: east of it, up the Grade, the CHP's Moorpark Area; west of it, through town, the CHP's Ventura Area, whose territory takes in Camarillo.

City streets

Camarillo Police Department (Ventura County Sheriff), 3701 East Las Posas Road, (805) 388-5100

Non-emergency dispatch

(805) 654-9511

The 101 through town

CHP Ventura Area, 4656 Valentine Road, Ventura, (805) 662-2640

From Thousand Oaks

about 13 miles by road

If a car is gone from a Camarillo street or lot, call the station's business line on a weekday between 8 and 5, or non-emergency dispatch at other times. A deputy's tow is on record there, and so is a private-property tow, because under Vehicle Code 22658 the property owner has to phone it in to local law enforcement within an hour of authorizing it. An officer-ordered tow also comes with the right to a post-storage hearing; ask for it at the counter, by letter or by telephone, no later than 10 days after the notice date.

The street rules are short. A car may not stay on a city street longer than 72 hours. Oversized vehicles - motor homes, long trailers and the like, as the ordinance measures them - may not park from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, holidays included, in the zones the ordinance lists, which grew in February 2024 to take in more residential, commercial and industrial areas; Sheriff's deputies enforce it.

In a free lot open to the public, such as a shopping center, Vehicle Code 22953 gives a parked car one hour before the owner may have it towed. The exceptions: a car in a fire lane, one within 15 feet of a hydrant, one in the way of a driveway into or out of the lot, and one in a space marked for disabled drivers; residential lots are outside the rule.

The truck is chosen on the call. A two-wheel-drive car or light pickup goes on a wheel-lift. An all-wheel-drive SUV, an electric car, a lowered car or anything that will not roll goes on the bed, and the reasons are on our flatbed page for AWD and electric cars. We are light-duty - cars, SUVs, pickups, vans and motorcycles - so a motor home or a bus is past our rating, and you hear that on the phone.

Camarillo is one of our longer regular runs, and distance is the largest part of the quote: the miles over the Grade and back go into the figure, with the truck and any time on scene. The method is set out in what goes into a quote over the Grade, and the figure is fixed before the truck rolls. You pick the drop-off: a Camarillo repair shop, the dealership, home, or a garage back over the Grade in Thousand Oaks.

North of town, SR 34 follows Lewis Road to the city limit at Las Posas Road and carries on as Somis Road to the 118 near Somis, and the 118 leads east to Moorpark, at the north end of the 23 freeway. Oxnard and Ventura, farther west, are quoted by the mile. Everything else we do starts from our base in Thousand Oaks.