MOULTRIE — When a wrecked vehicle needs to be moved, local law enforcement must often call a wrecker service because the vehicle’s driver can’t. Those services are chosen from a list of providers that’s kept by the E-911 Center, and a rotation system is used to try to be fair to all the participants.

On Tuesday night, the Colquitt County Board of Commissioners voted to tighten some of the rules that govern the wrecker services on that rotation list.

The changes are the result of negotiations among the companies currently on the list and county administration, including E-911 Director Theresa Warburg and County Administrator Chas Cannon. They were first presented to the Board of Commissioners Oct. 4 and voted on Tuesday, Oct. 18.

The wreckers were already subject to inspections, but the new rule requires an annual inspection conducted by the Georgia Public Safety Department or the state Department of Transportation.

The wrecker companies were already required to have insurance but some wrecker companies would get a policy long enough to show the county that they have it, then they’d stop paying and let the policy lapse, according to speakers at the Oct. 4 meeting. To address that, the county will now be listed as “an additional insured” on the wrecker services’ policies. That way, if the wrecker service lets the insurance lapse, the county will be notified and can take action.

The county wanted to protect itself from liability, but the change was supported by the wrecker services too because they didn’t want to have to compete against a company that didn’t play by the rules.

Commissioners accepted those proposals with virtually no debate, but they removed another proposal that would have limited the number of wrecker services on the rotation list.

The list currently includes nine companies, but the proposal was to reduce that to a maximum of seven. Companies currently on the list would be grandfathered in, but if a company came off the list it would not be replaced until the list dwindled to less than seven companies.

Officials of the wrecker companies said Oct. 4 that they like being on the rotation because it’s guaranteed work. They pick up the wrecked vehicle and take it to their impound lot and the owner has to pay to get it back. But some calls are not profitable.

Bobby Owens of Owens Towing and John Warner of Warner Recovery both described cases where owners didn’t take action on a wrecked vehicle. After the vehicles sat on the company’s impound lot for months, the wrecker companies were able to sell them for scrap metal, but low scrap metal prices mean the transactions weren’t profitable for the wrecker services.

The wrecker owners wanted to limit the number of companies on the list so each company would have more calls, which would increase their revenue.

But commissioners, especially Chairman Denver Braswell and Commissioner Chris Hunnicutt, expressed concerns about barring companies that are otherwise qualified from participating in the rotation. They said that seemed unfair, and commissioners eliminated that provision from their vote Tuesday.