Need a tow? Towing in Lompoc, CA

Lompoc is one of our longer runs: 25 to 26 miles by road from the center of Santa Maria, approximate. The road in is the one Vandenberg Space Force Base prints for visitors coming from Santa Maria, followed on past the main gate.

The truck takes Broadway, the 135, south through Orcutt to where Highway 1 joins it, then follows Highway 1 when it exits to the right. At the traffic light in front of Vandenberg's main gate, the Santa Maria Gate, Highway 1 bends toward Lompoc, past the Constellation Road exit for Vandenberg Village and the Allan Hancock College campus, to a second light at the north end of town. From there it is North H Street, past the airport, to Ocean Avenue, where Highway 1 and the 246 share the road east to the edge of the city.

We give a Lompoc caller the arrival window on the call, worked out from where the truck is at that moment, and the quote covers the whole trip, out and back. Our phones and trucks run around the clock; most of the agency offices further down this page do not.

The main roads out of Lompoc each get their own question on the call:

• Highway 1 north - from the light at the top of North H Street past the Hancock campus, Vandenberg Village and the base's main gate toward Orcutt. Give us the last exit you passed, Constellation Road or Santa Lucia Canyon Road.
• Highway 1 south - out of town to meet US 101 at Las Cruces. Give us your direction and the last landmark.
• The 246 - Ocean Avenue east out of town, then a relatively flat two-lane road that follows the Santa Ynez River toward Buellton and the 101.
• Harris Grade Road - the county road over the hills between the Lompoc and Los Alamos valleys, from Rucker Road to the 135 near Los Alamos.

Harris Grade closed in 2024: a slope failure after storms early that year kept it shut for several weeks, and county repairs began in April. A road the county has closed is closed to our trucks too, so we come in by Highway 1 and say on the call what the detour does to the arrival window.

Lompoc sits in the Santa Ynez River valley, where fog and ocean breezes are frequent and snow almost never falls, so a winter call here is far more likely to mean wet pavement than ice. Inside town the two highways run on Ocean Avenue and H Street, with through traffic beside a stopped car day and night. For a car that dies on either one after dark, a night tow on Highway 1 or the 246 is quoted exactly like a daytime job.

Lompoc is a city of 44,444 people at the 2020 Census, and which agency handles a tow there depends on which side of the city limit the car stopped.

Inside the city it is the Lompoc Police Department at 100 Civic Center Plaza, whose dispatch center takes non-emergency calls day or night. Its Records section keeps lobby hours of 8:30 to 5 Monday through Thursday and 8:30 to 4 on Friday, and on Saturday and Sunday the lobby opens only for vehicle releases.

Past the city limit, traffic belongs to the CHP, which by its own enforcement policy covers every non-freeway road in unincorporated areas. Its Buellton Area patrols Lompoc, Solvang, Buellton, Los Olivos, Santa Ynez and Vandenberg Village on US 101, Highway 154, the 246 and Highway 1, from an office at 166 Industrial Way in Buellton open weekdays 8 to 5. General law enforcement in the unincorporated neighborhoods around the city - Vandenberg Village, Mission Hills and Mesa Oaks - is the Sheriff's Lompoc Station on Harris Grade Road.

Towed from a Lompoc street

Lompoc Police, (805) 736-2341, day or night

Towed from Highway 1 or the 246 outside town

CHP Buellton Area, (805) 691-6160, weekdays

Towed in Vandenberg Village, Mission Hills or Mesa Oaks

Sheriff's Lompoc Station, (805) 737-7737; (805) 683-2724 after hours

Towed from a private lot

The entrance sign CVC 22658 requires gives each towing company's name and phone number

Lompoc's 72-hour rule

Lompoc rewrote its street-storage rule in November 2025. Municipal Code 10.28.190 bars leaving a vehicle on any street or highway for 72 or more consecutive hours, and moving it a few feet no longer restarts the count: a car still within 150 feet of its starting spot 48 hours after a 72-hour period ends, or with less than a tenth of a mile added to the odometer, is treated as parked the whole time. Police may remove it under CVC 22651(k) once notice is posted at the city's entrances, as the section requires. A car that will not start gets no exemption, so call before the clock runs out.

Section 10.28.240, which has its own permit program, keeps recreational vehicles off public streets between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The base runs its own gates. Vandenberg's visitor page says the sponsor meets a commercial vehicle at the Lompoc Gate to get it a 24-hour pass and have it searched, and a tow truck is a commercial vehicle. The Lompoc Gate is open 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.; the Santa Maria Gate and the South Gate are open 24 hours, the Solvang Gate 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. The base's own directions add that the Lompoc Gate, signed from the Santa Lucia Canyon Road exit on Highway 1, is not always open.

Distance changes the truck here. A front-wheel-drive car going from Ocean Avenue to a shop across Lompoc can ride the wheel-lift. The same car going 25 to 26 miles back to a Santa Maria dealer rides the flatbed on the Lompoc-to-Santa Maria run, and so does anything all-wheel drive, electric, lowered or unable to roll, whatever the distance.

Our trucks are light-duty: cars, pickups, SUVs, vans and motorcycles. A loaded farm truck or a large motorhome is past that rating, and we say so on the phone rather than send the wrong truck 25 miles.

Distance is the largest part of any Lompoc quote, then the truck and the time on scene; how we price a tow that starts in Lompoc sets out the rest.

The same call covers Vandenberg Village in the hills north of town, Mission Hills and Mesa Oaks, the base gates, and Highway 1 all the way back to Orcutt, the last town before Santa Maria. East on the 246, Buellton and Solvang are on our list too, and everything else we do is towing out of Santa Maria around the clock.