Chillicothe · South-central Ohio
Your shop's phone, covered after hours.
A furnace dies at midnight. A family calls at 3 a.m. A driver is stranded on the shoulder. AfterKeeper answers — a real conversation instead of voicemail, with the message texted straight to you.
In active testing. We're running with a small number of local businesses before opening this up. If you want one of those spots, say so — you'd be shaping how it works.
Goes straight to a person in Ross County. Not a ticket queue.
Who this is for
Trades where the call that comes in at the worst hour is the one that matters most.
HVAC & Plumbing
A furnace dies at midnight in January. It doesn't wait for business hours, and the phone shouldn't either.
Funeral Homes
These calls come at any hour, and they don't wait for morning. Every one gets a real response, not a ring-out.
Auto Repair
The call that comes in after close is usually the one that decides where the car gets towed to.
Towing & Roadside
A driver stranded on the shoulder needs someone who answers — not a mailbox that has filled up by morning.
Impound & Storage Yards
Someone whose car was towed from a private lot is calling at 1 a.m. to get it back. That call has rules attached to it.
What the rules say ↓For storage yards
This one isn't a preference. It's a duty you already have.
Ohio puts a specific obligation on a facility holding a vehicle towed from a private tow-away zone.
“The storage facility shall ensure that a process is in place for purposes of answering calls at all times day or night.”
Ohio Rev. Code § 4513.69(B)(1) — effective 24 October 2024
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A process for answering At all times, day or night — not a mailbox you clear in the morning. Division (B)(1). -
Someone able to release it Measured from the call itself, so the clock starts whether you heard it or not. Division (B)(2). -
The fee, and the amount The caller has to be told a retrieval fee applies and what it is. Division (B)(2).
So we built that call, rather than bending the roadside one to fit
- It asks for the plate, not where you're standing — the car is already in the lot.
- It states your retrieval fee and its amount. Yours, the figure you give us, which Ohio caps at $150. It never guesses one, and if we don't have it, it says nothing rather than inventing a number.
- It reads back what to bring — title, registration or lease, and a way to pay — so nobody makes a second trip.
- The text you get carries release by and the time, on the message that woke you, not somewhere you'd have to go look.
We're not your lawyer, and we don't claim to make you compliant.
Whether an outside answering service satisfies your obligation is a question for your attorney. What we can tell you is exactly what our line says and when — so you can put it in front of them and let them decide.
How it works
Three things, and nothing you have to manage.
- It picks up when you can't After hours, weekends, and the calls that land while you're already under a sink.
- The caller gets a real conversation Their situation is taken down properly, in their words, without a menu tree.
- You get it as a text Name, number, and what's actually wrong — waiting for you, not buried in a mailbox.
What lands on your phone
A real storage-yard message, in the format you'd actually receive it.
AfterKeeper — after-hours call
Caller: Dana Reed (740) 555-1234
Issue: blue Chevy pickup, plate HJK 4419, towed from the Kroger lot
Callback #: (740) 555-1234
Time: 2026-01-14 01:30 AM EST
RELEASE BY: 04:30 AM EST — ORC 4513.69(B)(2) allows 3 hours from this call.
What it will never do
It will never book a job, quote a price, or invent a time slot. It takes the message and guarantees a callback. That's the whole promise.
An answering service that improvises on your behalf costs you more than a missed call ever did. This one knows what it doesn't know, and says so.
The exceptions are the things Ohio requires you to say, so we say them for you: a repair caller is told they're entitled to an estimate before work begins, and a storage caller is told your retrieval fee and its amount. Those are your figures and your duties. Everything else, it leaves to you.
Built here
Run and supported from Ross County, Ohio. If something goes wrong at 2 a.m., the person who fixes it lives about twenty minutes from your shop.
Ask about a pilot spot