Is Lizard Lick Towing real? All the details

Lizard Lick Towing is a truTV show that ran from 2011 to 2014. It focused on the proprietors and employees of Lizard Lick Towing & Recovery in Wendell, North Carolina, as they recovered vehicles from irate owners. Every episode featured confrontations involving plenty of censored words and, occasionally, physical assault. 

The show’s appeal was the over-the-top manner in which the Lizard Lick team repossessed property and dealt with displeased owners. Despite the many negative comments about the show on internet forums, the show was a truTV hit. 

Critics of the show accused it of being fake, despite advertising itself as a reality show. 

Lizard Lick Towing followed real people and a real business but told scripted stories

Lizard Lick Towing is a real business run by Ron and Amy Shirley. The towing and repo company still exists eight years after the show’s last episode. However, despite the series featuring a real business and real people, its stories are scripted. 

Repossessing vehicles rarely involves such violent confrontations – they are often dull affairs. However, nobody would watch a boring ‘reality’ show. Therefore, the showrunners script the stories and the violence to make the series watchable. 

A dead giveaway that the series is scripted is that there’s always a camera ready to film in places the team hasn’t visited. Furthermore, nobody seems to get in trouble with the law despite the numerous felony assaults depicted in every episode. 

Steve Koonin, an executive at Turner, truTV’s parent organization, told The Los Angeles Times in 2011: “Notice we don’t say reality. We call it actuality.” Well, we call it scripted. Andy Denhart, the creator of ‘reality blurred,’ seems to agree with our conclusion. He told the outlet:

“It’s offensive to mention truTV in the same sentence as reality television. It just feels inauthentic. Lots of viewers have turned their backs on them, saying the action is not happening organically. To me, it’s a complete and offensive waste of time.”

Reality television fans view Lizard Lick Towing as an offense against the genre. “I pray to GOD don’t let fake reality shows get popular!” one fan reviewer rights on IMDb. “This is potentially the worst thing that could happen to the film and television industry, period.”

On the other hand, people who enjoy the show have no qualms about the fake reality. They view Lizard Lick Towing as any other entertaining production. Charles Barkley, an NBA analyst, told the Los Angeles Times:

“Dude, it’s some of the craziest stuff I’ve ever seen in my life. First of all, they seem like great guys, but they two big old country boys and they be stealing people’s cars back. It is the funniest thing in the world. They have people fighting with them all of the time. You’re just laughing the whole time.”

It’s unlikely that Lizard Lick Towing will come back anytime soon 

Some disappointing news for fans of Lizard Lick Towing – it’s unlikely that you’ll get new episodes of the show. Since the last episode of season 4 aired in 2014, truTV has shown no indication that it’ll renew the series. 

2022 started badly for the Lizard Lick crew as Ron and Amy Shirley lost their 21-year-old son, Harley Alexander Shirley, in a shooting. Ron wrote on Facebook on 18th February:

“He’s at peace now – waiting on the rest of us to arrive at those gates. We will be there soon Big Shur – and will always cherish the times we had while you were with us son.”