On its face, towing cars in Miami Beach would seem like a pretty good business model. With spaces on the island in such short supply, tourists and night-lifers inevitably park their cars where they shouldn’t.

The tow truck companies get to cruise around in wreckers, harvesting the violators, hooking them up, hauling them away, sticking the illegally parked cars in a secure lot and charging $205 — cash, please — to give the owners back their property.

Practically everyone has a Miami Beach horror story involving a tow truck.

But the two companies that have a city-approved monopoly on the business, Tremont and Beach Towing, say they can’t make it under the current fee structure. They have asked the city for an average increase of $64 per tow. A vote of the City Commission could happen Wednesday.

“It’s really not this multi-million dollar profiting business that’s been implied, in an way shape or form, at least not in the last four years,” explained Andrew Mirmelli, who says his mother recently invested in Tremont only to find that no one is making any money from Miami Beach tows.

Such assurances notwithstanding, the proposal doesn’t sit well with one of the companies’ harshest critics, City Commissioner Ed Tobin, who said of the rate hike: “I think it’s terrible and it’s disgusting and now I’m going to throw up.”

The dispute over fees comes at a time when towing on the Beach has gone Hollywood. One week after Wednesday’s vote, TruTV will air the season premiere of South Beach Tow, a reality series that documents the supposed daily tribulations of Tremont Towing.

Think of it as Dog the Bounty Hunter with a winch.

Between them, Tremont and Beach Towing are believed to make $2.5 million a year handling 14,000 police and parking department tows, of which the city gets a $25-per-tow cut. But the business doesn’t end there, and neither does their monopoly. Under Miami Beach law, private condo associations, hotels and other business can contract only with Tremont or Beach Towing for non-consent tows.

The city also recently paid Tremont $8.5 million for its former tow lot, which it coveted to build a garage. Both companies operate out of tow lots in the Sunset Harbour neighborhood, within walking distance of each other. The current fee structure is $115 per tow, plus a $30 administrative fee, $30 after-hours fee, $25 labor fee and $5 per mile fee, adding up to an average tow of $205.

But those rates haven’t changed since 2004, back when a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline was $1.88 and other costs were lower.

So how much do the two companies make when you factor in all of their business on the Beach?

Don’t ask the city.

“We don’t examine their books to see what their operations are or depreciation or revenues,” said Saul Frances, Miami Beach’s parking director.

Even though Miami Beach has for years had the right to audit the public towing receipts, it has chosen not to do so. The companies say they shouldn’t be penalized for that.

They also say the upcoming vote has been complicated by Miami Beach’s interest in taking over the storage of publicly towed cars at a property on Terminal Island, meaning Tremont and Beach are asking for new contracts from a potential competitor.

Tobin, the commissioner who says he is sick to his stomach over the rate-hike plan, is hardly the only critic of Miami Beach’s towing companies. Since 2004, 166 complaints have been filed with the Miami-Dade County Consumer Services Division against Tremont and Beach Towing by Miami Beach residents and tourists.

Among the grievances:

•  Scott Benjamin said he stopped a Tremont wrecker from hauling off his Dodge Caravan from a private Collins Avenue parking lot last month but was forced to pay a $100 “drop fee,” a charge legal in many areas of the state but illegal on Miami Beach since 2009.

•  Sheldon King, former director of Consumer Services, whose truck was towed by Beach Towing during the 2010 during Memorial Day Weekend, got a full refund after he said he was overcharged.

“Towing on the Beach,” he wrote in an email. “They make a ‘killing’ this weekend.”

About a months later, Beach Towing also fully refunded a consumer services mediator when she said they towed her car after she paid to park in a legal, metered lot.

•  Adriana Garcia Alejos, who lives in Aruba but owns a condo at Brickell on the River, complained in February 2010 that her new, $80,000 Hummer H2 disappeared from its condo parking space while she was away from South Florida.

Tremont Towing took control of Garcia Alejos’ title, even though Consumer Services said her condo association didn’t call for a tow and didn’t sign the proper paperwork needed to haul the Hummer off the property. She got her Hummer and title back after hiring an attorney and working with Miami police.

long enough

Rafael Andrade, Beach Towing’s pro bono attorney, said the company isn’t strong-arming drivers and waives or refunds about $100,000 to drivers each year as a courtesy rather than dispute complaints.

He has told commissioners that stories of Miami Beach towing piracy are greatly exaggerated.

“The towing industry has been vilified,” he said. “There’s been attacks and all sorts of aspersions cast on the industry, which we believe are unwarranted, unfair and which will hopefully cease in the near future.”

Arguably, the reality show South Beach Tow isn’t helping the industry’s image. The series regularly depicts fisticuffs and car chases.

To be fair, the show stretches the concept of “reality.” Dave Crystal, a former mayoral candidate who appeared on the show under the guise of an abrasive L.A. businessman, said “the whole thing is set up.”

TruTV insists that the show is “based on real situations.”

Last year, police received roughly 750 calls to Tremont Towing and Beach Towing — at least two a day — mostly for “disturbances,” but also for stolen vehicles, assaults, theft and other crimes in which the towing companies were sometimes the victim and sometimes the accused.

Some of them stem from a range war over the city’s towing business that raged nearly two years before a recent truce. During that conflict, Beach and Tremont filed a slew of lawsuits and appeals, hired influential lobbyists and accused each other of extortion, assault and death threats.

Manuel E. Diaz. Jr., a Tremont managing partner and former Beach Towing employee, complained that his wife had received more than 30 anonymous phone calls from someone threatening to kill Diaz Jr., his wife and his children over the ongoing business dispute.

Diaz Jr., on the other hand, was accused of punching a Beach Towing driver, and menacing Andrade.

Police, meanwhile, have an open investigation into whether one of the towing companies was shooting out windows of Miami Beach properties belonging to developer Scott Robins. Robins wound up in the middle of the towing dispute last year when Tremont refused to leave its old tow yard, where the developer is building a municipal parking garage.

Allegedly crooked behavior has also been documented by Miami Beach residents, including someone who videotaped Tremont drivers jimmying open cars in their lot and rifling through people’s possessions, which led to a 2010 WTVJ-NBC report. The company said its employees were merely looking for registration information.

Frances said he is unaware of Miami Beach ever revoking a permit or fining one of the companies. But the contract on the table Wednesday could increase the city’s oversight of the companies’ behavior.

The contract, as presently written, calls for GPS devices in tow trucks and perhaps eventually the installation of internal video cameras.

And though Beach and Tremont accept traveler’s checks, personal checks drawn from South Florida banks and keep an ATM on site that accepts credit cards, Frances said the city believes its towing permits require that the companies also accept credit cards directly, something the companies have resisted because customers can then dispute the charge on their account.

Miami Beach residents would also get a twice-yearly, 20 percent discount on tows with each company.

Diaz Jr., who declined to discuss the police reports involving him and his family, said the towing industry is cleaning up its act as new investors buy into the business, and it isn’t “the Wild West” as people believe.

“We’re changing the name of towing,” he said.