An especially dangerous situation is one where your car breaks down on a highway. Too many people have been injured or killed after being hit by distracted drivers, so it makes sense to get off of the highway any way you can. For some folks, that means calling AAA, for others, it means ringing up a friend with a truck or SUV, and then having them yank you out with a chain.
As Jason wrote on Saturday, there’s a really wrong way for this to go, and it’s dragging the car from behind and letting it flop all over the place. Mike Harrell has some great advice:
…the lesson is don’t tow a car with the wheels that steer unsecured.
That’s not the lesson. The lesson is that the only correct way to flat-tow is with the towed car facing forward and the steering unsecured. When doing this with a proper tow bar, don’t let anyone ride in the towed vehicle. When, in an emergency, doing this with a chain or strap, have a driver onboard the towed vehicle to control the steering and brakes, making sure that both of these systems work properly before they’re needed. The driver being towed needs to understand that it’s their responsibility to steer their own vehicle and to keep the tow line from going slack.
It’s also the responsibility of the driver of the lead vehicle to, you know, keep watch in the mirror to make sure things aren’t going poorly.
Finally, and I can’t stress this enough, whenever possible use two SAABs:
The only thing that I would add is that some cars are flat-towed better when the steering wheel has a little bit of securement. The Smart Fortwo’s front wheels may sometimes oscillate when towed behind a diesel pusher RV. The fix for this is a bungee cord linking the wheel to the driver seat frame. It doesn’t hold the wheel in place, but provides enough pressure to stop the oscillations.
Anyway, Brockstar:
I guess they read the GCWR part of Mercedes’ post on selecting a tow vehicle but missed the actual trailer part of the article. See kids. This what happens when you skim through your reading assignment.
This morning, Matt wrote about the flood of car news you’re going to read this week. One of these cars will be the 2026 Toyota RAV4. The NSX Was Only in Development for 4 Years has a hilarious prediction:
My Rav4 prediction is that it’s going to look absolutely wild, everyone here will hate it, and it’ll be the best-selling vehicle of the last 450 years.
David is protective of his family, and whenever he writes about his wife, he calls her “Elise (Not Her Real Name).” Now, David is a dad and calls his kid “Delmar (Not His Real Name).” These have become inside jokes and they show up in the most hilarious places. 10001010 noticed something funny about the location of one of the cars for sale in this morning’s Shitbox Showdown:
Location: Del Mar Heights, CA (Not its real location).
I haven’t laughed that hard at the mention of a city in a while. Have a great evening, everyone!
Yay! Cheaping out on towing finally pays off!
“Things I’ve never heard after 20 years in the Commercial Transportation Industry for $400, Alex.”
I take it you’ve never worked with Swift.
The Stevie Wonder Institute For Trucking? See What I Fuck-up Today?
I’m convinced they exist purely to make every other trucking company look better.
The heels of the trucking world.
Wooo!
That one had me rolling!
The best way to tow two cars is in a 3-car road train on interstates in Northeast Alabama, preferably driven by gentlemen of questionable residency status who are more trouble to pull over than it’s worth to the police. All that paperwork! Bonus if the towed vehicles are occupied.
Yes, this is an oddly specific example, but if you know I-59, you know.
See the same on I-40 in Arkansas.
The best way to tow a car? How about know wtf you’re doing?
Since I have no idea, and I have the means and experience. I call and wait. Also not trying to dodge a warrant. So there is that.
That being said, I’m not hooking up a vehicle backwards on a highway.
Friend/ neighbor, his brothers and another friend, towed home a K5 blazer backwards. They did have a rigid, triangulated tow bar and a rope securing the steering wheel. The did it backwards because the plates on the blazer were expired. 3 of the 4 involved were highway patrolmen.
It’s not that hard. The first time I towed another car I just had to guess how to do it, and managed not to screw up. I don’t remember spending any time thinking about which way around to tow it either, every other car I’d ever seen being towed had been facing forwards, so we just copied that.
And for anyone that’s in the same situation: a VW Polo has entirely adequate towing capacity, if all you’re towing is a Peugeot 106.
(No warrant involved, but the friend I was towing may not have had a driving license at the time, she did get one eventuially)
God that last post of 10001010 was the funniest thing I have read today. Definitely cord
I totally didn’t get 10001010’s joke dangit.
Really? In case you are seriously posting DT kid Delmar not his real name Del Mar CA not it’s real location. It’s right there and hilarious.
I grew up in the area so my brain fixated on the place, rather than the pun possibilities of the name.
I didn’t know it was a real place, so I just assumed the joke was inventing a place name based on the kid’s fake name. In that sense, it worked better for me 🙂
Reminds me of an old character from the Proud Family named Lacienega Boulevardez. Kind of a deep cut for most audience members…
I had the same blind spot, as Del Mar (the place) is only 20 minutes away. Didn’t make the connection at all.
We need a ‘not his real name’ for David Tracy. The whole family needs to go incognito. Rusty J. X. Rebuilder?
I tried not to spoil it
More joy was had by more folks. 🙂
To be honest, it took me way longer than it should have to get it.