Heavy Duty Towing in Queens, NY, for Box Trucks, Buses, and Tractor Trailers

The line between light and heavy duty is the chassis, not the owner. A contractor's half-ton pickup is a light duty tow even with a full bed. A box truck built on a cutaway chassis, a straight truck with a lift gate, a 20-yard dump truck, a school bus, a coach, or a tractor with a 53-foot trailer behind it is heavy duty, because it needs a wrecker with the boom, the underlift, and the weight to tow it without the back of the wrecker lifting off the road.

For a business in Queens, the common calls are the ones that stop the day: a delivery truck that will not start at the loading dock, a bus with a blown turbo on its route, a dump truck with a dead transmission at a job site, a tractor trailer with an air leak that will not release the brakes. Each of these is a routine job for a driver who tows commercial vehicles every week in Queens, Queens Village, Cambria Heights, and the rest of Queens.

Heavy duty also covers recovery: a truck that slid off the pavement, backed into a ditch, or went over on its side. The wreckers carry the winch capacity and the rigging to get it upright and back on firm ground before it is towed. The heavy duty towing page covers the wreckers themselves; this page covers what the job looks like when the truck is sitting in Queens.

Recovery is a separate job from towing, and it is priced and planned separately. The driver looks at how the truck is sitting, what it is resting on, where the weight is, and what the ground will hold. He picks anchor points that will not tear the truck apart, rigs the winch line with snatch blocks to multiply the pull where he needs it, and brings the truck back slowly, stopping to re-rig as it moves. A loaded truck on its side is a two-wrecker job in some cases, and the person who answers will tell you if that is what your truck needs.

Once the truck is on firm ground and upright, it is inspected before it moves: fuel and fluid leaks, a bent frame, damaged air lines, wheels that are not pointing straight. A truck that has been on its side is not started until the engine oil has been checked, because oil that ran into the cylinders will wreck it. Then it is hooked and towed to the destination you name. If the truck has body damage, the collision shop at Valley Stream can take commercial vehicles; the commercial body work section explains what the shop handles.

The one thing to do before the wrecker arrives is to keep people away from the truck and off the road around it, and if there is a fuel leak, to say so when you call. Recoveries in Queens, Queens Village, and Laurelton are rigged the same way, and the only local fact the driver needs is exactly where the truck is and how it is sitting.

A heavy tow goes wrong when the wrecker that arrives is not matched to the truck. So the call is where the job is planned. The vehicle: make, model, and body type, and whether there is a trailer. The weight: the gross weight as loaded, or the empty weight and the load separately. A tractor trailer with 40,000 pounds of freight is a different job from the same rig running empty. The load: what is in the trailer or the body, whether it is palletized or loose, and whether anything has shifted.

Air brakes: most trucks and buses have them, and when the air system has lost pressure the brakes lock on. The driver brings the fittings to supply air from the wrecker and release them, or cages the spring brakes by hand if the system will not hold air. Tell us if the truck lost air so he brings what he needs. Where it is in Queens: a loading dock, a yard, a job site, a street, or off the pavement. A truck in a tight dock or on soft ground changes the setup. Where it is going: your yard, a dealer, a truck repair facility, or a body shop, with the address and whether anyone needs to meet the wrecker.

If the truck is on its side or off the road, say so, and describe how it is sitting; that is a recovery before it is a tow, and the recovery module below explains how it is rigged. The what to tell us section on the towing page applies to every tow, heavy or light.

Heavy tows have more variables than car tows, and the quote reflects the ones you give us. The vehicle and its gross weight decide which wrecker is sent, and a tractor trailer with freight is a bigger job than the same rig empty. Distance from Queens to the destination is measured as the real route, not a straight line. Recovery, if the truck is off the pavement or on its side, is rigged and priced as its own job before the tow, and a two-wrecker recovery is priced as two wreckers. Pulling a driveshaft, caging brakes, and dollying a truck that will not steer are part of the hookup, and they are on the quote when you tell us what is wrong.

Time of day matters: towing runs 24 hours, and a call at 3 AM on a holiday is not the same as a scheduled move on a weekday afternoon. Storage applies by the day if the truck waits at our yard before going to a destination. What we will not do is quote low to get the wrecker to Queens and add to the bill on the hook. If the job on arrival is what you described, the quote is the price. If the driver finds something different, a loaded trailer described as empty, or a truck on its side described as on the shoulder, he tells you the new number before he touches it.

For fleet accounts, pricing is on file and the call does not need to cover it. The how a tow is priced section on the towing page explains the factors for every kind of tow.