After the Crash: Accident Recovery That Takes Your Car From the Scene to Our Shop in One Move

The difference is not the truck, which is usually a flatbed; it is everything around the truck. There are more people at an accident scene, more paperwork, and more ways for a car to be moved somewhere you did not choose. A good recovery driver reads the scene first: where the car is sitting, what it is leaking, whether a wheel is bent or an axle is broken, whether the airbags fired, and whether the car can roll at all. Then he decides how it comes out and how it goes on the deck.

Macarthur has done this on every kind of road in Nassau County and the Queens neighborhoods along the county line, from a two-car tap in a parking lot in Hempstead to a car on its side in a front yard. The sections below walk through what to do at the scene, who gets to choose the tow, how winching and recovery are done, what happens to the car at our shop, and how the insurance side works when the tow and the repair are one company. If you are reading this at a scene right now, skip to the checklist and call 516-362-5350.

Tow trucks that appear at accident scenes without being called are a known problem, and the result is usually a car in a yard you have never heard of with a storage bill growing by the day. Here is how to keep control.

Say it clearly. "I have called my own tow company and they are on the way." Say it to the driver and to the officer. You do not owe anyone an explanation beyond that.

Do not sign anything. A clipboard at a scene is often an authorization to tow and store. If you did not call the company, do not sign.

If police order the car moved. When a car is blocking a lane and cannot wait, the officer can have it towed by whoever is available. The car goes to that company's yard. Call us with the yard's name. Once the yard releases the car to you, usually after you show ID and settle their fees, our truck collects it and brings it to our collision shop. The sooner this happens the smaller that first bill.

If the car is at Macarthur's shop. It stays there. There is no second tow, no separate storage lot, and nobody else handling the car between the scene and the repair bay. The destinations section on the towing page covers every other place we can take it instead.

The biggest practical advantage of calling a tow company that owns a body shop is that the car stops moving. Most accident cars are towed twice: once to a yard and once to a shop. Each move is a bill and a day lost, and the yard charges storage in between.

At Macarthur the sequence is shorter. The truck unloads in our lot, the car is checked in with photographs, and the office opens a file. During shop hours an estimator walks around it with you or on the phone and writes the first estimate. When your insurer assigns an adjuster, the inspection happens here. If the car is approved for repair, it goes into the shop. If it is declared a total loss, it waits here for the insurer to collect it. The body shop page explains how the estimate is written, and the collision repair page covers the repair itself.

If you would rather the car go to your own mechanic, a dealership, or your driveway, it goes there instead. Say so when you call. Nothing about calling Macarthur for the tow obligates you to repair the car with Macarthur. New York law makes that your choice, and the next section explains how to use it.

A loaded box truck in a ditch is a different recovery from a sedan. The heavy wrecker has the winch capacity and the boom to pull a truck back to the road, and the underlift to tow it afterward. Tell the person who answers the gross weight, what is in the truck, and whether it has air brakes, so the right equipment leaves the yard. The heavy duty towing page covers how a heavy recovery and tow are set up.

For fleets, a standing account means the person who answers already knows your yard and who signs for the vehicle. The commercial accounts section on the towing page explains how that works. Body work on commercial units, including lettered panels and specialty bodies, is handled at the collision shop.

From the yard on the Nassau–Queens line, the trucks are closest to the south shore and southeastern Queens: Valley Stream, Lynbrook, Elmont, Franklin Square, West Hempstead, Hempstead, Malverne, Rockville Centre, Oceanside, Baldwin, Freeport, Long Beach, Cedarhurst, Lawrence, Woodmere, and Inwood, and across the line in Laurelton, Rosedale, Springfield Gardens, Cambria Heights, St. Albans, Jamaica, and Far Rockaway.

The same trucks cover central and eastern Nassau, Garden City, Mineola, Westbury, Uniondale, East Meadow, Levittown, Hicksville, Bethpage, Wantagh, and Massapequa, the north shore from Great Neck and Manhasset to Glen Cove and Syosset, and the Suffolk border towns of Amityville, Melville, and Huntington. Every town on the locations page has an accident recovery page. If yours is not listed, call anyway.