How to prepare your vehicle for a scheduled tow

Four things: take your belongings out, sort out the keys, clear a path the truck can physically use, and make sure someone knows what happens at the other end. Everything else is a detail, but those four are what turn a scheduled tow into a non-event.

This is for a planned tow — a car going to a shop next Tuesday, a project car being moved, a junk vehicle being collected. If you are stranded right now, what to do when your vehicle breaks down is the more useful page.

1. Empty it properly

Go through it as though you are selling it, because from the moment it leaves, getting back into it is somebody else’s schedule rather than yours.

The obvious places, and the ones people forget:

• Glovebox and centre console — registration, insurance card, sunglasses
• Under the seats, and the seat-back pockets
• Trunk or bed, including under the trunk floor
• Garage door remote — the single most forgotten item, and the one that causes the most inconvenience
• Toll tag or transponder on the windshield
• Phone chargers, dash cam, and the dash cam’s memory card
• Child seats, if you need them for another vehicle
• Prescription medication, spare glasses, house keys

Worth knowing the law here: in Oklahoma, a licensed wrecker service must release personal property from a towed vehicle during regular business hours at no cost to you. Personal property means everything in the vehicle except the vehicle, its attached or installed equipment, and the keys. So your belongings are not held hostage — but collecting them later means a second trip during someone else’s opening hours. Far easier to do it now.

2. Sort out the keys

The driver generally needs the key, even for a vehicle that will not start. It releases the steering lock so the vehicle can be guided, and lets the transmission come out of park.

Decide in advance:

• Are you handing the key over, or keeping it? If the vehicle is going to a shop, the shop needs a key. Work out whether it travels with the vehicle or you drop it off separately.
• Take your house key off the ring. Leave only the vehicle key.
• If the battery is dead, say so when you book. An automatic with no power often will not shift out of park, because the shift interlock needs electricity.
• If there is no key at all — lost, or a vehicle you inherited — tell us up front. It is workable, but it changes the approach.

3. Clear a path the truck can use

A flatbed is a large vehicle that needs to get reasonably close, with room behind it to tilt the deck down to the ground. Walk the route from the street to the vehicle and look at it the way a driver would.

• Move the other cars. If the vehicle is blocked in, nothing else on this list matters.
• Check overhead. Low branches, a carport, a garage door opening — the deck needs vertical room.
• Think about the surface. Grass or soft ground after Oklahoma rain is a real consideration. Mention it when you book rather than letting the driver discover it.
• Narrow or steep driveway? Say so. It is not a problem, but it is worth knowing in advance.
• Gates, codes and barriers — apartment complexes, storage yards, gated neighborhoods. Have the code ready.
• Unhook anything attached — trickle charger, cover, tarp, straps.

4. Tell us if anything changed

The quote was built on what you described. If something has shifted since, a quick call is all it takes:

• A tire has gone flat while it sat
• The battery has now died completely
• You have moved it, or it has been moved
• The destination changed
• It will not come out of park any more

None of these are difficult. They just need to be known before the truck leaves. What affects the price of a tow explains why these particular details move a quote.

Paperwork worth having out

For a routine tow to a shop, you generally do not need paperwork. For anything where ownership matters — a vehicle being sold, scrapped, or moved for someone else — have the title or registration to hand.

If you are selling a vehicle to us, the title question is worth settling on the phone first. Our junk car page covers it, and the short version is call and ask, because it depends on the vehicle’s age and whose name it is in.

If you will not be there

Common and entirely workable, as long as it is arranged rather than assumed.

• Tell us in advance that nobody will be on site.
• Agree exactly where the key will be, or arrange to hand it over beforehand.
• Give us a number you will actually answer — if something is not as described, the driver needs to reach you.
• Confirm the destination will accept the vehicle when it arrives. A shop that is closed or full is the most common way an unattended tow goes wrong.
• Settle how payment works before the day.

The night before, in short

• Belongings out, garage remote and toll tag included
• Key ready, house keys off the ring
• Other vehicles moved, path and overhead clear
• Gate code or access sorted
• Destination confirmed and expecting it
• Anything that changed since the quote, phoned in
• Your phone charged and off silent

Then you can more or less forget about it. What happens during a pickup and delivery covers the rest.