Vehicle recovery
Vehicle recovery often involves challenging scenarios that require specialized techniques and equipment, particularly in difficult weather or complex environments like multistorey car parks, steep hills, or off-road areas.
[1] Additionally, providing precise location details, checking for any height restrictions, and noting any obstacles or mechanical issues (like locked wheels) further aids the recovery operation.
Military vehicle recovery is a type of operation conducted to extricate wheeled and tracked vehicles that have become immobile due to condition of the soil, nature of terrain in general, loss of traction due to an attempt to negotiate an obstacle, having broken down, or from sustaining non-combat or combat damage.
Special hand and arm signals are used during the vehicle recovery to guide the participants where field of view or line-of-sight are restricted and to make communications feasible in noisy battlefield conditions.
The largest of these was National Breakdown Recovery Club (today known as Green Flag), who also offered to cover you if you had an accident, something almost unheard of up until then.
American recovery operators were created to serve the needs of their own customers, rather than of club members as in Europe.
Ernest Holmes, one of the older suppliers of recovery equipment, used a line in his advertisements that said "The big profit jobs don't drive in, they are towed in."
After both World Wars, a number of army surplus vehicles were purchased cheaply by operators and converted to civilian use.
In 1918, Ernest Holmes of Chattanooga, Tennessee patented the first American commercially successful vehicle recovery crane, and its modern descendants have changed little since.
In Europe, Harvey Frost Ltd of Great Portland Street, London, started selling recovery cranes made by Ernest Lake from around 1905.
Olaf Ekengard, under the trade name EKA, designed and marketed a crane that lifted from underneath the subject vehicle.
It is not uncommon for them to also operate mobile cranes, road going fork lifts, articulated tractor units and incident support vehicles.
This still requires a relatively skilled driver, as neither the power brakes or power steering will function, and you must take care to steer wide in sharp corners and never allow the chain to slacken, or it may get jerked and broken, or worse, drag underneath the vehicle and possibly cause damage or even loss of control.
With commercial vehicles, it is more common to use a set of lifting forks to attach to the suspension, axle or chassis of the casualty.
In the sites it often common to see 'city loaders,' a type of transporter fitted with a cradle to totally suspend a vehicle for loading.
A special form of webbing called a snatch strap is sometimes carried to assist with vehicles that are bogged down in mud, etc.
The picture at right, taken in the late eighties, shows a recovery crane lifting a Hawker Hunter aircraft before transporting it to Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, England.
The insurance company then contacts a certified crime scene inspection and decontamination expert to complete a Bio Safe.
It is estimated that over 35% of stolen recovered vehicles contain hazards such as illegal drugs or contaminated paraphernalia such as used needles or crack pipes, semen and sputum.
In the early days of vehicle recovery, the driver of an automobile would have to contact his or her club or local garage in some way when it failed.
Telephones were supplied for this purpose by some motoring organisations, and eventually the agencies responsible for the major roads networks would install them on some hard shoulders.
Computer software is used to distribute work based on criteria such as nearest vehicle, right equipment (or spares) carried, and of course driver hours regulations.
Motoring organisation vehicles are also fitted with a Mobile Data Terminal, allowing job details to be sent direct to the driver.
Uniquely in the UK and Ireland the motoring organisations and the recovery operators have worked together to form a common standard for the communication of job details.
Its main advantage is that it does away with the need for the information to be re-keyed into all the different computers in use and eliminates most of the delays associated with 'job taking'.
It was estimated at the European Tow Show in 2005 that 90% of all jobs dealt with by independent UK recovery operators are passed using the Turbo Dispatch system.
The system allows a broken-down motorist to pass his details to the motoring organisation (usually by phone), but once they have entered his information into their computer, it can then be sent electronically to their agents.
This then allows the operator to rebroadcast it to the recovery vehicle, where the onboard Satellite Navigation System can guide the driver to the incident, even if he does not know the area.
The regulation can involve limitations on the numbers of vehicles able to operate in particular areas, particularly major cities, typically through licensing and post accident allocation schemes.
An example of this sort of scheme is to be found in the Accident Towing Services Act enacted by the State of Victoria, Australia.
