Recovery equipment and lift technique depend on vehicle class. Each class has its own page with equipment specification, weight band, strap-point notes, and the per-service band variation. EVs are flatbed only by default; HGVs go through the heavy-vehicle sub-panel.
PAS 43 operator panel
BSI recovery standard
24/7 dispatch
Every day, every postcode
UK-wide coverage
200+ cities and towns
Published rate, pay per use
No subscription, no surcharges
cheap car tow is a booking and price-publication service. The recovery itself is performed by an independent PAS 43 compliant operator dispatched at the published rate. See terms for the operator-panel arrangement.
Each class card opens a dedicated hub with the recovery equipment specification, the lift technique notes, the compatible services, and the per-service band.
Up to 3,500 kg gross vehicle weight
Light vehicle category, spec-lift or tilt-bed flatbed
3,500 kg to 7,500 kg gross vehicle weight
Light commercial vehicle, heavy-duty flatbed or underlift
Up to 600 kg with rider equipment
Tilt-bed flatbed with wheel chock and ratchet anchors, or covered trailer
Up to 3,500 kg with battery pack
Flatbed only with high-voltage isolation procedure, lithium fire awareness
Up to 3,500 kg, pre-1980 typically
Enclosed trailer preferred, soft-strap anchors, low approach ramps
Up to 7,500 kg with habitation load
Heavy-duty flatbed or full underlift, extended-bed truck for A-class
Over 7,500 kg gross vehicle weight
Heavy underlift, rotator crane for rollover, dolly system
Up to 3,500 kg, single or twin axle
Tilt-bed flatbed with axle straps, jockey wheel support
The same procedure for every recovery in every UK postcode. Six minutes from "I've broken down" to "operator dispatched" on the published rate.
Open TowManVan in any mobile browser. No install, no account, no membership. Postcode + vehicle class is all the dispatcher needs.
The indicative price band for your vehicle class is shown before you confirm. No bait pricing, no "from £X" headlines, no surprise at the scene.
PAS 43 compliant operator on the panel matched to your location. ETA confirmed live; the dispatcher messages an update if the window changes.
Photos at lift and at drop, the route, the lift technique, any variations. Emailed to you at handover; the document your insurer asks for.
This page is the catalog entry point for every vehicle classes covered by cheap car tow. Each tile links to a dedicated page with the full procedure, the published price band where applicable, the legal framework, the FAQ, and the cited primary sources.
The catalog is exhaustive within the published scope. Where a UK vehicle class is not on the catalog, it is not currently supported by the operator panel; we tell you that openly rather than route a booking that we cannot fulfil at the published rate.
Navigation: use the catalog tiles below to drill into a single vehicle class, or jump to the how-it-works page for the cross-cutting recovery procedure that applies to every entry in the catalog.
Every entry in the catalog is reviewed on a published cycle. Service entries are reviewed every six months alongside the pricing-table review; vehicle entries are reviewed every twelve months alongside the equipment standard review; city entries are reviewed every twelve months against the council recovery pound, Authorised Treatment Facility, and Clean Air Zone status published by the relevant authorities; blog entries are reviewed every twelve months for primary-source currency.
A material change to a catalog entry (a price band change, a council pound address change, a CAZ class change, a primary-source URL change) is logged with the date in the relevant entry. Editorial corrections (typo fixes, broken-link repairs) are not logged because the catalog is the source-of-truth document and the historical record sits in the git history of the public repository.
Where a new vehicle class enters the scope (a new UK city is incorporated, a new service is added to the operator-panel agreement, a new vehicle class is introduced by a manufacturer category), the relevant entry is added with the same depth of primary-source citation as the existing entries.
Each catalog entry is structured to the same template so a reader knows where to look:
The recovery management standard is PAS 43, administered by the British Standards Institution. Operator competence, equipment, working procedure, and recovery sheet content are all defined here.
The motorway and managed-trunk-road framework is the National Highways recovery framework (sometimes called NRS). The tariff is statutory; we do not set it.
Police-instructed removal sits under section 165A of the Road Traffic Act 1988. Council-instructed removal of abandoned vehicles sits under the Refuse Disposal (Amenity) Act 1978 and the Removal and Disposal of Vehicles Regulations 1986.
Private-land removal is governed by Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 Schedule 4, and end-of-life vehicle disposal sits under the End-of-Life Vehicles Regulations 2003 routed through an Authorised Treatment Facility licensed by the Environment Agency.
The four axes of the catalog (services, vehicles, cities, blog) intersect. The service catalog tells you what we do; the vehicle catalog tells you what equipment is dispatched; the city catalog tells you where we work and the local context (council, motorway, Clean Air Zone); the blog catalog gives you the longer-form context that ties the other three together.
Every service entry lists its compatible vehicle classes; every vehicle entry lists its compatible services; every city entry lists all fourteen services available in the city; every blog entry cross-references the relevant service and vehicle pages.
The combined service x city grid (services index x cities index) produces around 2,800 templated pages, each with at least four city-specific facts woven into the prose. The templated grid is how we cover every UK city, every London borough, and the top large towns at the same depth.
Every page on the site cites primary sources from a fixed allowlist: gov.uk, legislation.gov.uk, nationalhighways.co.uk, bsigroup.com, hse.gov.uk, ico.org.uk, citizensadvice.org.uk, tfl.gov.uk, the local police constabulary domain, and which.co.uk for empirical industry research. The allowlist is enforced by the editorial team at every page review.
We do not cite review sites, aggregator directories, AI-generated content farms, or competitor marketing pages. We do not publish testimonials we have not verified. We do not publish star ratings until a verified Trustpilot or Google Business Profile feed is wired up.
Where we cannot verify a fact (a council pound address, a population figure, an Authorised Treatment Facility name) we set the field to null in the data layer and the page renders a graceful fallback. We do not invent local data.
If you are looking up a vehicle class because you have a roadside problem right now: open the relevant entry, read the quick answer at the top, and either call the booking line on the contact page or open the booking form. The dispatcher reads the indicative price band before the operator is dispatched.
If you are looking up a vehicle class for research (you are an insurer claims handler, a fleet manager, a council enforcement officer, an academic): the magazine body and the primary-source citations are what you need. The FAQ may also answer the question more compactly than the body. Every cited URL opens in a new tab.
If you are looking up a vehicle class to compare us with another provider: the price band on each page is the actual band the dispatcher reads, not a marketing headline. Compare against the corresponding figure from the other provider; bands are the like-for-like comparison.
Some things readers expect to find in a recovery-service catalog are deliberately absent:
Every entry in the catalog is built to be quotable by an AI overview engine that surfaces UK recovery information. The mechanisms: a QuickAnswer block above the fold that condenses the entry's first answer into one or two sentences; a SpeakableSpecification schema block that lists the css selectors holding the speakable text; a DefinedTermSet schema block linking the entry's vocabulary to the glossary; a CreativeWork-typed citations block listing the primary sources.
These mechanisms align with the public documentation Google and Bing publish on their AI-overview citation criteria. Where the published documentation changes (a new schema type is preferred, a new selector convention is published), the editorial team updates the helpers in the lib/aiOverviewHelpers.ts module and the change propagates to every catalog entry on the next build.
Eight: car, van, motorbike or scooter, electric vehicle, classic car, motorhome, heavy goods vehicle, and trailer or caravan.
Recovery equipment is matched to class. Wrong equipment cannot safely lift the vehicle, so getting the class right at booking avoids a re-dispatch.
Yes. EVs are flatbed-only by default because the permanent-magnet motor generates a back-EMF on the road wheels that can damage the inverter.
Tell the dispatcher the manufacturer, model, weight and any unusual features. The dispatcher picks the correct equipment with the operator.
Yes. Enclosed trailer is the default for concours-relevant vehicles; open trailer is a lower-cost option for shorter distances.
Yes, through the heavy-vehicle operator sub-panel. Pre-attendance quote required because of equipment specificity.
Habitation occupants ride in the cab or travel separately during the recovery itself; the operator confirms the seating arrangement before lift.
Book on the TowManVan app and the dispatcher matches the right truck to your vehicle class.