🪝 Tow Truck Recovery 3D

You're on call

Tow Truck Recovery 3D puts you in the driving seat of a recovery truck in Maple City. The phone keeps ringing: a car has broken down at the side of the road, there has been a crash and the police need the wreck cleared, or somebody has parked where they really should not have. Your job is to get there, hook the car up and tow it to the right place before the end of the shift. It is a full 3D driving game in your web browser, with a whole city of streets, traffic lights and other traffic, and a tow truck with a working wheel-lift.

Tow trucks go by lots of names: wreckers, recovery trucks, breakdown trucks and rollbacks. Whatever you call them, they are among the hardest-working vehicles on the road, and this game lets you do the whole job yourself, from the call-out to the drop-off.

Three kinds of call-out

A breakdown is a car parked at the kerb with its bonnet up and its hazard lights blinking, a warning triangle behind it and the owner waving at you from the pavement. Those cars go to City Auto Repair to be fixed. A crash is a smashed car stopped in the road, still smoking, with glass on the tarmac, cones around it and a police car parked behind with its lights flashing. Wrecks go to the Scrap & Salvage yard. And on an illegal parking job you find a car on a red line next to a fire hydrant and a no-parking sign, with a ticket on the windscreen. The police want it in the Police Impound lot.

How to hook a car

Real tow truck drivers back up to the car they are collecting, and so do you. Follow the arrows to the job, drive past the car and pull back into the kerb lane in front of it. A yellow box on the road shows exactly where the truck has to stop. Reverse slowly into the box: the job card in the corner counts down the metres, and the box turns green when the truck is lined up. Stop, press F or the 🪝 button, and the truck does the rest.

On the Wheel-Lift Tow Truck the under-lift slides out, the cradles drop under the car's front wheels and lift its nose off the road. On the Flatbed Rollback the whole bed slides back and tilts down to the road, the winch pulls the car up onto it and the bed levels out again. If you stop in the wrong place, the game tells you whether to reverse a little more, pull forward or straighten up. Try the hook camera (press C) while you reverse: it looks straight back at the car.

Towing through the city

With a car on the wheel-lift, the truck feels different. It is heavier, so it is slower to pick up speed, and the towed car rolls along behind on its back wheels. Just like a trailer, it cuts the corner on every turn, so swing out wide or it will scrape a lamp post, a fence or another car, and every scrape costs four points. The speed limit drops to 25 mph while you are towing. The flatbed is easier: the car rides on the back of the truck, so nothing swings out behind you.

Follow the blue arrows to the yard, stop in the green bay outside the gate and press F. The car is lowered (or rolled off the bed) and the yard crew pushes it through the gate into a parking space. Then the next call comes in.

Five shifts

Breakdown Calls is three broken-down cars on quiet streets, all going to the garage: the perfect first shift. Crash Scene has three crashed cars to clear for the police, and they all go to the scrapyard. On Police Impound you tow away four badly parked cars in busier traffic. Night Recovery sends you out after dark to two breakdowns and a crash, with the headlights on and the streetlamps lit. And Rush Hour is the big one: five jobs, three different yards and the heaviest traffic in the game. Free Drive lets you cruise the city in the tow truck with no clock at all.

Rules of the road

Run a red light and you lose ten points. Bump into another car or a building and you lose six, and backing into the car you came to collect costs three, so reverse gently. Scraping the towed car costs four. The limit is 30 mph in the empty truck and 25 mph with a car on the hook. Every shift also has a finishing time worked out from the length of the real route, shown at the top of the screen, and finishing late costs points too. Score 88 or more out of 100 for three stars, or 70 for two.

Three tow trucks

You start in the yellow Wheel-Lift Tow Truck, the classic city wrecker with a boom and an under-lift at the back. Earn five stars to unlock the red-and-white Flatbed Rollback, where the car rides on a tilting bed and never swings out on corners. Earn eleven stars for the Heavy Wrecker, a big three-axle truck with the most powerful engine, which hardly slows down at all with a car on the hook.

Tips for a perfect shift

Slow down well before the job so you can see where the car is and which way it faces. Pass it with plenty of room, pull back into the kerb lane about one truck length ahead, then reverse in a straight line. Small steering moves work best when reversing. Once you are towing, take every corner from the outside of the lane and turn late, and give parked cars and lamp posts a wide berth. On Rush Hour, keep an eye on the clock: wasting time lining up on one job can make you late for the last one.

Controls

On a computer: W or the up arrow accelerates, S or the down arrow brakes (hold it when stopped to reverse), A and D steer, F hooks the car and drops it off, C changes the camera, H sounds the horn, L switches the lights, Q and E work the indicators, R puts you back on the road and P pauses. On phones and tablets, on-screen pedals, steering and a hook button appear.

Free, safe and made for every device

Tow Truck Recovery 3D is free to play in the browser with no download, no account, no chat and nothing to buy, and your progress is saved only on your device. The crashes are cartoon-style with nobody hurt. It runs on computers, Chromebooks, tablets and phones. See the Parents & Safety page for more.

More truck games

Empty the wheelie bins in Garbage Truck Driver 3D, race to the fire in Fire Truck Rescue 3D or back a trailer into the loading dock in Truck Parking 3D. Every truck and lorry game is on the Truck Games page.

Frequently asked questions