How to Get a Car Out of a Ditch in Four Easy Steps

As an auto mechanic, you never know what kind of car trouble you’ll have to bail someone out of. While repairs are your priority, you might find yourself faced with a customer who wants you to recover their wrecked car from a ditch.

While it’s fine to contact a towing service, it can also be useful to have the option to recover the car yourself. You can either use a tow dolly you can hitch to your own truck or car trailer, or you can use a flatbed truck.

Vehicle recovery isn’t too complicated. Just make sure you have the correct tools and keep a few key core principles in mind.

To recover a car from a ditch and haul it to your garage, you’ll need the following things:

• an electric truck winch
• steel cable or wire rope
• a tow chain or tow strap
• frame hooks
• auto-hauling straps (like axle straps, lasso wheel straps, or over-the-wheel straps) to secure the car to your truck

If you plan on using a tow-dolly trailer to move the car to your garage, rather than loading the wrecked car directly onto your truck, you’ll need wheel net straps instead of the other types of straps

Step 1: Clear the Area

Make sure your work won’t be interrupted by other drivers or pedestrians. For everyone’s safety, recovering the vehicle requires a clear space.

If there aren’t any other people on the road because the area is remote, it can be enough of a precaution to simply use hazard lights and a yellow tow-truck light on top of your car. However, on a road with moderate to high traffic, you’ll likely need to coordinate with local law enforcement to close a lane or set up the necessary barriers.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation created a PDF with concrete guidelines and a checklist to help law enforcement and tow truck drivers effectively work together to recover a vehicle safely.

Step 2: Get Ready to Load the Car

Select the frame hook that’s compatible with the car you want to recover. R-hooks are designed to hook under the frame of Ford vehicles, J-hooks can secure and tow most Japanese and European-made vehicles, and T-hooks are compatible with GM and Chrysler vehicles.

If you have a v-chain, you can attach two of the same style of hooks to the ends of the different legs of the chain, which is useful in spreading out the tension. But, single-leg chains are also fine, and in that case, you only need one frame hook.

You can also use a soft, flexible strap, called a tow strap or recovery strap, to secure the frame hook to the steel cable. Tow straps come in single-leg varieties and v-shaped varieties, just like tow chains do. If you are looking to use a wire rope, here’s a guide you’ll find interesting.

Secure the anchor point of the chain or strap to the steel cable or wire rope you’ve loaded into your winch. There are many fitting options, so you need to do the research to make sure that whatever end-fitting you have, you’ve secured it correctly. And watch out for the kind of winch you buy. While some budget-friendly winches can do the job just fine, some cheap knock-offs can do even more harm than good here.

Once everything is connected, get far enough under the car you want to recover to secure the frame hook to the car’s frame. You might need to use a shovel or other tools to dig your way under since the car is in a ditch.

Step 3: Maximize Traction

Before you turn on the electric winch, make sure you have maximum traction.

Reduce the total weight of the car you’re trying to recover if at all possible. The lighter the car, the easier it is to haul it out of the ditch.

Help the tires of the car get good traction by clearing away any ice or snow directly beneath them, and by trying to set them against a solid surface they can push up against, like a piece of wood or tarp. That way they won’t simply get bogged down in the mud.

Once you’ve given the car the easiest possible path out of the ditch, turn on the motorized winch. Let the winch wind the cable and pull out the attached car.

Step 4: Load and Secure the Car to Your Tow Dolly or Flatbed

Once you’ve pulled the car out of the ditch, roll it onto your flatbed or tow dolly.

Use your auto-hauling straps to secure the recovered car onto your trailer. Learn how different strap styles attach differently by doing research online or on YouTube. Choose among axle straps, over-the-wheel straps, tow dolly straps, or wheel lasso straps, based on what works best for you.

Tighten the straps as firmly as possible. If your auto-hauling straps give you the option, secure each strap by two anchor points to maximize security.

Once you’ve secured the recovered car to your own vehicle, you’re free to drive the car back to your garage. If you collaborated with law enforcement, check in with them before you leave to make sure everything is good to go.

Vehicle recovery isn’t mandatory for mechanics, but since so many drivers find themselves stuck in ditches at some point, towing can be a good skill to keep in your arsenal.