Recovery is a separate incident outcome. Build the right class of towing capacity where your road missions happen.
Separate firefighting from recovery
A vehicle fire or road collision can have both an emergency-response phase and a towing outcome. Completing the visible fire or police requirement does not necessarily finish the incident when a vehicle still needs recovery. This makes recovery availability part of the account’s overall completion rate.
Our recommended rollout starts with the road-call volume you already have. Inspect the actual car and truck recovery outcomes, then place the appropriate capability near the recurring workload. Do not assume a recovery centre automatically means every class of vehicle can be moved.
Two exact examples
Burning car with recovery overlay (2, overlay a) lists one Fire Station and one Recovery Centre. It asks for one Fire Engine in the response rows and specifies exactly one car to tow in the additional fields. The towing need is therefore real even though it is not presented as a second fire-engine-style row.
Caravan roll over RTC with overlay a (466) lists an HGV Recovery Extension. The response is one Fire Engine-or-Rescue Support Vehicle and four Police Cars; its additional fields specify exactly one truck to tow. The incident title alone is not a reliable guide to the game’s towing class.
Recommended commissioning sequence
- Inspect recovery variants of common missions in your own possible-missions list.
- Confirm the current UK recovery centre and HGV extension menus, vehicles, parking and staff requirements.
- Commission ordinary recovery before adding heavy capability unless your current workload already demands HGV coverage.
- Test a car outcome and a heavy outcome separately.
- Observe whether a second towing request waits while the first recovery is still occupied.
- Position additional capacity according to repeated road journeys and delays.
Find the real reason a recovery request is stuck
First identify whether the outcome is classified as a car or a truck. Then check that an eligible recovery vehicle is available, crewed, within the active dispatch limits and not already committed. A nearby vehicle of the wrong type is not effective capacity.
Compare the exact mission URL and variant with the rule you are using. A base mission without a recovery overlay can have the same name as one with towing work. Saving only the title in a planner loses that distinction.
If the emergency resources have completed their work, inspect the remaining request instead of repeatedly sending more fire or police vehicles. If recovery is only late in one city, review regional placement before making a nationwide purchase.
Evaluate value over the full job
The published averages in these examples rise when recovery is added, but the extra reward is not a promise of better earnings per hour. Count the vehicle’s travel and occupation and the number of other requests waiting for the same resource.
For a growing account, a modest reserve can be more valuable than maximising every station’s total capacity. Keep enough recovery coverage to clear normal overlapping calls, use an explicit fallback for exceptional peaks and expand only when observed queues justify it.
Sources and further reading
Latest editorial change: Added an answer-first summary, action checklist and related planning/reference link. Detailed source dates remain independent.
Official sources establish game rules; practical build orders and planning examples are TKB recommendations. Follow the UK game’s current requirement panel where a later update differs.