Commercial & Oversized Towing

Oversized means bigger than a car, not bigger than we can carry

"Commercial" on this page means the working vehicles and equipment we can carry. It covers:

• Work vans and cargo vans. Transit, ProMaster, Express, and Sprinter bodies, empty or fitted out with shelving and a bulkhead. High-roof extended vans are the ones dispatch measures twice.
• Box trucks on a cutaway van chassis. The shorter boxes: parcel routes, small movers, mobile shops. Long boxes on a medium-duty chassis are past us, and we say so.
• Utility-body pickups. Service bodies with bins full of fittings, a compressor in the bed, and a plow mount in January. All of that weight counts.
• Small trailers. Enclosed cargo, landscape, tandem-axle utility, and small dump trailers, with or without the truck that was pulling them.
• Compact equipment. Skid steers, mini excavators, scissor lifts, and walk-behind rollers.

Vans, pickups, box trucks, and equipment ride on a flatbed, fully off the ground: carried, not dragged. Roadworthy trailers follow on the hitch. Anything heavier or longer than that list is beyond us.

Three questions before dispatch says yes

Every commercial call gets the same three questions, and the job is not accepted until all three are answered.

Weight. The rating on the door-jamb sticker or the equipment spec plate, plus what is in the vehicle right now. A plumber's van with a full copper rack and a water heater on the floor is a different load than the same van empty. Nobody is judging the mess. We are matching it to the right truck.

Length. Overall length and wheelbase, so we know how the unit sits once loaded and how far it hangs off the back. A pickup with the plow still mounted is longer than it was in July. Say so.

Access. Where it sits and what is between it and pavement. A gravel yard off Ecorse Road after a week of rain. A loading dock behind a locked gate. A downtown Ann Arbor parking structure where a work van fits but a tow truck cannot. Access decides whether the truck backs straight up to the unit, whether a winch-out comes first, or who opens the gate at 5 am.

When one answer puts the job beyond what we carry, dispatch says so on that call. You hear "this one is past us" while you still have time to find someone who can take it, not after a truck has driven out, looked at it, and left.

The van is cheap to move; the idle crew is not

Fleet managers and contractors call for a different reason than the driver on the I-94 shoulder. The vehicle is not the problem. The crew that should be in it at 7 am is. So the move runs on your schedule.

• After-hours to the shop. A van dies at 4 pm on a site off Ford Road in Canton. We move it that evening to your mechanic or your own yard, key where you told us, and the crew takes the spare truck in the morning.
• Overnight equipment relocation. A skid steer needs to be on a different site before the trades arrive. We move it after traffic thins on US-23 or M-14 and set it where the site lead marked.

Not every down vehicle needs a tow. A van that clicks and will not crank usually wants a mobile battery install at the yard. A gas-engine van that ran dry on Carpenter Road wants fuel delivery. Dispatch says which one you are looking at, because a tow truck sent for a battery wastes your money and a truck that could be on a real tow.

How trailers and compact equipment actually load

Trailers come to us two ways. Roadworthy, meaning the tires hold air, the lights work, and the coupler matches our hitch, and the trailer follows on the hitch while the dead tow vehicle rides on our truck. Or the trailer is the problem, a seized bearing or a tire shredded to the cord, and it gets winched aboard like the dump trailer in the photo above. Tell dispatch the coupler size and axle count. A 2-inch ball, a 2-5/16 ball, and a pintle ring are three different hookups, and the right one has to be on the truck when it leaves Ypsilanti.

Compact equipment is the same split. If it runs, it drives up onto the truck under its own power. If not, it gets winched. Either way it is chained at four points, not strapped, because a machine's weight sits differently than a van's. Rubber tracks and tires load without any prep. Tell dispatch about steel tracks or an attachment still mounted, since a bucket or forks change the length and the tie-down plan.

Quoted per job, receipt to the business

Passenger-car tows are a hook-up fee plus loaded miles. Commercial and oversized work is different: dispatch quotes it per job, because a loaded service body and an empty cargo van are not the same job at the same mileage. Call dispatch for the quote. It folds in what applies: holidays, extra winch time past the first fifteen minutes, off-pavement recovery, and any extra equipment the unit needs. You approve that number before a truck is sent, so the price is confirmed before anyone rolls.

Repeat accounts run by phone. Call 734-985-0010 or email dispatch@safewayservicesllc.com, give the business name, and dispatch works from the shops you use, who can release a unit, and how the receipt should read. We do not bill insurance directly; if a claim covers the tow, you pay us and send in the itemized receipt.

Cars, SUVs, and everyday pickups belong on light-duty towing. This page is the same dispatch number and the same care in loading, with a longer conversation about weight first.