A Day in the Life of a Tow Truck Driver in Savannah, GA

6:42 AM — Before the Phone Rings

The city is still quiet when I start the truck. Not silent — Savannah is never quite silent, even before sunrise there’s a garbage truck somewhere, a jogger crossing Forsyth Park, a single horse-drawn carriage being hitched up for the day’s first tour — but quiet enough that I can hear the diesel engine settle into its idle and think, for a minute, about nothing in particular. This is my favorite part of the shift. Before the phone rings. Before anyone’s day has gone sideways yet.

It doesn’t last long.

7:58 AM — A Dead Battery on Bull Street

First call of the day: a dead battery on Bull Street, a woman named — well, it doesn’t matter, someone on her way to work, standing next to a silver sedan with the hood already popped like she’s hoping the problem will just solve itself if she stares at the engine long enough. It won’t, but I don’t blame her for trying.

“It was fine yesterday,” she says, which is what almost everyone says. And she’s probably right. That’s the thing about batteries in a climate like this — the heat doesn’t kill them all at once, it wears them down slowly, all summer, until one morning they just don’t have anything left to give. I hook up the jump box, wait for the meter to climb, and thirty seconds later her engine turns over and she’s laughing with relief, already late but no longer stranded. I tell her to get the battery tested soon. She probably won’t, and that’s fine. That’s not really my job — my job was the thirty seconds.

9:15 AM — A Flat Tire on the Cobblestones

Second call takes me into the historic district, and I already know before I get there what I’m going to find, because I’ve done this enough times to recognize the location on the map. Sure enough: a flat tire, right where the cobblestones near River Street have a way of finding the one weak spot in a tire’s sidewall and exploiting it completely. The car belongs to a couple visiting from somewhere up north, rental car, first time in Savannah, no idea where the spare even is.

I get them squared away — spare’s in fine shape, thankfully — and while I’m working, the husband asks if the cobblestones are “always like this.” I tell him they’re original ballast stones, some of them two hundred years old, brought over in the hulls of ships and then paved into the streets once the ships didn’t need the weight anymore. He looks genuinely delighted by this, tells his wife, and for a second I forget I’m kneeling on a curb with a lug wrench. That’s Savannah for you. Even a flat tire comes with a little bit of history attached.

11:30 AM — An Accident Near the I-16 Merge

The dispatch call comes in different this time — an accident near the I-16 merge, and the tone shifts the second I hear it. These calls are never routine, no matter how many times I’ve done this. I get there fast, hazards already flashing behind a cruiser’s lights, and thankfully — this time — everyone’s okay. Shaken, but okay. That’s not always how it goes, and I try not to think too hard about the times it hasn’t been.

The car itself isn’t so lucky. Front end crumpled, undrivable, needs to go to a repair shop across town. I work carefully, more carefully than usual, because a vehicle that’s been in a collision doesn’t always behave the way you expect when you’re loading it — something could be bent, jammed, unpredictable. I take my time. The owner keeps thanking me for something I haven’t really finished yet, and I let her, because sometimes people just need to say thank you to someone, and I happen to be the person standing there.

1:20 PM — Lunch, Eventually

Lunch, finally, eaten in the truck in a gas station parking lot off Victory Drive, because that’s usually how it goes. I’ve learned not to plan lunch around a specific time. Plan around whenever there’s a gap.

2:40 PM — Keys on the Seat, Eighteen Inches Away

A lockout at a shop downtown — keys sitting on the driver’s seat, visible through the window, taunting the owner from about eighteen inches away. This one’s quick. A little finesse, a little patience, and the door pops without a scratch on it. The owner offers me a free coffee from the shop, and I take it, because it would be rude not to, and also because it’s July and I will drink literally any cold beverage handed to me at this point in the day.

4:15 PM — The Box Truck That Wouldn’t Budge

The call that takes the most out of me, physically: a box truck that’s stalled out and can’t be moved with anything standard. Heavy duty jobs are a different rhythm entirely — slower, more deliberate, more math involved. Weight distribution matters. Rigging matters. You don’t rush a truck like this the way you might rush a sedan, because the margin for error gets bigger right along with the vehicle. It takes almost an hour to get it properly secured and moving, and by the time it’s done, my shirt is soaked through and I’ve stopped noticing the heat completely, the way you do once you’re past a certain point.

6:50 PM — Sunset Over the Marsh

The sky starts doing that thing it does in Savannah in the summer — turning the kind of orange-purple that looks almost fake, like someone oversaturated a photo, hanging low over the marshes as I head back across town. I catch it through the windshield for exactly as long as I’m not thinking about the next call, which is not very long, because the phone rings again before I’ve finished the thought.

10:20 PM — Running on Empty Near Tybee

Last call of the shift: fuel delivery, a guy who misjudged how far he could stretch a nearly empty tank on his way back from Tybee. He’s apologetic about it, like running out of gas is some kind of moral failing rather than something that happens to almost everyone eventually. I tell him it’s fine, fill him up enough to get to a station, and watch his taillights disappear down the road.

11:05 PM — Back at the Yard

Back at the yard, engine off, and that same quiet from this morning is back, except now it feels earned instead of just early. Somewhere between the dead battery on Bull Street and the fuel run back from Tybee, I helped six or seven people get from a bad moment back to an ordinary one. Most of them I’ll never see again. A few of them will probably forget my face by next week. That’s fine. That’s kind of the whole point — you’re not supposed to remember the tow truck driver. You’re supposed to just get back to your day.

Every driver on our team has shifts like this one — some quieter, some rougher, none of them ever quite the same twice. If you’re ever the person standing next to your car wondering who to call, that’s us: On Point Towing and Roadside, in Savannah, GA, daily from 8:00 AM to 11:00 PM, at (912) 205-8234.