Vehicle Recovery in London

A vehicle that will not move is a problem that gets worse by the hour. It may be blocking a bay you are paying for, sitting on a red route collecting tickets, or stuck somewhere you cannot leave it overnight. MPG Recovery moves vehicles across London on a tilt-and-slide bed, 24 hours a day, and the first thing we will do is tell you honestly how soon we can be there.

When a vehicle needs recovering

Some of it is obvious. The engine will not turn over, the gearbox will not select, there is a bang followed by silence, or the car has been hit and is no longer roadworthy. Some of it is less obvious: a slipping clutch that finally goes, a snapped cambelt, a flat battery a jump pack will not revive, or a wheel that has locked solid.

There are also vehicles with nothing mechanically wrong with them at all. A car sat long enough to be untaxed and uninsured cannot legally be driven to a garage, however well it runs. Nor can one bought at auction before cover is in place. Those travel on the bed for the same reason a broken one does.

What matters to us is not the fault itself but three practical things: does it roll, does it steer, and are the keys available. Those decide whether the vehicle is driven onto the bed, winched on, or needs skates underneath it.

How we recover different vehicles

Most jobs are a straightforward non-runner collection. The bed tilts and slides down to road level, the winch pulls the vehicle up, and it is strapped by the wheels rather than the bodywork so nothing is pulled out of shape. Seized engines, locked steering, long-term SORN cars and vehicles with no keys all load this way.

Not everything needs recovering. Where the fault is something we can deal with at the roadside we will try, which is what breakdown recovery usually starts as — a jump start, or getting a car running well enough to move itself. If it cannot be fixed there, the same truck takes it, so you are not waiting on a second callout.

Motorcycle recovery uses a front wheel chock and soft straps, so a bike is held upright without anything being clamped to the frame or the bars. Electric and hybrid vehicles go on the bed with all four wheels off the ground, which is the only safe way to move them, because towing an EV on its driven wheels can damage the motors. Underground and multi-storey car parks are their own problem: a full-size recovery truck will not clear the ramp, so the vehicle has to be brought up to street level and loaded there.

Where a vehicle has been damaged in a collision, see accident recovery. Where nothing is wrong and it simply needs to be somewhere else, see vehicle transport. The full list is on our services page.

Recovery on London roads

London makes recovery work harder than it needs to be. Red routes where you cannot stop, bus lanes under camera enforcement, permit bays, box junctions, width restrictions on streets built long before anyone owned a car, and height barriers across half the car parks. A recovery truck cannot simply pull up wherever the casualty happens to be.

That is why we ask for the exact location and a photograph of how the vehicle is sitting. A picture of a low car tight against a kerb, or a bay with a bollard at the end of it, tells us more than a paragraph of description, and it decides what we bring.

We work out of the railway arches on Tent Street in E1, so East London and the Docklands are the ground we cover most often. Recovery work also runs across Central, North, South and West London and the surrounding areas. Send both postcodes and we can confirm availability before anything is arranged.

What happens when you call

You message or ring the same number and speak to someone directly. There is no queue and no reference number. Tell us where the vehicle is, where it needs to go, what it is and whether it runs, and we will come back with a price and a realistic arrival time.

Once you are happy with both, the truck is on its way. On arrival the vehicle is loaded, strapped down and checked before we move, then delivered to the address you gave us — a garage, your home, a storage yard or anywhere else. If the destination has opening hours, tell us and we will plan around them.

What recovery costs

Price depends on the distance, the time of day, whether the vehicle rolls and steers, and how difficult it is to reach. A car on a driveway is not the same job as one on the third level of a car park with a flat battery and no keys.

Quotes are free and the figure is agreed before we set off, so nothing moves afterwards. There is no separate callout charge on a job we carry out. The only time a callout fee applies is when we have already travelled to you and the vehicle then does not need moving after all.

What to send us

• Collection location or postcode
• Destination address or postcode
• Vehicle make, model and approximate year
• Whether it runs, rolls and steers
• Whether the keys are available
• When it needs moving
• Photos of the vehicle and how it is parked

A WhatsApp location pin is the most reliable way to tell us where you are, particularly at night or on a stretch of road with no obvious landmark.

Why people call us

We are on call 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and the phone is answered by someone who can tell you what is actually possible. MPG Recovery is rated 5.0 on Google from 19 reviews, every one of them five stars, and the company holds business hire and reward insurance to carry customers’ vehicles.

For everything else we move, vehicle recovery and transport across London starts on the same number.

Vehicle recovery FAQs