Tow truck on St. Georges Avenue and Stiles Street, Linden, NJ: the Route 27 shops, the high school and the blocks between

Half the calls on this stretch end at a shop that is already on it. A front-drive sedan with a bad alternator rides a wheel-lift from a Stiles Street driveway to a garage on St. Georges Avenue in a few minutes and a few miles.

If the shop you use is on the avenue, say which one; the driver knows where the bays open onto the street.

Audis, BMWs, Mercedes and the hybrids that share these blocks all ride a flatbed. A low front lip gets blocks under the ramp; an electric car goes up in transport mode, strapped by the tires and never lifted by the battery pan.

Say the model on the call so the flatbed is the first truck sent.

A car that will not start in the school lot at dismissal, a fender-bender in the pickup line, a staff car that sat through a double session. Security lets the truck in once you have called, and a jump is tried before anything is loaded.

A car that has to leave goes on the truck its drivetrain requires, loaded away from the bus loop.

Two-lane streets lined with parked cars, crashes at the bigger intersections and a lot of short tows over the line into Elizabeth. A car that has been hit is a flatbed job to the body shop you name; a car that rolls and steers rides a wheel-lift.

Give the cross street and the side; the driver comes in by the side street rather than down the block against the parked cars.