Flipped at Dawn

By George L. Nitti

In the early morning hours of February 23, a driver in Cleveland, North Carolina lost control, slid off the roadway, and came to rest upside down—nose-down in a ditch, well off the pavement. By the time the call went out around 8:40 a.m., the sun was up and the driver, fortunately, was uninjured and walking at the scene. 

Responding to the scene was Cesar, also known as Towman127, of TowMan’s Roadside out of Statesville, NC. He arrived in a 2000 Ford F-550 XLT wrecker equipped with a Jerr-Dan HPL-35 twin line system.

“The first priority was to get it back on its wheels where it sat,” Torres explained. With approximately 100 feet of cable, he was able to reach the vehicle without repositioning into the ditch. Rigging to the suspension, he carefully rotated the car from its roof onto its side, then onto all four tires, using the soft dirt surface to his advantage and thereby minimizing the risk of it rolling unpredictably on pavement and reducing the chance of additional damage. 

Once upright, Torres repositioned his truck parallel to the vehicle’s path of travel and winched it straight back to the roadway - the same direction it had entered. The final steps were routine: load, secure, and prepare for transport.  Once upright, he completed the recovery by addressing a flat tire—swapping it out for the spare—before towing the vehicle to the customer’s home.

While Cesar described the job as straightforward, it serves as a textbook example of proper technique: controlled winching, correct rigging, and using the environment to your advantage—skills that separate experienced operators from risky guesswork.

For Torres, a 26-year industry veteran who launched his own company two years ago after relocating from New York City, each call is also an opportunity to reinforce best practices. Through his extensive YouTube training content, he’s helped thousands of operators learn safer, more efficient recovery techniques. 

This job may not have been the most complex of his career, but it’s a textbook example of doing the basics exactly right.