When you unlucky enough to experience a vehicle breakdown, you rightly expect to be rescued with the minimum of delay. When the recovery vehicle arrives, you expect it to carry all the spares you are likely to need and if your vehicle needs transporting, then you expect a clean, safe, purpose build transporter that will take you home.

However, this has not always been the case and it is only really in the early seventies, that the ‘get you home’ Recovery industry we have today, was created.

The first ‘Motoring Clubs’ were the AA and the RAC who were formed around the turn of the last century, but only offered basic roadside assistance and then a little later, recovery to a local garage.

The modern ‘get you home’ services first appeared in the Midlands, often limited to a range of up to 50 miles from your home. National Breakdown (today Green Flag) soon became the largest and offered a full nationwide service. This was later expanded to Europe, by making agreements with their continental rivals.

Unlike the older clubs, these new companies did not employ their own patrols. Instead, they recruited garages with their own breakdown trucks and trailers. At first, there were no real standards for these garages, but as the years went by they have been introduced and are rigidly enforced by the Motoring Organisations.  

Those original pioneering Garages that are still operating today, have in the main stopped doing repairs and just specialise in vehicle movement Also a multi-million pound industry has grown up to supply the industry, with the equipment needed to carry out the work and many specialist vehicle designs have been developed.  

More details can be found at www.vehiclerecovery.org/history