Question for recovery lads

One of our drivers got held up in the queue on a14 yesterday near cambs,took him 2hours, said it “took them” 4.5hour to move the truck? That seem quite a long time. Surely a simple breakdown recovered fairly quickly? Unless wrecker came from Scotland! Just wondered how long does it take from rocking up to pulling off for simple breakdown, not a rollover.cheers.

Only done light recovery work so I don’t know the inns and outs of heavy stuff. But i imagine there can be a lot of work involved in getting a broken truck prepared for towing depending on the type of breakdown. Not quite as simple as a broken down car.

Depends whats up with it.
Straight lift n shift on a broken down artic - 45 mins tops from rocking up to pulling away.
Compressor/air system fault - wind all the brakes off+take wing tops off - more time.
Close coupling fridge and the sliding 5th wheel is siezed, either split the rig or unsieze the 5th wheel.
Hub faults - chain up the axle and remove wheels.
Rear axle fault - Unit needs to be pulled out, turned around and back-end lifted, then the trailer moved.
Fire damage - burnt hubs means full lift (how do you do that on a decker■■?).
RTA - if the Collision Investigation Unit want to take a look, the road could be closed for hours.

4.5 hours suggests to me this was not a run of the mill lift n shift. Must have been more to it than that.