What Makes a Winch-Out Cheap or Expensive on a Buffalo Side Street in January

Between December and March, winch-out and recovery is most of what we do. Cars backed into the berm the plow left across the driveway. Cars buried at the far end of a side street that has not seen a plow since the band came through. Cars slid off the shoulder of a town road where the drift hid the edge of the pavement. We do not work highways, expressways, parkways or bridges, which is a different license and a different truck, and we will say so rather than take the job.

A winch-out is $199 to book plus $150 an hour from when the driver arrives, so what matters is how long the pull takes, and three things decide that; you can judge all of them from where you stand. How far off the pavement the car sits, because every foot of pull is work. What the truck can anchor to, because a winch pulls against something and an open field offers nothing. Whether the car rolls, because a wheel packed solid with ice has to be dragged. A car a few feet off a plowed driveway is the easy end. A car nose-down in a ditch on a back road is the other end.

Before the truck comes, stop spinning the wheels; every turn polishes the snow into ice. Clear the snow from in front of the tires, straighten the wheels, and put sand or a floor mat under the drive wheels. If the pull reveals a bent control arm or a tire off the bead, the car rides home on a flatbed for only the mileage, $7 a loaded mile, with no second booking fee and no hook-up fee. The winch-out guide covers the rest.