24 hour towing in Elizabethport, NJ: the Port, the water and the streets that never fully sleep

The curb along First Street and the numbered cross streets never empties, and the corner stores keep lights on late. Most calls are a battery that quit, keys shut in the car, or a car so tightly parked in that starting it would not help. Give dispatch the cross street and the side of the block; the truck comes in from the numbered street, not down First.

When a high tide meets a hard rain, the streets nearest Veterans Memorial Waterfront Park and the mouth of the Elizabeth River fill up. A car that stalled in that water rides a flatbed, not a wheel-lift, and the driver wades the depth before he backs in. Leave the key alone; call and tell us the car was under water.

The New Point Road campus turns over staff at odd hours, and the lots produce the same call each week: a car that sat twelve hours and now clicks. That is a jump start at one flat price before it is anything else. Tell dispatch the lot or the deck, and security admits the truck once you have called.

The port runs all night, so its vehicles fail all night: drayage tractors that will not build air, chassis with a blown tire, employee cars dead in the lots by the gates. Heavy-duty and medium-duty trucks roll from the same yard as the flatbeds, and a fleet dispatcher calling at 4 a.m. gets a truck and a single invoice.