A tilt tray truck is about three and a half metres tall with the deck down, and taller with it raised. A typical CBD multi-storey car park has a clearance bar at around two point one. The arithmetic is not subtle: the truck does not go in.
So when someone rings from level four of a city car park with a car that will not start, the actual question is not “how fast can you get here”. It is “how do we get the car to where the truck can be”.
The job
A Friday evening. A woman has finished work in the city, come down to a car park off Murray Street, and found a completely dead car. No dash lights, no central locking, nothing. She has to be somewhere. The car park closes at a set time and she does not want to leave the car in there over a weekend accruing parking fees.
A car with no electrics at all is a different problem to a car that will not crank. No electrics usually means the battery is flat beyond recovery or a main connection has failed. It also means:
- The steering lock may be engaged and the car cannot be shifted out of park without power.
- Electronic park brakes stay on. On a lot of modern cars, that is genuinely the deciding factor.
- The car cannot be freewheeled, so it either gets power or it gets skates.
How a car gets out of a building
There are three ways, and we work down the list in this order:
- 1Get it running or at least powered. If a jump pack brings the electrics up, the park brake releases, it shifts into neutral, and the car can be driven or rolled up the ramps under control. This is by far the best outcome and it happens more often than people expect.
- 2Roll it under control. If it has power but will not run, it can be steered and braked while being moved slowly to a loading point. Ramps are the whole risk here — a car rolling down a spiral ramp needs a person on the brakes and someone controlling the pace, always.
- 3Skates. If the wheels will not turn or the car cannot be shifted, wheel skates go under it and it gets moved that way. Slow, deliberate, and the reason a car park job takes longer than a kerbside one.
Why CBD jobs take longer than they look
The tow itself, once the car is on the tray at street level, is the easy part. Everything before that is the job:
- Where the truck stands. Loading zones, clearways, bus lanes and one-ways in the city all matter. There is often only one legal place to have a truck stopped near a given car park entrance, and it is not always outside it.
- Building management. Most city car parks want to know a recovery is happening. Getting that agreed first avoids a much longer conversation later.
- Ramps. Moving an unpowered car down a spiral ramp is careful, methodical work. It cannot be rushed and should never be.
- Time of day. A city car park at 5:30pm on a Friday is not the same building as at 10am on a Tuesday.
How it ended
Her car came up on a jump pack, which released the park brake and let it shift. She drove it down the ramps herself with us alongside, out onto the street, and it went on the tray there. She did not want to risk driving it home to the northern suburbs, which was the right call — it went on the truck and she went home.
The Perth CBD area page covers the city and inner suburbs, and car towing explains the standard job. If your car is stuck in a building right now, ring rather than read — the clearance and level details are much faster spoken than typed.
Need a truck now?
Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If we miss your call, we'll call you back within 30 minutes.
Questions we get asked about this
Can a tow truck fit inside a multi-storey car park?
Almost never. Clearance bars are usually around 2.1 metres and a tilt tray is far taller. The car is brought out to street level first — driven, rolled under control, or moved on wheel skates — and loaded there.
My car has an electronic park brake and no power. Can it still be moved?
Yes, but it changes the method. If power cannot be restored, the car goes onto wheel skates rather than being rolled. Mention the electronic park brake when you call — it is one of the details that decides how the job runs.
Do I need to tell the car park that a tow truck is coming?
It helps a lot. Most city buildings want to know before a recovery happens on site. If you cannot reach them, tell us and we will handle it when we arrive.
