1. Decide Where It Is Going Before You Call
The destination decides everything downstream: the equipment, the paperwork and whether one truck can finish the job. A repair shop, a driveway, a private buyer and a salvage yard are four different deliveries.
A shop has a flat apron and someone to take the keys. A driveway may have neither. A buyer across a state line turns a local errand into an interstate move. A yard will want the title and will not care about a scratch.
2. Find Out Whether It Rolls, Steers and Stops
A tow operator's opening question is rarely what is wrong with the engine. It is whether the wheels turn, because that answer picks the truck.
Federal regulations even have a name for moving a vehicle on its own wheels. Under 49 CFR 390.5 a driveaway-towaway operation means "an operation in which an empty or unladen motor vehicle with one or more sets of wheels on the surface of the roadway is being transported," and the listed reasons include repairs "associated with the failure of a vehicle component or system." That is a broken car on its way to a shop, in federal language.
The operative phrase is wheels on the roadway. Once a car cannot roll, steer or stop, the wheels leave the ground and the job becomes a carry rather than a tow. Flatbed towing exists for that case; which truck your vehicle actually needs is worked through separately here.
Test it before booking. Release the parking brake, put an automatic in neutral, and push. Thirty seconds on level ground saves a wasted trip.
3. Check Whether Illinois Will Let It on the Road at All
A vehicle with no current Illinois registration cannot legally be driven on a public road, including the short run from a seller's driveway to yours. The state sells a permit for that gap.
Under 625 ILCS 5/3‒403, the Secretary of State "may issue a short-term permit to operate a nonregistered first or second division vehicle" within Illinois "for a period of not more than 7 days," at a statutory fee of "$10 for permits purchased on or after July 1, 2003."
The same section covers the other route. It allows "a registration permit for one trip" for "vehicles in transit by the driveaway or towaway method," operated by a transporter "in compliance with the Illinois Motor Carrier of Property Law." Illinois wrote both into one statute because both happen constantly.
A permit lets you drive it, not tow it
The two are routinely confused, and the difference decides which one applies. A short-term permit covers a person operating an unregistered vehicle. If the car will not start, nobody is operating it, so that permit does nothing for you.
A car being carried or pulled is cargo, and the authority that matters belongs to the company moving it. That is why an operator can collect an unplated car from a driveway without asking you to produce anything first.
4. Have the Keys, the Title and a Photo Ready
Three things stall a pickup more often than mechanical trouble: a key nobody can find, a title nobody can produce, and an argument about damage that was already there.
Say on the phone whether there is a key. It changes the equipment sent, and it is only a problem when it is a surprise. Photograph the car from all four corners before the truck arrives; two minutes there settles every later question about condition.
The title matters at the destination, not at the curb. A yard or a buyer will ask for it; the driver will not. Find it the night before anyway.
5. Clear the Path Where It Sits
A tow truck needs a straight pull and working room, and a car that has sat for months is usually boxed in by the ordinary accumulation of a household.
Move whatever is parked in front of it and open the gate. Check overhead too: low branches and carport beams are the quiet reason a flatbed deck cannot tilt back.
Ground matters more than people expect here. A car left on grass through a wet Madison County autumn settles, and the tires sink past the tread. Pulling it out of that is winch out and recovery work rather than a straightforward hook, and it is worth saying so when you call.
6. Decide Whether This Is One Tow or an Interstate Carrier
Distance, not weight, separates a tow truck job from an auto transport job. One truck handles a local or regional move; a genuine multi-state move is usually a car hauler with other vehicles already aboard.
That line sits closer to home in Alton than almost anywhere else in Illinois. Missouri is minutes west across the river, so an out-of-state delivery can be a shorter run than a trip to Springfield. Within that range, long distance towing keeps the car in one pair of hands.
Multi-state shipping is a different industry, and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration publishes consumer guidance on it. Both brokers and carriers operating interstate "are required to be registered with FMCSA," each receives a six-digit MC Docket number, and "auto transporters are also issued a seven digit 'USDOT' number."
Its plainest warning is about who you are actually hiring. "Auto brokers only arrange the transportation of your car," the agency says, and it tells consumers to "be suspicious of any Web site where it is not clear whether the company is a broker or a transporter." Pricing is a separate question; what a tow actually costs around Alton is covered elsewhere here.
Moves Like This Around Alton
Most of these calls are ordinary. A car that sat out a winter, an estate vehicle in a garage in Godfrey, a project car bought in Bethalto that has not turned over in two years, a daily driver stranded at a shop in Wood River.
Towing Alton runs all three versions: flatbed towing for a car that cannot roll or steer, winch out and recovery when it has to come off grass first, and long distance towing when the destination is further than a cross-town hop. Dispatch answers at (618) 323-8416.