The Museum of Man, Mud and Machine
Chattanooga, Tennessee, pays tribute to those wonderful folks who rescue us from breakdowns, mud holes and scary places in the middle of the night — the tow truck drivers.
It’s the middle of the night, and your car will not move. Maybe you’re stuck on the shoulder of an Interstate highway. Maybe you’re in the country, bogged down to your axles in the Georgia mud. In such a situation, who is your hero? Easy. It’s the person who shows up behind the wheel of a tow truck to rescue you.
And if you’ve ever thought the tow-trucker drive is underappreciated, perhaps you should beach to Chattanooga, Tennessee to visit the International Towing & Recovery Hall of Fame and Museum. It’s home to nearly two dozen restored antique tow trucks and wreckers. It sits just a few miles and a hundred or so years from the birth of the world’s very first tow truck.
The inspiration couldn’t have been more Southern.
As the story goes, a Chattanooga resident named Ernest Holmes Sr. got a call from a friend whose car was stuck in a nearby creek. This was early in the 20th century and there was no such thing as a tow truck. So Holmes gathered a dozen or so friends and they spent most of the day trying to pull the car to dry land.
Holmes, frustrated by the process, spent the next year trying to figure out a more efficient way to pull cars from creeks. He came up with something brand new: the Holmes 485, a chassis that sported a metal tube framework, wires, pulleys, outriggers and hooks.
This is the sort of history memorialized at the museum along Chattanooga’s south shore, where tow trucks from throughout the U.S. sit on display, all but one ready and willing to run to trouble.
Visitors can find a rich array of antique wreckers and tow trucks, including:
- A 1929 Ford Model TT
- A six-cylinder, three-speed 1935 Chevrolet Blue
- A 1933 Ford Custom Hot Rod Tow Truck
- A V-8 Ford 1966 F-350
- A 2004 Chevrolet SSR
Perhaps the most unusual tow truck, visually, is the yellow Retractable HardTop Convertible, a pickup truck with a 300-horsepower V-8 and a towing capacity of 2,500 pounds.
For visitors with a need for speed, the museum has the world’s fastest tow truck, according to Nyle Vincent, museum administrative associate. The truck, with bragging rights painted on its doors, set the world record. The 1970 Silverado “got to a top speed of 300 m.p.h. on a straight track at Talladega. And it was fully loaded with gear.”
However, one of the most popular vehicles on display with visitors is the one painted in G.I. olive drab, a World War II tow truck that survived service on the Normandy beaches in France. The truck was used as part of the Red Ball Express supply chain the Allies used after the June 1944 invasion. The truck doesn’t move, according to Vincent. “There’s some damage to it from the war I was told,” he said. “When I inspected it, I (didn’t) see any damage.” As with many combat veterans, the wounds are internal.
Not to be overlooked in a rush to see the big wreckers, the museum is marked by a bronze statue of a symbolic tow truck rescue: an anonymous figure holds onto a tow chain with one hand as he reaches down with the other to pull a second man to safety.
This statue marks the museum’s memorial to those tow truck and recovery vehicle drivers who die on duty each year, with an average of 20 names added annually.
The museum also offers, in far greater numbers, toy tow trucks from all over the world, many donated by visitors, according to Vincent. “It’s one of the largest such collections in the world.”
