Heavy Duty Towing in Jackson, TN

Heavy Duty Towing in Jackson, Tennessee means one thing before anything else: you are on a freight corridor. Jackson is the county seat of Madison County, with 68,205 residents at the 2020 census, and it sits on Interstate 40 about 70 miles east of Memphis and 130 miles southwest of Nashville. Trucks moving between those two cities pass through it all day. When a tractor-trailer, bus, dump truck or piece of equipment goes down here, we send a heavy wrecker sized for the unit. Call (731) 202-9868 and dispatch answers 24/7.

What to have ready when you call

Callers in Jackson are usually on a shoulder with traffic going by. Give dispatch these things first:

• Where you are: I-40 eastbound or westbound and the nearest exit, or the cross street if you are on a city road.
• The unit: tractor and trailer, straight truck, bus, RV or equipment, with an honest weight class.
• Loaded or empty, and with what. Say so up front if it is hazmat or a refrigerated load.
• What happened: breakdown, blown tire, jackknife, rollover, or a unit off the pavement.
• Who pays: the driver, the fleet, an insurer or a broker.

The dispatcher gives you an honest arrival estimate on the call, based on where our wrecker is at that moment.

The Jackson stretch of I-40, exit by exit

Through the north side of the city, I-40 widens to six lanes and has six urban interchanges. The Tennessee DOT exit numbers that matter to a driver are these:

• Exit 79: US 412 joins I-40 here. US 412 runs along I-40 from exit 79 to exit 87, so a sign for US 412 on the interstate does not mean you have left it.
• Exit 80: the US 45 Bypass, which is also State Route 186. This interchange was rebuilt from a full cloverleaf into a six-ramp partial cloverleaf, with construction running from September 2017 to June 30, 2021, and 2.9 miles of I-40 were widened to six lanes in the $67.5 million project.
• Exit 82: US 45, Highland Avenue, a former cloverleaf now rebuilt as a single point urban interchange. Highland Avenue north goes to Humboldt and Milan.
• Exit 83: Campbell Street.
• Exit 85: Christmasville Road.
• Exit 87: US 70, State Route 1, where US 412 leaves the interstate and turns southwest on US 70.

New ramps and wider lanes help, but a loaded semi stopped on a ramp or the inside shoulder still needs a plan. Recovery near an interchange can need traffic control, and we tell you on the call what that will involve.

Surface roads: the bypass, Highland Avenue and US 412

The Keith Short Bypass, State Route 186, is the US 45 bypass through the western part of the city. It carries trucks around the center and back to I-40, and a unit stuck on it blocks a road other trucks depend on. Locally, US 45 south of town is Highland Avenue, and it leads to Henderson. US 412 connects Jackson to Alamo and on to Dyersburg, where it meets I-55. US 70 runs alongside the interstate between Huntingdon and Brownsville, so it is the usual detour when I-40 closes. State Route 18 runs southwest toward Bolivar.

For surface-street calls inside the city, tell us the cross street and any business or gate you are near. Many calls here are a straight truck or a bus at a loading dock or a gate, where the job is a careful move rather than a highway recovery.

Where the freight comes from

Jackson is more than a pass-through. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reported in 2014 that Delta Faucet had 880 employees, Kellogg 735 and West Tennessee Healthcare more than 5,000, and it listed Pinnacle Foods and Stanley Black and Decker among the top ten employers in Madison County. Manufacturing was the third-largest sector by employment in the Jackson area. Those plants and their suppliers keep box trucks, flatbeds and tractor-trailers moving on city streets as well as on I-40.

Rail matters here too. The Memphis to Jackson line was completed June 1, 1888 and is now part of CSX, and its track in Jackson still serves the east and west industrial parks. Trucks moving to and from those parks take the same roads as everyone else, and a breakdown near a rail crossing or a plant gate gets handled differently from one on open interstate.

Jackson weather and what it does to heavy trucks

Jackson averages 56.89 inches of precipitation a year on about 121.5 days, and snow is rare at 2.7 inches. Heavy rain is the more common problem. On May 1, 2010, a storm dropped 13 inches of rain in a short period and caused flash flooding. Jackson has also been hit by violent tornadoes. An F4 tornado in May 2003 devastated downtown and killed eight people, and a January 1999 storm killed eleven. After a severe storm, expect downed limbs, debris and closed lanes, and tell dispatch if your unit is off the road or on its side.

What we recover in Jackson

• Tractor-trailers and straight trucks: breakdowns, tire failures, jackknives and rollovers
• Buses and motorcoaches, with a plan for passengers
• Dump trucks and construction equipment, hauled on a lowboy or landoll
• RVs and large trailers
• Unit uprighting and load recovery, with air cushions and winch lines as the scene requires

For a written estimate on a non-emergency move, use

Get a Free Estimate

. For a unit down right now, call (731) 202-9868.

Jackson is the main city for this site, so we can describe the whole region from here. Humboldt, Milan, Medina, Three Way, Bells, Alamo, Brownsville, Henderson and Lexington each have their own page on this site. Most of them are one highway away from Jackson.