Tow truck hoisting a small car with a hook, traffic cones, guardrail, hills, trees, and clouds.

Tow Truck Lifting a Car by the Roadside

A roadside tow truck steadies a tilted hatchback with its boom and hook while traffic cones mark the lane beside rolling hills.

Free to print for personal and classroom use. This coloring page is part of the Rescue Vehicle collection, made for ages 8–12 and drawn in a Standard style.

🎨 How to color it

Color the tow truck a bold rescue red, the lifted car a bright sky blue, the traffic cones orange with white bands, and the hills soft green. Use sharp pencils for the cable, hook, tire rims, and cone stripes, then fill the larger truck panels with smooth marker strokes. Try a pale sunset gradient behind the clouds so the red tow truck stands out against a cooler roadside scene.

🔢 How this color by number works

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Find each number in the key and fill its zone: 133 zones and 12 colors, sized for adults. Tiny unnumbered slivers borrow the color of their neighbors, and the little model above shows the finished page whenever you want to check your work. More grids like this live in our color by number gallery.

Prefer classic line art? Open this drawing as a regular coloring page.

The story behind this coloring page

The Cone Path Secret — Before the tow rig’s engine cooled with a tick-tick-tick, Rafferty had already chalked three arrows on the shoulder. Read the full story →

Before the tow rig’s engine cooled with a tick-tick-tick, Rafferty had already chalked three arrows on the shoulder. He wanted his handmade game, Cone Path, to beat the radio’s boring safety drill. The rules were his: set the cones so a marble could roll from one to the next without crossing the black tar crack. Wind smelled like warm rubber and clover beyond the guardrail.

Then the little hatchback slid crooked off the lane, one wheel hanging in the ditch. The driver was safe, but cars hissed past too close. Rafferty’s uncle reached for the usual straight line of cones. Rafferty held up his chalky hands. “Try my path,” he said, pointing to the zigzag he had made. A straight row told drivers to move over once; his crooked row made their eyes follow each bright cone, farther and farther away from the hook, cable, and swinging bumper.

The mystery solved itself in orange stripes. Every passing car gave the tow truck room, and Rafferty felt taller than the boom he had helped protect. Ever since, crews on that country highway set cones in Rafferty’s zigzag when a car must be lifted, and if you trace the cones, you can still find his first chalk arrows under the tick-tick-tick.