Recovery and HGV Recovery Operational Progression

Recovery operations add a second workload after, or alongside, emergency response: disabled cars, collision vehicles and trucks must be cleared after the Fire, Police or Ambulance phase is supported. Canonical records store towing under recovery.assets, separately from dispatched emergency-resource requirements. This distinction is fundamental to safe planning.

Current evidence baseline: 28 July 2026.

Command doctrine

Use this order when expanding:

One complete car-recovery chain first — a Recovery Centre should create useful clearing capacity, not only new missions.
Towing outcomes separate from emergency response — recovery assets are not fictional Fire, Police or Ambulance requirement rows.
HGV as a separate progression gate — truck towing and HGV mission generation require the dedicated extension.
Road-corridor geography before duplication — recovery time includes travel to the incident, towing and return-to-availability.
Preserve conditional and probabilistic fields — Traffic Cars and personnel may not be guaranteed.
Regional reserve before more generators — a multi-vehicle incident should not remove every recovery route from the account.

Open Mission Lookup · Open Concurrent Fleet Planner

Recovery workload chain

Recovery Centre / HGV Recovery generation
                  ↓
Emergency incident response where published
                  ↓
Car or truck recovery outcome
                  ↓
Towing and clearance workload
                  ↓
Vehicle returns to regional availability
                  ↓
Recovery reserve restored for another incident

Verified infrastructure

Recovery Centre

The canonical Recovery Centre:

generates dedicated Recovery Vehicle Missions;
enables recovery-enabled variants;
provides car-towing capability.

The following remain unknown:

purchase cost;
construction time;
capacity and staffing;
vehicle-market inventory;
towing economics and speed.

HGV Recovery Extension

The canonical extension:

enables HGV recovery mission generation;
provides truck-towing capability;
is a precondition on verified truck-recovery variants.

Compatible parent building, cost, build time and capacity remain unpublished.

Recovery outcomes versus requirements

Emergency-resource requirements

These describe vehicles or personnel required to resolve the incident phase, such as:

Fire Engines;
Police Cars;
Traffic Cars;
Operational Team Leaders;
patients and medical support.

Recovery assets

These describe the post-response towing workload:

"recovery": {
  "assets": [
    {
      "asset_type": "car",
      "minimum": 2,
      "maximum": 4
    }
  ]
}

Do not create an invented recovery_vehicle emergency requirement from this object. Use the asset type and range exactly as published.

Dedicated Recovery missions

Abandoned Car Obstructing Road

Verified contract:

1 Recovery Centre;
no published emergency-resource requirement;
exactly 1 car recovery outcome;
Recovery Vehicle Missions classification;
400 average credits.

Broken Down Car Obstructing Road

Verified contract:

1 Recovery Centre;
no published emergency-resource requirement;
exactly 1 car recovery outcome;
Recovery Vehicle Missions classification;
400 average credits.

These current canonical records supersede the older Stage 20 note that the towing outcome was unavailable. They still do not prove a vehicle-market name, price, crew or station capacity.

Fire recovery variations

Burning car

Verified variation:

1 Fire Station;
1 Recovery Centre;
1 Fire Engine;
exactly 1 car to recover;
670 average credits.

The car is a towing outcome, not an additional Fire Engine requirement.

Burning truck — HGV variation

Verified variation:

2 Fire Stations;
1 HGV Recovery Extension;
2 Fire Engines;
exactly 1 truck to recover;
1,280 average credits.

This is the foundation HGV contract. The HGV extension does not replace Fire suppression, and the truck outcome does not create another Fire resource row.

Collision recovery variations

Multi vehicle RTC

Verified response:

2 Fire Engines;
2 Police Cars;
1 Traffic Car with 50% probability and only_when_available condition;
1 Operational Team Leader with 50% probability;
3–7 patients;
50% transport probability;
2–4 cars to recover;
1 Recovery Centre.

This mission combines emergency, medical, conditional, probabilistic and towing fields. Preserve every semantic separately.

Non-Injury RTC with Police Car — Recovery Required

Verified response:

2 Police Cars;
1 Traffic Car;
1 Police Sergeant required;
3 Police Sergeants available before generation;
exactly 1 car to recover;
1 Recovery Centre;
4,800 average credits.

The Police Sergeant available/required fields are personnel semantics, not vehicle crew counts.

Multiple vehicle RTC — Major Incident recovery variation

Current verified directory evidence publishes:

1 Recovery Centre;
the major-incident infrastructure preconditions;
10,300 average credits.

Response and towing outcomes remain unavailable in the current record. Do not copy the two-to-four car range from the ordinary Multi vehicle RTC into this major variation.

Conditional and probabilistic semantics

Traffic Car

The Multi vehicle RTC recovery overlay publishes one Traffic Car with:

50% probability;
only_when_available condition.

This is neither a guaranteed resource nor a mere recommendation. Preserve both the probability and the condition.

Operational Team Leader

The same mission publishes one Operational Team Leader with 50% probability. Do not dispatch the role as guaranteed on every variant or omit it entirely.

Five commissioning gates

Gate	Question	Recommended pass condition
Car recovery	Can one-car and multi-car outcomes be cleared without exhausting the network?	At least one protected regional recovery route remains
HGV	Can the dedicated truck workload be supported?	HGV extension activation follows verified truck-recovery readiness
Emergency response	Can Fire, Police, medical and personnel requirements operate independently?	Towing capacity is not counted as emergency response
Geography	Can assets be reached, cleared and the recovery route restored?	Road-corridor and return time are operationally practical
Evidence	Does the mission publish the towing range?	Unknown outcomes remain unknown rather than copied from another variant

Recommended capacity templates

These are strategic templates, not official Recovery Centre capacities.

Foundation recovery network

Capability	Recommended posture
Recovery infrastructure	1 Recovery Centre only after one-car missions can be cleared reliably
Protected reserve	One useful car-recovery route outside a normal dispatch
Cross-service	Fire and Police response remains available for recovery-enabled variants
HGV	Delay extension activation until truck recovery is operationally supported

Developing recovery network

Capability	Recommended posture
Car recovery	Enough regional capacity for the verified 2–4 car Multi vehicle RTC range
Geography	Separate recovery routes across main road corridors
Police/medical	Traffic, personnel and patient fields included in recovery variants
HGV	One complete truck-recovery route with geographic reserve
Concurrency	Dedicated mission plus one recovery-enabled emergency incident tested together

Established recovery network

Capability	Recommended posture
Car recovery	Independently dispatchable routes across major regions
HGV recovery	Multiple geographic routes when one extension area becomes a travel bottleneck
Major incidents	Recovery reserve protected while Fire, Police and Ambulance assets remain committed
Evidence handling	Unknown major-variation towing outcomes remain excluded from capacity calculations
Recovery	Towing and return-to-position time included before declaring readiness

Transparent concurrency examples

Dedicated car mission plus Multi vehicle RTC

Calculated published recovery workload:

1 car from the dedicated mission;
2–4 cars from the RTC;
combined range of 3–5 cars.

Emergency pressure still includes Fire, Police, conditional Traffic Car, probabilistic Operational Team Leader and patients.

Burning car plus Burning truck

Calculated published recovery workload:

1 car;
1 truck;
two separate asset classes and infrastructure paths.

This does not prove the same market vehicle can recover both classes.

Geographic doctrine

Urban road network

Place Recovery Centres near repeated RTC and obstruction demand.
Include congestion, tow destination and return time.
Keep Police and Fire reserve outside recovery-enabled incidents.
Duplicate capacity when one recovery route becomes the persistent blocker.

Motorway and trunk-road network

Align car and HGV recovery with major corridors.
Place HGV capability by travel time rather than extension count alone.
Preserve Roads Policing and scene-control support.
Test simultaneous car and truck outcomes.

Rural network

Keep regional recovery capacity local enough to avoid long closures.
Use actual road routes rather than map distance.
Protect one ordinary emergency-response route while recovery is travelling.
Treat alliance support as contingency.

Recovery-to-readiness

After towing begins or an incident clears:

identify every recovery route still travelling, towing or returning;
restore one regional car-recovery route first;
restore HGV capability in the relevant corridor;
confirm Fire, Police, Ambulance and personnel reserve has recovered;
review patients and custody activity still active;
rerun the selected concurrent recovery scenario;
correct repeated geographic or asset-class shortages before more infrastructure activation.

Mission completion is not proof that towing and regional availability are restored.

Common failures

Failure	Operational symptom	Correction
Creating a fictional Recovery Vehicle requirement	Data and dispatch advice claim a row the source does not publish	Keep towing under `recovery.assets`
Treating infrastructure as a dispatched vehicle	Recovery Centre or extension appears in an emergency response	Preserve it as a precondition/capability
Copying outcomes between variants	A major variation receives unsupported towing numbers	Keep unavailable outcomes unknown
Treating conditional Traffic Cars as guaranteed	Roads resources are over-dispatched	Preserve probability and condition
Ignoring patient and personnel fields	Recovery planning misses medical and command pressure	Audit the complete mission record
Treating car and truck recovery as identical	HGV readiness is overstated	Preserve asset class and extension semantics
Counting only arrival time	Recovery seems available while still towing/returning	Include the complete clearing cycle
Expanding while depleted	New recovery missions generate before reserve returns	Restore readiness before more centres/extensions

Operational readiness checklist

Stage 37H completion

The Recovery and HGV Recovery programme now covers:

Recovery Centre and HGV extension progression;
dedicated and recovery-enabled missions;
car and truck towing outcomes;
separation of recovery workload from emergency response;
conditional and probabilistic semantics;
scalable regional templates;
geography, concurrency and recovery-to-readiness.

The next service programme is Stage 37I — Railway Police and Railway Fire operational progression.