The first tow truck was based on a 1913 Cadillac rather than a heavy-duty truck chassis, as one might assume. According to the Chronicle and many reports, Ernest Holmes, a mechanic in Chattanooga, Tennessee, received a call from his old business school professor, John Wiley, who had drove his Ford Model T off the road and upside down into a creek bed, on a day in 1916. It took eight hours, six men, and unfathomable amounts of human labor for Holmes to get the T out of the stream bed and upright.

However, the incident inspired Holmes to equip a three-year-old Cadillac with a crane and pulley system that would lift broken-down and destroyed vehicles and secure them for towing back to a neighboring mechanic's shop. In November 1917, Holmes filed a patent for his remarkable new concept (US Patent 1254804) after recreating his idea with a pair of outriggers to offer stability when elevating other vehicles. But Holmes didn't stop there. With his new patent in hand, he refocused his company to produce Holmes Wrecker tow vehicles and sell them to other mechanics and garage owners, advertising them as a way to actually capture additional business.

After that, he became a prolific inventor, patenting at least a half-dozen modifications on the basic tow truck theme as well as at least another half-dozen vehicle lifts, creepers, and jacks before dying in 1945. Wikipedia utilized this page as a source of information.

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