Off the Shoulder on Kanan or the 23: Thousand Oaks Winch-Out

Published 17 September 2026

Thousand Oaks Tow Truck gets the canyon calls in a pattern: two wheels into the brush between the Kanan Road tunnels, a pickup backed off the edge of a turnout on Decker Canyon, a hatchback high-centered on the lip of a trailhead lot after the first rain. None is a tow yet; each is a recovery, and the recovery decides whether the car drives away.

Here is where it happens, why the wheels must stop turning, how the line is rigged and pulled, what not to do while you wait, and the Move Over law.

Kanan Road starts at Westlake Boulevard and runs 19 miles south to Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, climbing to 1,800 feet through three tunnels, T-1, T-2 and T-3 from north to south. Tell us which tunnel you passed last.

The 23 is the other way to the coast: Westlake Boulevard for roughly two miles south of the 101, then Decker Canyon Road, a steep and winding drop that has been called notoriously dangerous, where the rusted chassis of cars that went over the side can still be seen. A car well below the road can exceed a light-duty truck's rating; we say so on the call.

The trailhead lots produce more calls: Wildwood Regional Park at 928 West Avenida de los Arboles, 58 stalls, closing at dusk; the main Los Robles trailhead at the south end of Moorpark Road; Rancho Sierra Vista off Potrero Road. When the stalls are full, cars park on the dirt lip, which holds in August and gives way in the winter rain.

A tire that spins on loose dirt or dry brush does one thing: it digs. The first spin breaks the crust holding the car, the second throws the loose material out behind the tire, and by the third the wheel is in a trench. Keep going and the floor pan or differential settles onto the ground between the ruts - high-centering - and the tires, carrying no weight, cannot move the car.

On a canyon shoulder the same spin is worse: a wheel scrabbling for grip on a slope walks sideways as well as down, and sideways on Kanan is toward the drop. So the rule is one gentle try in your own tracks, and if the car does not move, foot off the throttle, parking brake on, engine off.

The truck parks on the pavement above the car, in line with the pull, so its own weight is the anchor. The winch line runs to a rated tow point - the tow eye stored with the car, which on a Tesla Model 3 lives in the front trunk, or a frame hook - never to a bumper, a control arm, an axle or a tow ball.

When the truck cannot sit in line with the car, or one line is not enough, a snatch block goes in. It is a pulley that opens to take the line: anchored to a tree or the truck it changes the angle of the pull, and hung on the car's tow point with the line run back to the truck it doubles the pull while halving the speed.

The pull comes in stages: a few feet of line, stop, look at what moved, pull again. The wheels are turned to follow the line, the driver's foot stays off the throttle so the tires roll instead of plowing, and a high-centered car is lifted at one end first so the underside comes clear before it is dragged. Nobody stands in line with the cable or below the car until the car is back on pavement and the line has gone slack.

On the 101 and the 23 freeway, California's Move Over law, CVC 21809, tells a driver approaching a stationary tow truck with flashing amber warning lights to change into a lane not immediately adjacent to it when that is safe and practicable, and otherwise to slow to a reasonable and prudent speed. Kanan Road and Decker Canyon are not freeways and have no second lane, so there the scene depends on the amber lights and the next driver slowing for the curve.

Most of the damage on a canyon recovery is done in the half hour before we arrive:

• No strap on a tow ball. A hitch ball takes a steady trailer load, not a shock load, and when it shears it flies with the strap.
• No pushing while the driver spins the wheels. The tires throw rock, and a car that suddenly catches grip moves with nobody in control.
• No waiting in the car on a slope. Get out on the uphill side, well back from the edge.
• No flagging traffic from the lane. Hazards on, and if the car sits past a blind curve, call 911 first, because an officer can close a lane and we cannot.

Some cars drive away from a recovery. A folded wheel, steering that pulls hard or water above the floor means a flatbed, and so does an all-wheel-drive or electric car that cannot be driven off: the Subaru owner's manual says never to tow an AWD model with one axle on the ground, and Tesla's Model 3 manual calls a flatbed the recommended method.

There is no public service for this. The Ventura County Freeway Service Patrol works the 101 on weekday commute hours and does not cover the 23 or surface streets, so a car off the shoulder on Kanan or Decker Canyon is a private recovery at any hour: winch-out and recovery on the canyon roads around Thousand Oaks, the pull, the rigging and the time on the slope quoted as one job.

The one road where the state sends a truck is the 101 on a weekday, covered in breaking down on the Conejo Grade, and who comes. Everywhere else a recovery is a job you call for yourself, and so is the tow after it: no benchmark, no yard, no release fee, one total given on the call, that the light-duty trucks Thousand Oaks Tow Truck runs leave on.