A towtruck is a strong truck built for pulling other vehicles away. It has a crane, a hook, or a flat sliding bed on the back, so it can lift one end of a car — or the whole car — and carry it off. You meet a towtruck in two very different moods. The happy one: your car dies on the road, you call for help, and the towtruck takes it to a garage. The unhappy one: you park where you should not, and the towtruck takes your car away to a pound, and you must pay to get it back. Because of that second use, 'the towtruck came' can sound like bad news all by itself. In writing you will see tow truck (two words) most often, especially in American English; towtruck as one word also appears. British speakers may say breakdown truck or recovery vehicle instead, and 'wrecker' is an older American word for the same thing. The person driving it is a tow truck driver — there is no neat single word for them.