There's nothing worse for the DIY-agnostic car enthusiast than getting a phone call from someone asking what's wrong with their motor.

"Any idea why it won't turn over, mate?" "It wasn't making that knocking noise yesterday." "Should the sump have water in it?" You want to help, but armed with such scarce information and not being au fait with the mechanical intricacies of every car ever made, you can only do so much.

Now imagine getting that call 10 times a day, and not having the option of pleading ignorance because there's someone on the other end of the line who desperately needs your assistance, and they're not having a good time.

They might be stuck hundreds of miles from home, stranded on the driveway with screaming kids in the back or shivering in a supermarket car park in the rain.

For a breakdown patrol, it's all part of the job. But these unsung heroes of the hard shoulder deserve far more recognition than they get for keeping the roads flowing and the lay-bys empty, often putting themselves in danger to get us back to safety.

For a few years, I daily-drove a classic Beetle, of whose inner workings I had only the most superficial understanding. I could just about service it and replace worn-out consumables in the comfort of my parents' driveway, but when it went wrong out on the road – which it often did – I rarely had the nous to coax it back to life.

So, within a year of passing my test, I was on first-name terms with at least three local RAC patrols – one of whom once valiantly rigged up an emergency throttle cable in a bus stop at the side of a dual carriageway, while another patiently showed me how to change gears by rev matching, so I could get home without a clutch.

Once, I called them out to the house to deal with an issue on another car and could only blush when the patrol arrived and cheerily remarked: "Nice to work on a different one for a change!" Naturally, he resolved the issue at hand in minutes and still found time to advise me on the Bug's weeping pushrod seals before he left.

There was also the time my mum's Discovery ground to a halt halfway down a busy, remote, single-lane country road on a winter's evening with me and my brothers in the car, and a light snow just beginning to fall.

It was stressful, until our knight in orange armour arrived and went straight to work cheerily downloading error codes and reassuring us we'd be on the move in time to get our homework done.

After a while, though, he reached a dead end with his laptop and it became clear something quite serious was wrong with the old bus. Scratching his head, he didn't waver, but took the opportunity while my mum was out of earshot to ask me conspiratorially: "Mate, there's absolutely no chance your mum might have put petrol in the car instead of diesel, is there?"

Ah. No fixing that at the side of the road. But our man sat for two hours with us in his Transit, heaters blazing, while we waited for the recovery truck – and gallantly skipped the opportunity to explain the crucial chemical differences between the different options at a fuel station.

The recovery sector is adapting for the electric age, because cars simply won't need their injectors replaced or their rocker covers resealed like they once did. But the old skills will be in demand for many years to come, and there can be no greater reassurance than knowing there'll always be a van close by containing the tools, knowledge and patience needed to put things right if your car lets you down.