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once i saw a diagram in some of my books , of a car being towed by a big vehicle that was sort of a truck. now today that i am studying work , that picture somehow popped in my mind. it looked mostly like this :

enter image description here

please dont bother about numericals shown in the picture ; the picture that i saw had only the angle shown (between the rod tat connects the truck and the car).also in my diagram the force by the truck had lifted the car's front part a bit above the ground.

so my question is that does the inclination of rod bring any change to the force or work done on moving the car?

from the formula of work it looks like NO.

so why the car is being towed at all ?

is it to reduce the friction ?

if yes , then what is the use of the inclination of the rod in the figure that i gave(in this picture no part is above the ground)?

hope i have addressed my confusions clearly and would receive a good answer

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  • $\begingroup$ While lifting the car being towed up does decrease the cars normal force, and thus the friction, it equally increases the normal force of the tow-truck and thus it's friction. Perhaps if the truck has more "efficient" tires this would be beneficial. Though I do not believe this is why they actually do it. $\endgroup$
    – Novice C
    Commented Feb 24, 2016 at 10:06

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The cars are towed because the direction is locked by the Neiman, plus if a gear is set pulling the car could break the engine (and would suffer alot of friction anyway).

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  • $\begingroup$ but what about the work done on moving the car , wont it decrease ? $\endgroup$
    – Faiz Iqbal
    Commented Feb 24, 2016 at 10:12
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When you split the force acting on the car due to tension 'T' into rectangular components you will notice that the sine component cancels out the normal reaction of the car, hence decreasing the friction( and if thee will be less friction then definitely there will be less work done).

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