A mechanic who comes to the breakdown.
Patrick Freeman spent twenty five years in other people’s shops before building one that drives. No bays, no waiting room, no tow bill to get the work started.
- Licensed and insured
- BBB listed
- No hourly minimum
- Open 24 hours, seven days
Twenty five years, then a truck of his own
Patrick Freeman has been turning wrenches since the late nineties. Most of those years were spent inside other people’s operations, working through whatever came in the door: fleet trucks, farm machinery, the family sedan that would not start on a Monday. He learned the trade the long way, which in this line of work means learning it on things that were already broken and already costing somebody money.
Freeman Roadside Repair opened in 2022. The business is three years old. The hands running it are not, and that gap is the whole point: there is nobody in the next bay to ask once the truck has driven an hour to get to you.
What pushed him out on his own was a pattern he kept watching from the inside. People sat on a shoulder for hours waiting on somebody who had promised a window and then filled it with a bigger job. People were quoted one number and handed another when the work was already done and the vehicle was already apart. And plenty of people simply never got a call back, because their job was twenty minutes of labor or because their farm sat too far off the highway to be worth the drive.
OwnerPatrick Freeman, more than 25 years of hands-on experience across automotive, diesel, agricultural and industrial equipment.
Founded2022, in American Canyon, California.
StatusLicensed, insured and listed with the Better Business Bureau.
Reach him(707) 553-3369 or the contact page.
We’ve built our business around one simple promise: reliability when it matters most.
Patrick Freeman, owner
What a fully mobile shop actually takes
People hear “mobile mechanic” and picture a jump pack and a socket set. That covers a jump start and very little else. A truck that can finish real repairs at a roadside or in a field has to carry the parts that fail most often, because a two hour round trip for a serpentine belt turns a quick job into half a day. So the truck runs with common pads and rotors, batteries, filters, belts, hoses and a hydraulic kit already aboard.
Then there is diagnosis. Guessing is expensive when you are standing in a field, so the truck carries scan tools for automotive, diesel and ABS systems. Knowing which injector is dropping out before anything comes apart is the difference between one visit and three.
The piece most people do not expect is welding. On-site welding is what makes farm and heavy equipment work possible at all, because a cracked bracket on a combine in October cannot wait for a shop appointment in November. It also means a hydraulic hose can be made up on the spot instead of ordered.
Why the range runs from jump starts to hydraulics
Most mobile mechanics stop at cars and light trucks. This one does not, and the reason is less impressive than it sounds: the fundamentals underneath a pickup and underneath an excavator are the same fundamentals.
- Starting and chargingA dead battery on a commuter car and dead battery cables on a semi are the same circuit with different wire gauges. Jump starts, alternators, starters and no-start diagnostics all sit here, and they make up a large share of the after-hours calls.
- DieselInjectors, fuel systems, turbochargers, DPF and DEF faults. Diesel engines run under the hoods of delivery trucks, tractors, generators and excavators alike, so one body of knowledge covers a very wide range of machines.
- HydraulicsA loader bucket, a dump bed, a baler and an industrial press all move oil through a pump, a valve and a cylinder. Hoses burst, cylinders leak past their seals, pumps lose pressure. The circuit does not care what is bolted to the end of it.
- Brakes and chassisPads, rotors, calipers, lines and air brakes, plus shocks, leaf springs, tie rods and wheel bearings. Heavier equipment means bigger fasteners and more torque, not a different theory.
- InspectionsBIT and FMCSA inspections performed at your yard or at the shipper, which is where a fleet owner would rather have a truck than in somebody’s queue.
Learning all of that took decades of doing it, and it is why a call about a farm sprayer and a call about a minivan reach the same phone. The full breakdown sits on the services page, and finished work is on the gallery.
Small on purpose
There is an obvious version of this business where the next step is three trucks, a dispatcher and a script. Patrick has not taken it, and that is deliberate.
When a company grows that way, the person you speak to stops being the person who fixes anything. Your description of the noise gets summarized into a work order, and whoever shows up is meeting the problem cold. Staying small keeps that chain at one link. You describe the noise to the person who will hear it himself in an hour. He can tell you on the phone whether it sounds like a wheel bearing or a bad U-joint, and whether it is safe to drive it three miles to somewhere flatter. That conversation is free, and it is often the most useful part of the call.
Who callsCommuters, owner operators, trucking companies, farms, construction crews, warehouses and municipal yards.
WhereNapa, Solano and the surrounding counties, wherever the vehicle or machine happens to be sitting.
WhenAny hour on any day, including the ones nobody else answers.
In their words
Reviews left by customers, unedited.
Ended up using him for my entire fleet.
The number you hear on the phone is the number on the invoice. That is the entire business model, and it is why the phone keeps ringing.
A fleet owner does not hand over every truck he has after one repair unless the number he was told kept matching the number he paid. More of the work is on the gallery, and the contact page has every way to reach him.
Questions people ask before calling
Mostly about how a one-man mobile operation works in practice.
How long has Freeman Roadside Repair been in business?
The business was founded in 2022. Patrick Freeman himself has more than twenty five years of experience as a mechanic, gained working for other repair companies before he started this one. Those are two different numbers and we keep them straight.
Is Patrick the person who actually shows up?
Yes. The same person answers the phone, quotes the work and does the repair. That is the reason the company has stayed small, because every handoff between the description and the wrench loses detail that matters.
Why did he start a mobile business instead of opening a shop?
Because the problem he kept seeing was not a shortage of shops, it was people stuck waiting for one. A truck that carries parts, scan tools, welding gear and a hydraulic kit can finish most repairs where the vehicle already is, which removes a tow bill and a day of downtime from the bill.
Do small jobs get turned away?
No, and that is a founding principle rather than a courtesy. There is no hourly minimum here, so a short repair is priced as a short repair. Being ignored over a twenty minute job is one of the things that made this business exist.
How is the price handled?
You get a real number before the truck rolls, based on what you describe. If something underneath turns out to be worse than it sounded, you hear about it before any further money is spent, never afterward on an invoice.
Talk to the mechanic, not a queue
One number reaches Patrick. Describe the vehicle or machine and what it is doing, and you will know what it takes to fix and roughly when he can be there.