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Tow straps are great tools for short-range, emergency towing jobs. But they’re all that great for long-distance towing jobs — by which I mean anything more than “across the block”. You certainly wouldn’t want to try to cross down with just a tow strap connecting your defunct vehicle with a functional one.
The reason for that is simple: tow straps don’t protect the towing vehicle from the towee. That means every stop sign, stop light, brake light, raccoon in the road, sneeze, and butterfly is another chance that the person in the towee car might miss the brake and put a big ol’ dent in the back of your car.
Don’t get me wrong — tow straps are excellent tools to have; I keep one in the back of my truck in the toolbox that holds my snatch strap, my recovery strap, my tie down straps, and a few other straps that you don’t need to know about. My friends call me at least once a month with the latest story of how their car got stuck there, because they know I can get them out and functional again.
The other major thing that separates a tow strap from a tow bar is the need for a driver in the first place. Correctly installed, a tow bar ‘steers’ the towee for you. Tow straps require the existence and use of a licensed driver in the towed vehicle, ready and able to turn the wheel as well as apply the brakes. That can be a pretty disconcerting job given that, if you’re being towed by a very large vehicle, your view will consist almost entirely of that vehicle’s rear end.
Compare that to a tow bar, where having a passenger is the towed vehicle isn’t just unsafe, it’s actively illegal in most states! The tow bar does the work of the passenger, and if someone does happen to be in the other vehicle and they turn the wheel while you’re driving down the road, they could cause a major accident.
Finally, there’s the issue of safe speed. A tow bar will allow you to travel around 45 mph without much danger to either vehicle. A tow strap limits you to about 20 mph. Any faster and the rear driver won’t have the reaction time to turn and brake fast enough to prevent harming the towing vehicle.
Tow straps are much cheaper, much easier to use, and much easier to store — they definitely have their place. Just know the limitations of the tools you have on hand, and be safe.
Ratchet straps are one of a few different kinds of tie down straps used to secure things to the inside of a moving truck or the back of a pickup or flatbed. In short, its a normal polyester strap with hooks on either end, but it’s not a mechanism in the middle that ratchets the strap onto a spool, shortening it more with each crank of the mechanism.
The end result is that you get a strap that is almost perfectly snug to the item being secured, and is held more tightly than any amount of human muscle could manage. Whether you’re making sure a grand piano doesn’t roll around inside your U-Haul or you’re stacking a pallet of computers to the back of a pickup to take to your local elementary school, ratchet straps are the tool for the job.
Generally speaking, a one inch wide polyester strap is perfect for attaching things that have a weight and bulk about equivalent to a human being. A two-inch strap can handle larger objects like motorcycles. Three-inch straps can hold a car onto the back of a flatbed. Four-inch straps are used for moving giant pieces of machinery like parts of oil drilling rigs, or halves of double-wide mobile homes.
Of course, you need to worry about the length as well. In order to properly use a ratchet strap, you need about 3 feet more strap than it takes to get from one anchor point to the next. That’s to give the ratchet mechanism plenty to wind up on.
Also, take a close look at the break weight of your ratchet straps (and the ratchet itself). Generally the break weight on a strap might be between 2 tons for a 1-inch strap and 40 tons for a 4-inch strap. That sounds like a lot, but consider this: if you take a really sharp corner at a decent speed, you can easily generate 3 ‘g’s of sideway force. That means that your merely 1200 pound motorcycle might suddenly “weigh” 3600 pounds for those few seconds that you fly around the corner! For that reason, it’s important to buy a strap that has a break weight at least four times greater than the actual weight of your load.
There are two kinds of ratchet straps in the world — the kind that plumbers use to keep their ratchets in place, and the kind that movers use to ratchet a strap tightly enough that whatever’s being strapped down won’t move. Guess which one is more interesting?
A ratchet strap is the perfect form of tie down strap for an inexperienced mover or trucker. Generally, such an individual will have to choose between strapping their goods down with ratchet straps, cam straps, winch straps, or just plain rope. The last is a joke.
Here’s the skinny. Every tie down strap is made of polyester webbing. Some other straps are made of nylon so that they’re stretchy; tie down straps aren’t supposed to be stretchy, and polyester combines non-stretchiness with extraordinary strength, so it’s the substance of choice. The ratchet on a ratchet strap is significantly stronger than the webbing itself, so it won’t give out, either.
You could try to use cam straps, but they have a fatal flaw: you have to pull them tight with Muscle Power(tm), and they can come loose in the course of normal everyday driving over a bumpy road. They’re not bad, but if you’re transporting something really valuable, you don’t want to take the chance that your goods will slide around or come undone.
You could try to use winch straps to get around that problem — but the winch sits at one end of the strap, meaning you have to have something to attach the winch to. That can be problematic if you’re not a welder and you don’t want to drill bolt holes in the bottom of your truck.
Ratchet straps form the perfect midline, giving you the same kind of mechanical tightening ability that a winch has, but taking up space on the strap itself. That means they can be used in almost any situation and they deliver the service you need without a fuss.
Whether you’re a civilian trying to make it cross-country in a U-Haul or a newbie trucker trying to figure out how to secure a load with a minimum of mucking about, fall back on ratchet straps — they’re the right tool for the job.
If you pay for towing insurance, you might very well be able to save yourself quite a chunk of change in the long run by simply purchasing a good quality recovery strap and a good quality tow strap to keep in your vehicle. (Don’t confuse these with tie down straps; the three all look similar but have very different purposes.)
If your car or truck gets stuck in a ditch, all you need is a friend with a vehicle and a recovery strap to get it out. The first thing to do is to find an anchor point on each vehicle — most modern vehicles have a hook somewhere on the chassis under the bumper that will allow you to hook the loop of a recovery strap. Once the two are connected, have the tower accelerate slowly but firmly away from the stuck vehicle.
The recovery strap will stretch — it’s supposed to — and then it will ‘snap back’. Because the tower is still accelerating away, it will transfer the kinetic energy swiftly but gently onto the stuck vehicle, pulling it firmly but without a ‘jerk’ out of its predicament.
If the stuck vehicle is SO stuck that it’s functional mass is greater than the mass and the acceleration of the tower, you might have a problem — but that’s not terribly likely. Should you find yourself in that position, there are still options — find an offroading store and buy yourself a ‘snatch strap’; they’re the best bet for really unsticking the really stuck.
Once the towee is unstuck, the recovery straps can go away, and the tow straps can come out. The tow strap is a short-term tool, not to be used to lug a car across the country. Instead, use it to get it to a place where it can drive home under it’s own power — or just to get it home if it’s immobile on its own. You’ll need one person driving in the towed car, mostly to apply the brakes at each stop light so it doesn’t crash into the towing car.
It’s pretty common practice for people with boats or RVs to keep a tow strap in their car for when it comes time to take the other vehicle somewhere special. But it’s a lot less common for someone to keep a recovery strap in their ride of choice — which is too bad, because it’s just as common to need a recovery strap as it is to need a jumper cable.
Recovery straps differ from tow straps or ratchet straps in two very important ways. First, they don’t have metal machinery that can break or go flying in an accident. Second, they’re made to stretch and then snap back like a rubber band.
You can imagine that, in a tow strap, that would be a horrible quality: every time you stop accelerating, the car you’re towing would ‘snap back’ — right into the back of your vehicle! But when one car is stuck in a ditch and the other isn’t, it’s a wonderful thing. Essentially what happens is that the moving vehicle translates all of it’s kinetic energy into the recovery strap, which tries to snap back — pulling the other car right out of the ditch as it does so!
Any vehicle can get stuck on the side of almost any road. If you’re a motorcyclist and you’ve gotten stuck in a pond, you’ll be grateful you had that recovery strap when someone in a Volkswagen Beetle pops by and offers to give you a hand. On the other hand, if you’re a Ford F-150 type, a spare recovery strap in your toolbox will give you the means to help out just about any stuck vehicle you come across.
If you’re carrying a recovery strap for your own vehicle, you should make sure the strap is rated for your vehicle. If you’re the helpful type that wants to be able to assist other people in need, get a strap that’s rated for YOUR vehicle — you won’t generally be trying to recover something that’s bigger than you are in the first place. Be prepared, right?
If you’re looking to move for the first time in a while, you’re probably going to be exposed to something unfamiliar. It’s called E-track, and it’s commonplace on basically all moving trucks these days. E-track is designed to create anchor points for tie down straps, giving you lots of options for attaching your large valuable objects to the walls of the moving van.
At first glance, you might think that it’s a bit excessive — or obsessive — to strap everything to the walls of a truck that you’re probably going to be packing to the brim with boxes anyway. But consider this: how are you going to feel if you’re halfway between here and your new home and you hear a rumble and a crash from the back of the truck? What if it’s your grandmother’s china cabinet? Or your motorcycle falling into your vintage LP collection?
E-track is the answer. With a decent amount of tie down straps — usually, to be specific, ratchet straps — you can easily secure any and everything that might fall down to the walls. As long as you use enough straps to handle the weight and you secure them properly, you should be worry-free. If you don’t like or can’t afford ratchet straps, don’t worry — E-track supports S-hooks, J-hooks, and almost any other kind of hooks as well.
In almost every measurable way except cost, however, ratchet straps are the way to go. The ratcheting mechanism allows you to get a much snugger fit on your items from the get-go, which means less wiggling during travel, which means less chance of getting loose and doing harm. Ratchet straps are also even easier than others to undo, meaning getting your stuff back out of the van once you’ve gotten there is easier as well.
If you go to the moving truck rental shop and they offer you a truck that doesn’t have E-track in it, ask them politely to exchange it — because the difference E-track makes in the safety and convenience of your move is worth it.
Don’t get mixed up — tow straps and tie down straps are not anything like the same thing, even though they might look similar and might be sold in the same section of the auto supply store. You wouldn’t bring a chef’s knife into the woods to whittle, and you shouldn’t use a tow strap to hold a load in place while you drive — or a tie down strap to pull something massive and wheeled behind your vehicle.
Not only do tie down straps generally come in relatively narrow widths and relatively small working loads, tow straps also have the very important quality of being free of metal. Let me tell you why that’s important: kinetic energy.
Using the Force
See, you science types know that force is equal to mass times acceleration. Say you’ve got a truck with a mass measured in tons, and it’s straining against a tie down strap, trying to pull a Volkswagen Beetle down the road. It’s putting its mass times its acceleration into the strap, which is stretching out and storing that kinetic energy.
If the hook on that strap should break or lose it’s grip, that little tiny metal hook that connects the tie-down strap — maybe a quarter of a pound on the outside edge — is going to experience the force of that pull, and it’s going to express the bulk of that force as acceleration. In layman’s terms, that hook is going to go flying around at upwards of a bajillion miles per hour, and it’ll put a hole in pretty much anything except your engine block. Including bystanders.
On the other hand, a tow strap that slips might whip around like the tail of a pissed off bobcat, but it’s not actually going to hurt all that much.
Fully Loaded
The other big reason to use a tow strap where a tow strap belongs? Working loads. A tie-down strap generally doesn’t come in working loads big enough to pull a vehicle. That means you need more straps, which means more connecting points OR loading up a single connection point with more straps than it’s made for. Either scenario is a disaster waiting to happen.
Stick with tow straps for towing. It really is that simple.
If you’re an ordinary Joe towing your dune buggy out to the ocean for a bit of sandy fun, it’s not really a challenge to figure out what kind of tow straps you need: it’s the kind that’s rated for just over what your dune buggy weighs.
But what if you’re in the professional transport business and you need to figure out what kind of tie down straps you need to tie that dune buggy to a flatbed? Or what if you’re an offroader and you need to know what size tow straps you need to rescue a pickup that’s fallen down a hill?
Recovery Straps
Straps for getting a stuck vehicle unstuck have to be much stronger than the ones you use to tow a car across a flat, pleasant, asphalt road. Recovery straps, as they’re called, can be found in working loads that can pull anywhere from one to several tons. They come in plastic and in nylon — the nylon is more stretchy, which is good. They also come with or without hooks — you want them without; those hooks will put a huge hole in your windshield and/or face if they give way while you’re pulling.
The strength of a recovery strap is based on it’s total width — meaning if it’s 2-ply, you get the same strength as a 12-inch strap in only 6 inches. If it’s 3-ply, that same 12-inch strength will be only 4 inches wide. In general, multi-ply straps are cheaper and easier to deal with. Each ‘inch’ of width equates to about 5,000 pounds of safe pulling power, so if you’ve got a 2-ton pickup (4,000 pounds), you’ll want a 1-inch strap. If you’re pulling a cement mixer that weighs in at 9 tons (18,000 pounds), you can use a 4-inch strap or a 2-ply 2-inch strap.
Tie Down Straps
Tie-down straps are even easier to use — the working load listed on the strap, multiplied by the number of straps, has to exceed the weight of the object you’re tying down. So if you want to tie down that 2-ton truck, you can totally use sixteen 250-pound straps to do it.
It doesn’t matter if you’re strapping down a valuable family heirloom to move it across the country or you’re just taking a pile of crap to the dump — you’d better have the right tie down straps for the job. Tie downs include ratchet straps, cam straps, bungee straps, bungee webbing, winch straps, and more — but they do NOT include tow straps. Tow straps are similar, but have a different purpose and are built slightly differently.
Here are a few basic steps to follow no matter what kind of tie down straps you choose to use.
- Always visually inspect your tie down straps before you use them. Check for abrasion, wear, cuts, and other signs of structural weakness.
- All tie downs should be stored in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight.
- Each time you use your straps, look to make sure they’re not going to rub up against a sharp edge or abrasive surface during the move.
- Always wind up your excess strappage or webbing so it doesn’t flop around while you move.
- Use the right straps for your load. If you have 250lb work load straps and a 2000 lb load, you need to use at least eight straps.
- Don’t ever use nylon straps. Polyester is the new standard for a good reason.
Tie your load down securely — and remember that the more anchor points you have, the more secure your load is. That’s where webbing really shines, as it’s easy to attach the webbing to several anchor points. Of course, your anchor point should also be rated to hold at least four times the weight that the strap is bearing.
- Tighten all of your straps to equal tightness — any one strap being looser than the others will result in a direction that the load will more easily shift in during transport, which in turn means the wear on all of your other straps will increase.
Following these basic rules will ensure that your tie down straps last for years — and in your cargo getting there safely.
Tow straps are extraordinarily tough straps designed for towing vehicles. Most often, you’ll see these straps on use on the highway, as a recreational vehicle tows the family car along behind. Also commonly available and very similar in nature are recovery straps, which are even stronger and designed for pulling stuck vehicles out of ditches and whatnot, and tie down straps which look similar but are actually used to secure cargo during long trips.
The first rule of using these straps is not to interchange them. In principle, they can each do the other’s job, but there are good reasons not to do so. For example, if you use a tie down strap as a recovery strap, you’re using something with metal hooks and other metal parts to pull a two-ton object — if the hook should come undone, you’ll have a sharp metal object whipping through the air at potentially hundreds of miles per hour. That’s not good news for anyone or anything in the area.
When using tow straps as tow straps, like you should, there are still several precautions that are vital to take. First, check your state laws to make sure that everything you’re doing is legal. State laws vary quite a bit, so what you’ve done in Nevada won’t necessarily hold up in Louisiana when you get there.
You’ll need a driver in the towed vehicle to steer and apply the breaks. Make sure they have a valid driver’s license — even if it’s being towed, it’s still illegal for an unlicensed driver to drive.
If you have the option, using a redundant tow bar or tow chains alongside your tow strap is a great idea. Either way, visually inspect the entire assembly at least twice — preferably two different people look once each — before you depart. Make sure the hooks are fastened securely. Make sure the straps are entirely intact; even a slight weakness can cause a disaster on the road.
Use the right equipment with the right precautions and a little bit of education, and your trip should go flawlessly — at least as far as the towing is concerned.
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tie down straps, tow strap | ratchet_straps_mkl December 22, 2011 | 
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