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A good solid set of recovery tow straps is very much akin to paying for towing insurance. If your car or truck gets stuck somewhere, a solid recovery strap (not to be confused with normal tow straps or tie down straps) can not only save you time and stress, but quite a bit of money. Getting your car or truck unstuck by yourself or with a little help from a friend (or friendly stranger) means not having to call the towing company, wait around while they get out there, and then pay the bill.
A recovery strap functions by transferring kinetic energy from the puller to the object being pulled. It hooks to the back of the pulling vehicle and the front of the vehicle being pulled. The puller accelerates forward, and (unlike a normal tow strap) the recovery strap stretches — not as extremely as a bungee cord, but akin to one. When it has stretched as much as it can, the laws of physics force it to attempt to snap back. Because the puller is still accelerating away, the recovery strap must either overcome the acceleration and mass of the puller, or merely just the mass of the object to be pulled. (Or the laws of physics, but that’s not too likely.) The end result is that nearly always, the vehicle to be recovered comes loose, and pops back up onto the road.
For vehicles that like to go offroad and get stuck in extreme situations, there are hardcore recovery straps called ‘snatch straps’ that stretch even more, and thus hold more kinetic energy. You need it if you’re going to get a four by four over a stump or out of three foot deep mud.
There are two things you need to know about recovery straps. First, they don’t have any metal parts, just in case the strap snaps under the pressure. Flying bits of metal are bad for cars (and people). The second thing is that wider straps might have a greater load capacity, but they’re also not as stretchy — which means their purpose as recovery straps is greatly reduced.
No matter what kind of motor vehicle you own — from a motorcycle to an F-150 — it’s always a good idea to keep a set of recovery tow straps in your car. Unlike the other various kinds of straps available at your auto parts store (ratchet straps, cam straps, etc.), recovery straps have no machinery — not even any hooks. They’re entirely soft, supple polyester webbing designed to endure the fiercest stress of trying to drag a vehicle out of a sticky situation.
Any vehicle has the chance to get stuck somewhere, and even if your vehicle happens to weigh only 600 lbs and have only 2 wheels, when a stranger stops by and offers to help out, you’ll be very grateful that you have a good recovery tow strap with you. If you do happen to own a pickup truck, having a recovery strap on you to help out people you come across that are stuck is a wonderful way to take pride in your vehicle.
If you’re carrying a recovery strap in your car for your own car, you need to make sure that the strap you’re carrying is rated with a working load that is equal to or greater than the weight of your car. You might want it a little stronger just for safety’s sake. If you’re a truck owner and you want to be ready to help, you should follow the same advice — grab a strap that you could tow your own truck with if necessary. That way you’ll be ready for anything.
It’s critically important that your strap of choice doesn’t have any metal hooks or other machinery on it. If the strap breaks unexpectedly, the last thing you want is a pound or two of metal whipping around at the end of the strap. That’s a good way to get someone killed or, at the minimum, someone’s car rather badly scratched up.
There’s really no good reason to not to get yourself a high-quality recovery tow strap for your vehicle. The benefits are huge if they should ever be necessary, and the cost is just a few bucks.
Tow straps are frequently sold right next to recovery straps and tie down straps in auto parts and even some department stores. But much like a wrench and a ratchet, these tools are distinct entities and should never be confused. Recovery straps are the ones that everyone should have in their vehicle as an emergency preparedness option. They allow you to attach one vehicle to another without the use of metal hooks, allowing you to get a car out of a ditch without having to call a tow truck.
If you don’t already understand why recovery straps are important to keep separate from the others, let me lay out a scenario for you:
Your minivan breaks down in the middle of the highway, and it’s not going anywhere. You set up your emergency flare up the lane a ways and call your buddies with your cellphone. They come with a truck, and you whip out your trusty tow strap. Why no recovery strap? Never needed one. The tow strap has always worked.
Your buddy hooks up your van to his truck with the tow strap, but by now it’s dark and starting to rain, so he gives it a few tugs and calls it good. You get in your van, he gets in his truck, and he starts pulling. Just as he’s gunning it to get the extra weight of your van starting to roll, the hook gives way unexpectedly. His truck jerks forward, the hook takes all of that 2 tons of momentum and puts it in a 2 ounce sharp metal object, which starts flying at upwards of a hundred miles per hour. It richochets off of his truck and into a neighboring lane of traffic, shattering a little old lady’s window and causing a 31-car pileup.
Ok, so that’s an extreme example, but even if the hook had merely embedded itself an inch deep in your friend’s rear fender, that’s still a big repair bill compared to the cost of looking ahead a little bit and buying a recovery strap to go in your emergency kit next to the tow strap.
When you’re just hauling a car behind your RV south for the winter, figuring out the weight limit you need on your tow straps is a cinch. It needs to be slightly more than your car weighs. But what if you’re a city employee and you need to buy recovery straps to handle the situation when a city transit bus gets stuck in the snow? Or what if you’re a mud bogger and you need to figure out the power of the straps you should carry in your car in case you get a stump all up in your axles?
These kinds of scenarios call for a much stronger kind of strap than they use in typical tow straps or tie down straps. But just going into the store and asking for a 6-ton working load recovery strap will still give you a startling variety of options.
When it comes to recovery straps, you’ll find them in polyester and nylon — nylon is better because it stretches more, which means better kinetic energy transfer from the tower to the towee. You’ll find them with hooks and without — without is better because in the event of a disconnection, flying metal is bad.
You’ll find that you can get a few different ‘ply’ of recovery straps, and a lot of different widths. In general, it’s the total width that matters — so a 12-inch, 1ply strap is identical in strength to a 4-inch, 3-ply strap. The 12 incher is probably a bit more cumbersome and actually a little more expensive than the 3-ply version, so it’s generally best to go for multiple ply rather than a really wide strap.
So, here’s the math you actually need: you start by doubling the weight of your vehicle. If you have a 12-ton city bus, you start with 24 tons, or 48,000 pounds. Each inch of nylon strap can power through about 10,000 pounds of weight, so you need a total of about 5 inches to pull that bus safely. Generally straps come in 3, 4, and 6 inches, so you should look for a 6-inch (or a 2-ply, 3-inch) strap for that bus. Pretty simple, huh?
Most motorcyclists expect to drive their motorcycle to wherever it’s going, but that’s not always an option — sometimes, you need to put your bike onto another vehicle, and that means learning how to properly use tie down straps. There aren’t a wide variety of methods to accomplish that goal that have been tested and found safe for both the bike and the vehicle carrying it.
There are only three different things you need to secure a motorcycle:
- Four high quality ratchet straps — or, in a real pinch, two ratchet straps and two cam buckle straps, but ratchet straps are better in every conceivable way.
- Four soft loops — that is, four special straps that are used to protect your motorcycle from the sharp, damaging S-hooks or J-hooks of your ratchet straps.
- Four solid anchor points — preferably S-hooks or D-rings or E-track built into the vehicle that’s doing the transporting.
When you purchase your ratchet straps, ask specifically for a steel (or stronger metal) ratchet with a strap-gripping plate. Most strap ratchets come in exclusively this style, but there are a few others on the market (and they should be avoided.) Once you’ve gotten your necessities all in one place, follow these steps:
- Step 1
 ut the bike in the trailer in question.
- Step 2:Wrap a soft loop around the left handlebar, place an S-hook into the end of the soft loop and put one end of the ratchet strap into the other end of the soft loop.
- Step 3:Attach the other end of the ratchet strap to the wall at a valid anchor point. Pull the slack through by hand, then ratchet it a few times.
- Step 4: Repeat for the right handlebar, then ratchet each strap a few times, back and forth, until the bike is standing up on it’s own between two taut straps.
- Step 5: Repeat for the rear of the bike (using cam buckle straps if you don’t have two more ratchet straps). There are no regular anchor points on the back of the bike, so attach the soft loops where it makes the most sense.
Moving a motor vehicle (without driving or using tow straps to drag it behind something) almost inevitably involves putting it in a trailer or onto a flatbed, both of which absolutely require the proper use of powerful tie down straps. Not only is a vehicle usually a multi-ton affair, but it’s on wheels, which means it’s quite prone to…well, rolling. The right tie downs and associated equipment aren’t just important — they’re literally a matter of life and death.
First step: get polyester straps. Nylon straps are prone to stretching, and that means loosening, and that means slippage, and that means someone’s gonna die — probably whoever is behind you. Polyester also tends to have a higher break weight and working load per inch of width.
Speaking of break weight and working load, both of those things should appear on every tie down by law. When you’re securing a motor vehicle, you want strappage that has at least a 12,000 pound working load, and you want at least two of them.
The two of them part isn’t because of the working load, but rather because most states have a law that requires a minimum of four anchor points when transporting a motor vehicle. That means two straps, minimum. Generally the accepted practice is to have two anchor points at the front and two anchor points in the back, with two parallel straps both pulled plenty tight. After all, those wheels mean the vehicle isn’t that likely to move sideways, but front and backwards — those need redundant protection. Either way, it’s obviously critically important that you hook the straps onto proper anchor points, not just to the edge of the trailer or some random chunk underneath it.
Second step: use ratchet straps or winch straps. Cam buckle straps, ropes, bungee straps, and netting are just too weak to deal with motor vehicles. Ratchet straps and winch straps (which are really the exact same thing with different hardware attached to tighten and affix them) are powerful enough to handle the stress.
E track is something that, unless you work at a moving company or as a trucker, you’re probably unfamiliar with; the short version is that E track is a way of providing plenty of anchor points for all manner of tie down straps. Much like you use a baby’s car seat to strap down a restless child and make sure it doesn’t fall onto the floor and break it’s face, tie down straps are designed to hold large, heavy, and/or highly valuable cargo in place while you transport it from one place to another.
Moving can be a lot of work, and it seems to some that tie down straps and their associated E track strips are just that much more labor that you have to put into the effort — but consider it this way: if you get there and find that your grandmother’s curio cabinet fell onto your good china and now you have to replace both, how many hours of your time will that take?
E track is nothing more than those little vertical or horizontal strips that appear regularly along the inside of the moving truck; it has spots placed regularly down it’s length that can act as anchor points for tie down straps. They’re specifically designed to accept S-hooks, J-hooks, and other common ‘attach that strap to that spot’ kind of implements. Without E track, finding places to strap, say, that curio cabinet’s top to the wall could get really hairy. With E track, it’s — sometimes literally — a snap.
The easiest ‘professional’ tie downs to use with E track are ratchet straps. Ratchet straps utilize typical polyester webbing, but add a ratchet mechanism that allows you to tighten the strap much more snugly than human muscle could ever manage. The weakest of these straps have a working load in the four or five hundred pound range, making them ideal for moving furniture.
Other kinds of tie-downs work well with E track as well, but if you’re serious about getting your stuff from here to there safely, learn how to use a ratchet strap and then…use it!
Betcha can’t guess what ratchet straps are! If you said “it’s a strap with a ratchet attached to it”, you might be right — but it’s not a ratchet like the kind you have in your home toolbox; it’s a ratcheting assembly designed to take up slack (i.e. tighten down) the strap in question. Much like a cam strap is a strap with a cam buckle on it, a winch strap is a strap with a winch on one end, and a tie down straps are straps used to tie stuff down, a ratchet strap is pretty straightforward — so it’s a wonder that more novice truckers, amateur haulers, and families trying to move their stuff to a new house seem to have trouble understanding them.
Here’s the story — all of these straps are made of polyester webbing. The webbing is mad strong; it would only take a few of the smallest straps to hold up the heaviest person on Earth. In most cases, the hardware that holds the straps tight — the ratchets, winches, and whatnot — are even stronger; the strap will tear before the metal hardware gives out.
Cam Straps are weak sauce. Cam buckles can only be pulled as tight as human muscle will allow, and they have a disturbing tendency to come loose after a few dozen miles of vibration. You typically find cam straps on heavy duty pickup trucks and other commercially available vehicles.
Ratchet Straps are the norm for moving valuable cargo. They have the advantages of mechanical tightening with the flexibility of being able to attach to any anchor point. Ratchet straps can be found just about anywhere, but are most often associated with moving trucks and hauling companies.
Winch Straps are even more hardcore than ratchet straps, able to tighten more easily and more firmly. Unfortunately, the winch generally has to be welded or bolted in place, which greatly reduces the flexibility of winch straps. Winch straps are generally found on flatbed trucks and other specialty vehicles that can count on hauling the same essential kind of cargo over and over again.
Ratchet straps are used to tie down heavy objects on top of a flatbed or other vehicle. The strap is used to bind an object tightly onto the flatbed with the assistance of the ratchet mechanism. The tie down strap’s purpose is to secure bulky objects from pianos to tractors to china cabinets onto the platform or possibly a vehicle’s roof. A ratchet strap can be used by anyone due to its simple mechanism. They come in a variety of different widths and lengths.
Ratchet straps are typically made of polyester webbing and are utilized by those who wish to transport large and/or very heavy cargo. A 1 inch wide strap of polyester webbing can be used to firmly affix a bike to a truck. Raise the width to 2 inches, and you can affix a motorcycle with equal ease. Three inches wide, and you’re talking about hooking a boat onto a truck quite firmly. At four inches, you can carry an oil drill pipe on a big rig without worry about causing a disaster on the highway.
Obivously then, when you are buying ratchet straps it is critical to consider the weight of the cargo it is being used to secure — which will then determine the width and the length of the strap that you need to use. The straps’ working capacity is determined almost entirely by the width of the strap. The wider in width, the stronger the strap, with four inches being strong enough to handle just about any job (and thus the widest commercial available ratchet strap on the market.)
It’s important to recognize the difference between working load and break strength when working with ratchet straps. Most such straps are sold by break weight, and the numbers are pretty big – 4,000 lbs through 80,000 lbs. But the working load of any given strap is only 20%-25% of the break weight. Think about it this way: if you fly around a sharp corner and create 3 g’s of sideways force, that’s like the item suddenly weighing three times as much. That’s why you want the break weight to be at least four times the weight of the item.
Ratchet straps and winch straps are both kinds of tie down straps, and they have remarkably similar purposes.
A winch strap is a pretty straightforward piece of hardware that’s easy to grasp the form and function of. The ‘strap’ part is polyester webbing, exactly like a ratchet strap. The end hook on one end is almost always S hooks or double J hooks, exactly like a ratchet strap. The only difference is that instead of a ratchet mechanism partway along the strap, a winch hook has a winch instead of the other end hook. The strap is fed into the winch, pulled right with a cranking mechanism, and then locked into place. The winch is usually (permanently) fixed to the bed of the truck or trailer, though there are some winch straps that use a winch that has an end-hook of it’s own and attaches to a normal anchor point like any other strap.
Mostly, however, the winches are fixed. Some of the winches are welded into place, though that’s rare. Others are bolted down so that they can be removed for repair. Still others slide and/or lock into place for even easier removal — commonplace for trucks that don’t always need to strap their cargo down. Winch straps are often seen on flatbed trucks, where strapping cargo down is mandated by law.
All that said, it’s easy to forget that, if your winch breaks, it’s not all that difficult to use a decent ratchet strap in place of your usual winch straps. A ratchet strap being the same kind of webbing, so there’s no difference in the strap’s strength — the only question is ‘is a ratchet as strong as a winch?’. The answer is ‘yes, mostly’. The ratchet and the winch are about equally strong when it comes to tensile strength — as in, if you pull really, really hard on the strap, the winch and the ratchet both break sometime long after the strap has already torn.
The winch does have a small advantage in that if it gets hit by a big chunk of flying debris, it’s less likely than the ratchet to shatter — but if there’s debris that big and dangerous flying around your cargo, you’re probably already in trouble for other reasons.
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tow strap | ratchet_straps_mkl September 19, 2011 | 
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