Everyone who has ever driven off pavement and ended up stuck, which likely is 99% of folks reading this, absolutely needs to watch the video below.
It goes into the dangers of the forces of pulling out stuck trucks like many of us drive.
Watching this video sent a chill down my spine as I have done exactly what this unfortunate man did, using a cheap Chinese type tow strap (I bought mine at Tractor Supply because it was cheap :hammer:) looped over a ball hitch and hit the gas pedal to pull a truck out.
After my wife sent me this video, I started going down the rabbit hole of the forces at work and the load numbers on the equipment are surprisingly high, especially when pulling out the diesel 3/4 and 1 ton pickups. A diesel pickup with a load of feed/corn, ice chests, fuel, and people can easily weigh 10,000 - 12,000 on up to 15,000 pounds, if really loaded up. Stuck in the mud doubles that number to over 20,000# pounds of force needed to pull it out. Add a heavy load in the bed and/or a trailer and the numbers can jump to 30,000+ pounds. I have pulled out a F250 that had the bed loaded and towing a trailer full of feed stuck in the mud with a cheap Chinese tow strap on the ball hitch. Looking back, I got lucky.
Here is a good website with some very basic introductory type tutorials. They also offer an app for phones for $10 that will help calculate load forces and thus help the stuck person figure out what type and rating of equipment is needed to do the job safely..
Yes, I am still alive after doing it the half-assed full redneck way, but after reading this story and digging into it, this type of bad outcome is more common than we might think.
One of my relatives manufactures heavy duty axles for the off-road crowd. He has seen tow and winch lines break three times, one of the times cutting off a person's leg as he watched from afar.
Guys, this is a danger we can very easily minimize with a small bit of time and effort to inform ourselves. Please do yourself a favor and spend just a bit of time looking into and buying the proper equipment.
Another point - many believe that putting a "dampener" or "winch blanket" over a line will make it safe. There are some excellent videos on YouTube testing these devices and they do absolutely nothing - zero - to slow down a broken winch or tow line. They have absolutely no effect, so do not lull yourself into thinking that using one will save you, it won't.
Is this type of gear overkill? I think about my relative watching as a person's leg was cut off by a line breaking or that image below with a tow hitch through the windshield. That could be any of us.
A bit too much safety factor in equipment is better than coming up just a wee bit too short and having a catastrophic failure. Say you spend $500 to $1000, that is less than the deductible on the ER visit and a doc is not going to sew a leg back on or put a bandaid over a trailer hitch in the head. The gear will last many, many years and is something that if needed, needs to work right - and safely.
