Close Examining of Popular Truck Tie Down Devices
Talking about tie downs , they probably are talking about totally different things depends on the context, for instance, ratchet straps for truck are definitely 2” and 10,000 lbs tie down while ratchets for pick up will be 1” and five hundred lbs tie down, we’re only going to discuss about truck tie downs here, to keep it simple and stupid, I’m sure you’ve already seen flatbed tie downs on the road, we will only talk about flatbed trucks right now.
There are all kinds of loads on the flat bed truck, sometimes they just have to , the requirement for tie downs become pretty complex . We are going to discuss truck tie down straps solely , since the are popular tie down devices on flatbeds, and it should be the most popular tie downs on all trucks as well. .
Usually portable winch and 4×27 winch straps are most popular tie down devices for flat beds . There is one thing required for truck winch and winch strap tie down combination, winch bar, which is the tool to help you secure the cargo on the flatbed, since you can only tighten the winch straps through turning winch barrel, this only can be done by utilizing winch bars.
Some flat beds come with winches installed, not all flat beds have winches installed. When the trailer have the winches installed, we can use winch tie down straps to tie down articles on the flat bed , usually we tie down steel coils, concrete pipes, skids, anything that not too heavy for the 5400lbs safe load limit . Usually we see flat hooks at one end of the winch straps, the use of flat hook sometimes is by convention, sometimes by choice, because the flat hook is easy on flatbeds, and wire hooks can be used as well, mostly seen on 2” winch straps. We can find 2” and 4” winches and 2” and 4” winch straps , depends on different situation , the strap length can be twenty to fourty feet long or more than 50′ .
Of course there are most used tie downs: ratchets straps . In reality the ratchet straps are just the assembly of ratchet buckles and tie down webbing, which can be nylon or polyester, the combination of different ratchet buckles and different straps gives us many choices.
The ratchet tie down earned it’s popularity by being the most flexible, adaptable and capable tie down devices , from passenger cars to commercial trucks , you can see ratchet straps anywhere cargo needs to be secured. With flat hooks, wire hooks, cloth loops, chain anchors, even endless, ratchets just can’t have enough variety, how can we don’t love these ratchets? Width of the ratchets measured from 1” to 4” and the length can be anything from inches to more than 50 feet, the ratcheting mechanism really has it’s advantage. The reason we say that ratchet straps are most popular tie down devices for most trucks can be found in this paragraph, even for flatbeds which use winch straps massively may find ratchet straps attractive if there are no winches installed on the truck.
To get high quality yet low price ratcheting straps will be easy sometimes, and difficult some other times , depends on what you need and your budget. Depends on different situation , sometimes purchase them locally is a pretty good idea , sometimes online options are much better. Nowadays there are a lot of forums, blogs and online opinion sites out there, you just need to read some reviews, customer feed backs to figure out the product and service quality of the vendors, there is no need to take chances.