My friend John is a truck driver, a few days ago he asked me for help, he needed winch strap for his flatbed hauling job, he needed the straps in urgent, and he couldn’t get them at truck stop because they were expensive, so he asked me to get some locally or online for cheap.

I did the research, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought, I found a few online retailers who offered the straps at very competitive price, I made a few phone calls, in the end I bought the winch strap from Manufacturer Express, they offered low price plus free shipping. When John tried those winch straps, he loved them, and I felt happy for him. When the job was done, John didn’t take all the straps because he didn’t need all of them(I bought 2 boxes, 20 total), and we only opened one box, so we wanted to return the other box, I called in, the guy at the other end on the line just asked why we wanted to return the straps, then he gave a RMA number and sent us return shipping label, that was the service we are supposed to get! But how many times we got screwed by the big boys on the street?

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Truck tie downs are actually about totally different stuff to different applications , we will focus on commercial truck tie downs in this post , more precisely, we will talk about flat beds only, probably you’ve already seen them on the highway or truck stop.

There are all kinds of loads on the flat bed truck, sometimes they just have to , the requirement for tie downs become complicated. When it comes to flatbed truck , the first thing comes up will be the truck winches, you can see those flatbeds with truck winches at one side on the highway all the time, with those winches it’s easy for the driver to tie down loads with just winch straps with the help of winch bar .

For most flat bed trucks, truck winch and winch straps are what we usually use to tie down stuff, some trailers come with winches installed you only have to get winch strap. There is one thing necessary 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.

If your flatbeds come with winches installed, you only need to get some winch straps for most of your work, of course you still need to keep some chains, binders and ratchet straps handy. When the flat bed have the winches installed, we can use winch straps to tie down loads 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 double J hooks can be used as well, mostly seen on 2” winch straps. Truck winches come in with two different width, 2” and 4”, while there are 2”, 3” and 4” winch straps available, if you were to use 3” winch strap you only can put it into 4” winch for sure, when we look at the length of the winch strap, the range is pretty wide for regular use, from around 20 feet to more than 60 feet, 27′ and 30′ being the most common length available.

Of course here are most popular tie downs: ratchet straps. Usually the ratchet straps are assemblies of ratchet buckles and nylon or polyester webbing tie down strap, there are fixed end straps with ratchet buckles and loose end straps.

The ratchet tie down earned it’s popularity by being the most flexible, adaptable and capable tie down devices , from passenger cars to eighteen wheelers , you can see ratchet straps anywhere cargo needs to be secured. The ending comes with quite some varieties, flat hooks, wire hooks , chain extensions, snap hooks, endless and more. 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. On commercial trucks ratchet tie downs are the most popular tie down devices for shippers , those flat bed trucks without winches installed will find ratchet straps pretty useful .

Before you go out or go online to get these tie down straps , you will have to know how to get most out of them with less money, most important thing is the strap quality , most likely you will know the quality of local store stuff, but for online stores you need to find out by reading other people’s the reviews, trucking blogs, such as running tire , customer feed backs, or by some other venues to find out if the products and service are good or not.

Technorati Tags: ratchet straps, truck strap, truck tie down, winch bars, winch strap

Truck winches and winch straps mostly have been seen on flatbeds, a big chunk of flatbeds sold with winches installed, so the drivers only need to get winch straps to use with the winches, if they don’t have a winch bar they can get one from local store on online. A few different kinds of truck winches are available, most seen ones are slide in winches and weld on winches, to use slide in winches the flatbeds have to have rails installed at one side of the truck bed, and the sizes of the winches will be 2” or 4”, you will be able to use 2” or 4” winch straps with them respectively, of course you can put 3” winch straps in the 4” winches, but that’s not something you will see every day.

The concept of truck winches with winch straps are pretty straight forward, the component of both truck winch and ratchet that the tie down straps are inserted into for tightening the whole web tie down straps called mandrel, the mechanism to tighten the straps on truck winch is different than the self contained ratchets, you will need the help of winch bars to tighten the winch straps. The barrel across the winch body has holes at one end, a  gear at the other end, the part between the winch body is mandrel, you can insert the webbing into it, close the brake on the gear will allow you the tighten the straps over the load, since the gear is only allowed to go one direction, When unloading your flatbed, you can open the brake on the gear, loose the strap a bit, get the hook off and retract the winch strap by turning the winch barrel the other way, when you are at it you will find it’s so easy, even…can dot it. In order to secure your load with winch straps, you will need winch bar to turn the barrel, there is no way you can operate the winch by hand, it’s not only not safe, but also not legal.

For your information, usually you can choose from 4 different kind of winch bar, the standard winch bars painted black, the chromated standard winch bars, chromated combination winch bars and combination winch bars painted half yellow. To be honest, all these winch bars are serving the exact same purpose, and it’s all about personal preference and sometimes people choose combination winch bars for specific reasons, one of them being that you can use something else with the combination winch bar, thus the word “combination” in the name.

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E Track tie down system usually has two parts, the E Tracks and the logistic straps or hardware connector, aka E Track straps or tie downs. The E Track will be installed inside the box trucks , the most used are 2 variations , horizontal E Track and vertical E Track, the sizes usually are 5 feet and10 feet section. E Track tie downs have some varieties, there are e track cargo bars with e fittings at both ends, ratchet e track straps, cam buckle e track straps, rope tie offs, wood beam socket, they all have e fittings at the ends, and on the floor we have chocks for stop vehicles from moving. Of course all of these need to have E Tracks installed and secured on the trailers, let’s see how do we do that.

Here we will show you E Track Installation and safety tips .

Now we’re going to mount the E Track onto the trailer wall, first thing we do is to find the wall studs, this is same for the floor installation. The wall studs are a big channel with a few flat spots to put the plywood on, we will do the same to the E Track and bridge the stud and the E Track, now we need to use screw to hold the E Track in the place, the trick is the same as any other handy jobs. The key to safety is to use screws with deep threads, and put a screw into every hole if it is possible, and run the E track as far as possible (length wise), this helps to spread the load out as far and even as possible. But keep in mind that the outside wall is 2 inches away, make sure the screws won’t go too far!

The last thing of  the installation or say the first thing before getting the truck on the road is to test your e track installation, you can insert a 2”x12′ ratchet e track strap into the e track, drag it, ratcheting it all the way, make sure every piece of e tracks installed are mounted safely , any weak spots have to be fixed.

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Binder Chains and chain binder are heavy duty tie down equipment , both chains and binders are made of carbon steel, the WLL of the chains and binders are higher than most comparable tie down straps , let’s look at 5/16” transport chain(WLL 4700lbs) vs. WLL 3333lbs 2” ratchet tie down straps ,  6600lbs 3/8” transport chains vs. 5400lbs 4” tie down straps , the grade 70 chains are stronger than ratchet tie down straps and the grade 70 load binders are stronger than grade 70 chains, 3/8”-1/2” chain binder has WLL of 9200lbs, which is much stronger than 6600lbs of 3/8” chains . If we examine the design factor of chains and tie down straps, we will see that chains and binders have 4:1 design factor while tie down straps have design factor 3:1, that’s another reason we consider chains and binders are heavy duty tie downs .

According to NACM recommendations, the carbon steel used in making grade 70 chains should meet following criteria: no more than 0.35% Carbon, 0.040% Phosphorous and 0.050% Sulfur. As long as the choice made by chain manufacturers meets the recommended criteria and the final products meet or exceeds DOT requirements(or CHP, California Highway Patrol, or some other mandated requirements), we can use these products for transportation purpose and don’t have to worry about inspections.

These chains and binders are mostly used to haul big, heavy equipment, such as backhoe, bulldozer, these things are hard on straps, only carbon steel chains can sustain that kind of abuse , when we talk about backhoe, forklift, we need at least 3/8” grade 70 chains and binders to secure them, for something which has less weight we consider 5/16” chains are good fit, of course we still have 1/2” and up chains and binders, these chains will most likely be used to tie down something out of ordinary, such as battle tanks, or some other applications require super heavy duty chains.

Grade 70 transport chain can be used on anything but overhead lifting, you need at least grade 80 alloy chains for overhead lifting. We see people use transport chains to drag the trees, tow the docks, and to tie down the logs out of the the trees, you can go around to find more creative uses of these chains and binders, check out posts on www.cargofun.com for entertaining.

Technorati Tags: chain binders, grade 70 chains, load binders, steel chain, tie down chains, transport chains

Ratchet straps are assemblies of ratchet buckles with all kinds of straps with or without hooks, endless or not. The straps part of the assemblies can be made of nylon or polyester webbing , the safe load limit can be a few hundred pounds to thousands of pounds , the width of the strap can range from 1 inch to 4 inches , both ends can be a loop, endless, wire hook , flat hook, spring e fitting, snap hook, chain extension,or the ends can have different set up.

The ratchet buckle is primary made of steel, some buckles have plastic handles, some have aluminum handles, and there is one kind of buckle called one piece ratchet buckle, the handle is steel.

The straps are made of nylon webbing or polyester webbing, nylon webbing is used in many applications where shock absorption properties are important because nylon webbing has better elongation than polyester webbing of the same construction and strength, such as motor cycle tie downs, polyester webbing is used where low elongation and low creep are desirable, such as flat bed tie down straps, we don’t want the load on the truck bed to move .

Coated with suitable material, we can impact the characteristics of the webbing , we can make more abrasion resistant, seal the straps to prevent corrosion, increase ultra-violet light resistance, increase or decrease coefficient of friction and more .

Last but not the least, the quality of the straps is the most important characteristic, to use these straps properly and safely is a must . Now we need to find low price yet high quality straps. Usually your local dealer will have quite some varieties of straps, and the quality probably is OK but the price will be somewhat high. Actually there is a better way to acquire these straps, you guessed it, online stores are probably the best place to find wonderful deals, not most of the time but you will always find what you need, maybe not exactly but it will be close. Next time when you’re set to purchase truck tie down straps, keep in your mind that you deserve both quality and price, don’t settle for less whatsoever.

Technorati Tags: nylon webbing, polyester webbing, ratchet straps, tie downs

The winch strap usually will be used with truck winches, and these straps come in 2” and 4” wide, the length usually measures  from 20′ to 50′ even 60′ long, depends on different applications, people need different length. Winch straps can also be called flat bed straps, because most box truck use logistic straps, aka e track straps, only flat bed will have truck winches installed.

Winch straps can be used to tie down a lot different kind of loads, such as lumber, metal coil, log, paper roll, concrete pipe, etc. And winch strap assembly has webbing part and steel flat hook part, the webbing is made of polyester, the typical breaking strength for the strap is 15000lbs or 16200lbs, working load limit is 5000lbs or 5400lbs.

Winch straps are made of polyester webbing, because it’s applications require low elongation and low creep.

See the following pictures from both sides of the strap and the sewn point:

Winch Strap Front

Winch Strap Back

Winch Strap Sewn Point

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When I choose ratchet strap, the most important thing I consider will be the quality of the product, ratchet strap assembly usually consists two parts, the ratchet buckle with fixed strap ending with flat hook, wire hook or chain extension, the long strap with hook or chain extension. The  breaking strength is determined by the weakest part of the assembly, for instance, if the webbing has breaking strength of 12,000lbs but the ratchet buckle only has 10,000lbs, I say the assembly has breaking strength 10,000lbs. So we will need both the hardware and webbing to be strong and high quality.

When you shopping at local store, you can see and touch the strap and the buckle, and the look and feel can tell you a lot about the product, and you may have shopped there quite a few times to know the quality of their products, suffice to say, shop locally maybe a good choice. But there are times that we have to shop online, such as you can’t find a nearby store, or the local price is too expensive, or what you’re looking can’t be found in local store, then we have to go online to find what we need.

How do you tell which store has the best products? Here we have two major criteria, the first thing we should  check is the online review of the store and it’s products, then we can look at the price to see if it’s competitive. Of course we all know the online review stuff, there are a few to consider, if the store offers google checkout, you can look for their google checkout review, and probably bizrate.com is a good place to find some reviews, and you can google around see if there is any negative or positive reviews. The price to easy to check, there are quite a few comparison shopping sites out there, such as nextag.com, pricegrabber.com etc., don’t just look at the price, take shipping charge into account, because cargo control products tend to be pretty heavy, the shipping will be a big part of the total price. Our goal is to find low price with free shipping.

I know it’s a tough job to find both low price and free shipping, fortunately I actually found one, manufacturer express, http://www.mfrexpress.com, offers free shipping for all qualified orders, which is quite amazing, consider they have nice reviews on Google Checkout, and they have more than 1800 all positive feed backs on ebay, I say they have quite nice products and prices. And they have quite large selection of ratchet strap as well, from 1”-4” and all kinds of length available, buy from this store maybe a good idea according to the reviews, prices and no catch free shipping(mostly USPS and Fedex). They even offer free shipping on much heavier grade 70 binder chain, WOW, that’s all I can think of.

If you have better choices please let me know!

Technorati Tags: breaking strength, cargo control, free shipping, ratchet straps