It’s a well known fact that when we put ratchet buckle and tie down webbing together we get ratchet strap, by this logic the cam buckle strap is just the cam buckle with tie down strap, why I am not surprised? Most likely these cam buckle straps are used on pick up trucks or passenger cars for luggage tie down, and small cam buckle(1”) are more popular than big ones(2”). Unlike cam buckle, ratchet buckle are much stronger, and 2”,3” and 4” ratchet buckles are used in industrial grade applications, such as heavy duty transportation, with 3,333LBS, 5,400LBS working load and a design factor of 3:1, these ratchets have 10,000LBS and 16,2000LBS breaking strength respectively, which are pretty strong for most tie down applications.

Of course what we discussed above is mainly for flatbed trucks and some other kind of vehicles, there are another category of ratchet straps for semi trailers, ratchet e track strap , these tie down devices will be used with E Tracks installed inside the semi trailer. By estimation, there are almost 80% trucks on the road are box trucks, so these e track straps are supposed to the most popular ones by volume. And these straps are not as strong as the one we use on flatbed truck, the working load limit of typical e track straps is 1,000lbs, with minimum breaking strength of 3,000lbs. It’s easy to understand that why e track straps are not as strong as regular ratchet tie down straps, inside the box truck the loads already have strong support, at least there is no risk of falling off, all the e track straps will do is to fixate the loads more than tie them down. Coupled with e track cargo bar, rope tie off, e track hardware(such as D ring with E fitting), shoring beam, e track tie downs can be used to secure any kind of loads, and secure them reliably, but you still have to pay close attention to the safety of your load , easy to secure is not an excuse for careless tie down practice.

In first paragraph we talked about design factor of ratchet tie downs, which is 3:1, so the working load limit is 1/3 of maximum breaking strength for ratchet straps, while grade 70 chains which have a design factor of 4:1, that means the transport chains will work in more tough environment than tie down straps, which usually are chose for regular loads. The most common materials in making tie down webbing are nylon and polyester, which serve different tie down applications. Nylon webbing has better elongation than polyester, so for shock absorption wise nylon is ideal material while polyester usually is used to make tie downs for heavy equipment. When making the webbing, we have to take following characteristics in to consideration, the breaking strength, elongation, abrasion and the environment. There are mandated criteria for breaking strength and elongation of the tie down strap , while the abrasion and environment are mostly estimation and subjective sometimes, different area may have different requirements. Therefore the manufacturer may have to make these tie downs to different standards.

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Truck winches and winch straps mostly have been seen on flatbeds, a big chunk of flatbeds sold with winches installed, when the drivers put the loads on the truck, they only need winch straps and winch bars to tie loads down. Truck winch comes in with a few different flavors and sizes, we have slide in winches, weld on winches and some other winches, usually the weld on winches are sold with the new flatbeds, 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. To turn your winch barrel you will definitely need a winch bar, no one can do it with bare hands, besides, it’s required by law to use a winch bar with truck winches.

There usually are 2 kind of standard winch bars, chromated one and black one, and two different combination winch bars, chromated and painted half yellow, you can find them online or locally. To get which kind of winch bar depends on one’s priority and preference, all winch bars will serve the same purpose, they are just steel sticks with some tweaks after all.

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