A few weeks ago we had been wrestling with a large Balsam Fir which had been partially blown up and ended up hanging on to another tree, and it was on a steep slope within less than 10 feet of our garage, we bought a 2 ton cable puller and ended up destroying the puller, we had to buy a cable puller with 4 ton capacity , and this time it did  the job and our garage was still standing .

Actually cable pullers are heavy duty pulling tools and can be used to do a lot of things, sometimes you even can use it in pace of ATV Winch to save money. A typical cable puller has 1 ton to 4 ton pulling capacity, the lifting capacity is half of the pulling, and pull reach can be 6′ to 12′, 4 ton puller typically has 6′ reach but extra heavy duty ones may have more than 11′ reach. People sometimes call these cable pullers “Cable Come Along“, but come along refers to a lot of different hand tools besides cable pullers, such as the chain hoist, chain pullers, hand winch, strap pullers, and more, in a word, a come along is a hand operated ratchet lever winch. What makes cable puller different is that it’s capacity can be as strong as 4 ton, or 8800lbs, it is considered heavy duty tools, while regular hand winch has 400-4000lbs capacity and mostly used to pull boat out of or lower boat into water from trailer, sometimes also called boat trailer winch.

You have to do your homework before you go out to buy a cable puller, get to know it’s features. A regular cable puller will have a cable guide , which keeps 2 wraps of cable on ratchet wheel, and you can release loads one notch at a time, so you can lower a vehicle or tree safely, ratchet wheel made of laminated steel, plated steel for rust resistance, drop forged steel safety hooks, it features aircraft cable, 4 ton one will have 5/16” galvanized aircraft cable, and all the cable pullers will have to meet OSHA and ASME specs. Typically the cable pullers will have two slip safety hooks with latch, but some super heavy duty ones have 3 safety hooks for enhanced protection.

If you want to lifting or lowering something, you should choose cable pullers. You can pull or release vehicles onto and from trailer respectively, hold or drag trees when you’re logging, pull big rack or shed around your house, pull the stuck vehicle out of ditch, compare to electric powered winch, such as ATV winch , cable pullers are cheaper handy tools.