Winch

Also called recovery winch, electric winch, truck winch

A winch is a motor-driven drum that pulls a vehicle out of trouble along a line anchored to something that is not moving, and its rated pull is the figure on the first wrap of line on the drum rather than the fifth.

What is a winch?

An electric motor driving a drum through a large reduction gearset, bolted to the front of a vehicle and drawing several hundred amps from its battery while it works. You pay out the line, connect it to an anchor, and the drum winds it back in, dragging the vehicle toward the anchor.

It is the recovery tool that does not need a second vehicle, which is what makes it worth its weight and its cost to anyone travelling alone. It is also the slowest and the most involved, which is why traction boards get used more often on most trips.

Reading the rating

A winch's rated line pull is quoted with a single layer of line on the drum, and it falls as the drum fills. SAE J706, Rating of Winches, exists and covers rating criteria for winches on off-road machines, but it is paywalled and we could not confirm that it is what fixes the first-layer convention. Every maker we checked quotes it that way regardless. Each additional layer increases the effective radius the motor is working against, so the pull drops: by the outer layer it can be down by a third or more. The 9,000 pound number on the box is the best case, at the moment the line is almost all paid out.

The common rule of thumb is a winch rated at one and a half times the vehicle's gross weight, which exists precisely to leave headroom for that loss and for the fact that a vehicle stuck in mud takes far more than its own weight to move.

Line, and what it changes

Steel cable is cheap, abrasion resistant and heavy, and it stores energy when loaded, so a failure whips. Synthetic UHMWPE line is a fraction of the weight, does not store energy the same way, floats, and can be repaired in the field with a splice. It also hates heat, ultraviolet and sharp edges, and it needs a hawse fairlead rather than rollers.

Most people building for travel rather than for competition choose synthetic, and the reasons given are usually weight, safety and being fixable a long way from home.

One thing a recovery winch is not is a lifting device. It has no brake designed for a suspended load and no safety factor for one, and using it that way is outside everything it was engineered for.