What are your experiences with using recovery straps or ropes for freeing stuck heavy equipment? I recently picked up an Erickson Recovery Strap. It's 6 inches wide x 30 feet long, rated at 55,000 pounds. The manufacturer claims it will stretch up to 20% to help sling shot the stuck vehicle out. In the past, we've used smaller recovery straps and ropes to pull out lighter vehicles such as 4x4 pickups. For pulling out heavy equipment, we always used a heavy chain or steel cable. I'm wondering how strong these Erickson recovery straps really are. Will the 55,000 pound model break, for example, if one tries to pull out a stuck 40,000 pound loader with an excavator. Thankfully, at this point, this is just a hypothetical question. Maybe one needs a heavier strap or rope? For about three times the money, one can buy a recovery rope rated at about 135,000 lbs.
one would think pulling a 40,000lbs loader stuck in the mud will put more than just the weight of the loader on the strap, since your not only pulling the weight of the loader but also the force of resistance. But then again you may not be pulling all 40,000 pounds since some of the weight is being carried by the tires on the loader. Good question lol
straps are rated for rolling weight. the line pull required to move a stuck vehicle is 100% to wheels, 200% to the axles, and 300% to the frame. Im not sure how this equates to wheeled and tracked vehicles. I do know the military has it all figured out, with data cards on each vehicle. Mtkef might be able to give some better info
Technique has a lot to do with using a recovery strap. It is very likely that the 55,000lb strap would work if used properly. For instance if the machine is stuck to the frame, sometimes yanking at about a 45 degree angle will rock it and break the suction, and if the stuck machine is helping(not just wildly spinning tires) and turning at the same 45 degrees, it may come out. I have pulled out much heavier machines than the strap was rated for, and I never broke a strap. If the machine used to recover is less weight than the strap, the strap will seldom break. You may get yanked backwards in the recovering machine though. Every situation is different and experience is really helpful in determining what will work and what won't. Many times all that is needed is some helping force far less than the weight of the stuck machine. Then, of course, there are those machines so stuck that nothing will get them out. I watched a scenario once that was a real lesson in what happens when the ego takes over. I was asked to see if I could get a stuck pickup out of a field. I went to the site and observed that the road washed out so a 4X4 truck tried going around it in an adjacent field. He ended up buried past the doors and had to crawl out a window. I started walking across the field toward the truck and the ground felt like jello. When looking around I observed than the area was at the foot of some tall hills, where it suddenly got very flat. When they built the road many years ago it created a dam and the field filled up with about 10+ feet of silty runoff from the mountains. The ground underneath it all was clay, which wouldn't let the water percolate, so it just sat there in the silt. After the series of storms that eventually washed out the road, the field was super saturated. I told the guy that it was best to wait til it dried out some because the truck was very stuck and too far away from good ground to recover at that time. Also, because of the road washout, you couldn't approach it from the road side. He didn't want to wait and finally found a guy with a backhoe who said he could get it out. After burying the backhoe, the operator called a buddy who had a dozer to come help him out. They buried the dozer and then rented an excavator. When that got stuck, they rented a bigger excavator. When that got stuck, they waited until it dried.