Heavy Duty Recovery Tow Straps

When operating in commercial and industrial environments, it's a common occurrence for heavy vehicles and machinery to get stuck. This is a much more complex situation than trying to recover pickups, and off-road / overlanding vehicles, where there's a wider variety of options available. 

For the heavier duty vehicles, like tractors, or plant and machinery, it's more than just hooking up any tow strap or recovery rope and pulling. There's heightened risk involved if something goes wrong, and that can come from a miscalculation of vehicle weights, failing to account for terrain resistances, or simply using the wrong type of strap, or an incorrect technique.

A heavy duty recovery tow strap is one of the safest ways to recover these types of vehicles. Made from specialist polyester webbing, they provide an all round solution and can be used for towing, recovery, and as a winch strap.

Many people misunderstand the different types of straps, and also have some confusion about their use cases, what they can and cant do. Heres the breakdown.

Polyester Tow Straps

General consumer grade tow straps, made from standard polyester webbing, usually a flat web design for vehicles up to 10,000 lbs. Standard sizes are usually 2 - 4 inch wide.

Nylon Recovery Straps

Generally a consumer grade product, almost identical to the tow strap, the only difference is the material used. Most recovery straps are made from nylon webbing, which has a higher elongation than polyester. Standard sizes are usually 2 - 6 inch wide.

Recovery Tow Straps

Recovery Tow Straps are without doubt one of the safest and most reliable types of straps, especially for heavy duty vehicles, such as tractors, heavy plant, and commercial vehicles. They have much higher break strengths, and a lower stretch under load than nylon.

Dawnerz Recovery Tow Straps

We use a specialist industrial grade polyester webbing for all our products. This along with our stitching techniques, creates a slightly higher stretch under load than standard polyester tow straps, allowing for a little extra safety when using them to recover vehicles.  Our webbing is certified and our break strengths range from 70,000 to 380,000 lbs. 

This doesn't mean they can be used like a snatch strap or kinetic recovery rope (KERR), they are for controlled, predictable recoveries, identical in technique to how you would operate a winch strap.

There are several key benefits to using a specialist recovery tow strap

1. Polyester maintains 100% of its tensile strength when wet - Nylon loses 20-30% of its strength
2. The lower stretch provides a much safer, more controlled tow or recovery
3. After vehicle extraction, you can use the same strap to tow your vehicle
4. The wider 2 and 4 ply webbing distributes the load more evenly, reducing the risk of strap failure 

For polyester recovery tow straps, you need to determine the GVW (of the stuck vehicle). Then apply a safety factor to this, industry standards generally range from 3:1 or 5:1

Example

• GVW 20,000 lb - Safety Factor 3:1 - 20,000 x 3 = 60,000 lb break strength 
• GVW 20,000 lb - Safety Factor 4:1 - 20,000 x 4 = 80,000 lb break strength 
• GVW 20,000 lb - Safety Factor 5:1 - 20,000 x 5 = 100,000 lb break strength 

We never recommend using a safety factor lower than 3 x the vehicles weight when used for complex recovery situations.