Truck winches and winch straps mostly have been seen on flatbeds, a big chunk of flatbeds sold with winches installed, so the drivers only need to get winch straps to use with the winches, if they don’t have a winch bar they can get one from local store on online. 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 winch structure is pretty simple, there is a barrel goes through the winch body, one side has a though hole and the other side has a gear with a brake, in between lies the mandrel, the winch strap can be inserted into it, since the gear has a brake, when you turn the barrel to tighten the winch strap the brake on the gear will prevent the barrel from loosening the strap, when you let the hook loose and open the brake, you can retract the winch straps by turning the winch the opposite direction, that should be pretty straight forward. In order to secure your load with winch straps, you will need winch bar to turn the barrel, there is no way you can operate the winch by hand, it’s not only not safe, but also not legal.
There are a few different kind of winch bars available, usually you will be able to find following winch bars at any store: standard winch bars, usually painted black, chrome standard winch bars, chrome combination winch bar and chrome combination winch bars painted half yellow. Sometimes people get confused with all the different winch bars, they are only used with truck winches after all, why all the different styles? It all comes down to personal preferences and specific needs, for instance, with combination winch bar you can use something else with it, say using a standard winch bar with a combination winch bar under some special circumstances.