The Best Tow and Recovery Straps

Buy a three-inch strap with sewn loop ends and two rated shackles, and check your manual for where the car's recovery points are before you need them. Nylon straps stretch and snatch a stuck car out; polyester straps barely stretch and are the safer choice for a steady pull. Do not buy a strap with metal hooks on the ends.

Traction mats and a shovel get most cars out of most snow, and if you have not read how to get a car unstuck that is the better place to start - a strap is the tool for when self-recovery has failed and somebody with a truck has stopped to help.

It is also the item in the trunk with the highest consequences if you buy the wrong one. A strap under load stores energy, and the failure mode is not a gentle parting. This page is mostly about the two specifications that govern that, both of which are printed on some listings and missing from others.

Nylon snatches, polyester pulls

The single most useful thing to understand is that recovery webbing comes in two materials that do opposite jobs, and the listings do say which is which if you read past the headline.

Nylon stretches. The ALL-TOP strap here publishes 22 percent elongation. You take up the slack, the recovering vehicle accelerates gently, and the strap loads progressively - the stored energy pulls the stuck car out with far less wheelspin than a dead pull needs. This is a kinetic or snatch strap. It is what gets a car out of deep snow.

Polyester barely stretches. Rhino USA calls its strap a static strap in plain words; GearAmerica and TGL both specify low-stretch polyester. Nothing stores energy, so it is the more forgiving strap to learn on and the right one for towing a rolling vehicle or for a steady tug from a heavier truck. It is also what you want as a tree saver if a winch is ever involved.

Working load limit is the number, not break strength

Every listing in this category leads with a big number: 30,000, 35,000, 36,000 pounds. That is break strength - the load at which the webbing fails. It is not a rating you are meant to work at.

The number you actually use is the working load limit, conventionally a fraction of break strength to leave margin for shock loading, wear, knots, UV and the abrasion the strap picked up last time. Two of these listings publish one: ALL-TOP states 12,000 pounds against 35,000 break, GearAmerica states 10,000 against 35,053. Three publish break strength only and leave you to derate it yourself.

Notice that the strap with the biggest headline number publishes neither its material nor a working load limit. That is the one ranked last, and the hooks are the bigger reason.

Why the hooks are the problem

A metal hook sewn to the end of a strap looks like convenience and it is the classic recovery hazard. A hook has no positive latch. If the strap goes slack for a moment - which happens constantly during a recovery, as the stuck car breaks free - the hook can jump off whatever it was attached to. It is then a couple of pounds of steel on the end of a webbing strap that is about to release its tension.

There is a second problem specific to cars. Most modern unibody vehicles have no hook point at all. What they have is a threaded socket behind a bumper cover that takes a screw-in towing eye, or a welded loop on the subframe - both designed for a shackle or an eye, not for something hooked over an edge. Attaching a hook to a bumper, a suspension arm or a tie rod damages the car and can fail suddenly.

Loop ends plus two rated shackles is the answer, which is why the top pick includes the shackles rather than selling them separately.

How we judged these

1. Does it publish a working load limit? Break strength alone is half a specification.
2. Does it say what the webbing is? Nylon and polyester behave completely differently and the word appears on most, but not all, of these listings.
3. Loops or hooks? Loops, every time, with rated shackles.
4. Does anything third-party back the number? One listing names CE and TUV testing. Most publish an in-house figure.
5. Is it long enough to be useful on a road? Twenty feet is tight if the helping vehicle needs to stay on clear tarmac; thirty gives you options.

Using one without hurting anybody

1. Clear snow from around the wheels first. A strap that has to break a car out of packed snow works far harder than one pulling a car that can roll. Ten minutes with a shovel changes the load completely.
2. Attach to designed recovery points at both ends, with shackles. Both ends, not just yours.
3. Lay a coat or a floor mat over the middle of the strap. If it fails, weight in the middle drops it instead of letting it fly.
4. Nobody stands near the strap, and nobody stands between the vehicles. Everybody not driving stands well off to the side.
5. Take up the slack, then pull smoothly. With a kinetic strap a gentle acceleration is enough; a run-up is how people bend bodywork and break attachment points.
6. Steer the stuck car and keep its wheels straight. The driver being pulled has a job: light throttle, straight wheels, brake ready once moving.
7. Dry it before it goes back in the bag. Webbing stuffed away wet rots and loses strength, which is why one strap here ships with a roll strap instead of a bag.

The short version

Buy the ALL-TOP kit if you want one purchase that covers it - nylon with a published elongation and working load limit, and the two shackles that make a loop strap usable. Buy the GearAmerica if you would rather have a low-stretch polyester strap that also publishes its working load, and you already own shackles. Buy the Rhino if thirty feet of static strap and a lifetime replacement is the shape of what you want. Buy the TGL if you want the cheapest strap here that names the standard it was tested to. And skip the one with hooks, however good the number on the label looks.