Do I really need… part 9 – Rated Recovery Points

If you’ve ever seen the carnage that comes from hooking recovery straps to unrated points or just anything that sticks out that you can tie them around (look at the 1000’s of fail examples on YouTube) then you’ll know that anything that you use for recovery must be rated!

Rated recovery points are made to be installed on the chassis rails at the front of your vehicle, and have been fully tested and rated to be safe to use for the sort of high-force recoveries that we do find ourselves doing from time to time. Some vehicles have sets of two, while some vehicles have a single point available. If you get two installed you have a range of choices available. You can use either side if needed, or use both with a bridle strap as the best all-round solution.

At the rear of your vehicle, this isn’t quite as important for one big reason – the humble towbar. Having a towbar installed on your 4WD makes it one of the best recovery points that you can have. This is because it matches all of the reasons above. It’s connected directly to the vehicles chassis, it’s fully rated for high forces (towing trailers is a very high-force operation) and it gives you a great central point to recover from. The only caveat to this is that you should never attach a strap to a tow ball – no natter what! Straps will fall off tow balls and fling right back to the source. Tow balls are also known to snap in recovery situations, and having a big chunk of round metal flying towards you at high speed is somewhere between frightening and deadly.

While I’ve seen others out there disagree, I could never recommend using anything that’s not rated and made specifically for purpose purely because of what could go wrong. For the best representation of why, check our Ronny Dahls video on this. It shows exactly what can go wrong when you don’t use the right gear the right way.