Keeping Secure and Tight With Ratchet Straps

1
Keeping Secure and Tight With

• Ratchet Straps

2
Introduction

• If youve never worked in any sort of hauling
  business or used your own trailer or pickup truck
  before, then you might be having trouble knowing
  what to do with your ratchet straps, or where
  their best practical uses are. Stored in those
  bands of polyester mesh and steel clamps is a
  level of security for your cargo that is, for how
  easy they are to use, far beyond any other
  alternative method of securing cargo.
• Hopefully by going over some of the basics and
  what different purposes they serve, youll have a
  better idea of what to do with them moving
  forward.

3
Table of Contents

• The Fundamentals
• Securing Cargo
• Moving Vehicles
• Important Things to Remember

4
The Fundamentals

• Essentially, a ratchet mechanism allows something
  to move in a single direction, but bars movement
  on the other. A ratchet strap does this by
  employing the combination of two pawls and the
  gear. One of the pawls, the manual pawl, is the
  one that will inform you about the current status
  of the ratchet.
•  
• If the ratchet is in an L-shape, it indicated
  that you can begin working the manual pawl to
  tighten the ratchet. If the ratchet looks closed
  up, with the manual pawl touching the polyester
  mesh, then its in a locked position. If its
  flat and open, its in the loosening position.

5
The Fundamentals

• Feeding the line through the ratchet can be a
  little trickier to explain, though there are many
  resources available online demonstrating the
  process.
• Also, one final note on the basics, be sure to
  pick a ratchet strap that will actually be able
  to handle the job you are giving it. All ratchet
  straps have a variety of ratings that dictate
  what kind of weight they are capable of securing.
  This is especially important because the range of
  weights that different ratchet straps can fasten
  is enormous, from cheaper straps that can only do
  a couple of hundred pounds, all the way up to
  expensive industrial straps that can do thousands.

6
Securing Cargo

• The most obvious usage of a ratchet strap is to
  secure cargo. Using a ratchet strap to do this
  will ensure that you are using a tried and tested
  method of securing your goods. Ratchet straps
  have been around for an incredibly long time and
  still not replaced for good reason, they do the
  job they are meant to and they do it well.
•  
• In a lot of the industries that use ratchet
  straps for hauling cargo, such as professional
  truckers, they will be used in combination with
  some form of tie-down strap. Its one of the most
  common types of ratchet strap, especially if you
  own something like a pickup which has fastening
  points for a J-hook tie-down strap.

7
Moving Vehicles

• Another popular job of the ratchet strap is
  securing vehicles to trailers. Ratchet straps in
  particular are so effective at this for their
  ability to secure otherwise moving parts in a
  vehicle, thanks for their flexible nature. It
  should be a testament to how versatile and strong
  the ratchet strap actually is that transporters
  and owners of the vehicles are happy to have the
  ratchet strap doing the bulk of the fastening.

8
Important Things to Remember

• One of the worst offenders by far is having the
  ratchet straps in a position where they can rub
  against something sharp or something that will
  corrode the strap. If the strap is ratcheted
  tight like it should be, you risk the strap being
  worn away over the course of the journey as the
  load moves around.
•  
• Check that your straps are DEFINITELY secure! Be
  sure to give the straps a firm pull to ensure
  that theres no way they can move. You should do
  this after you have finished applying all the
  straps, just in case any of them have shifted
  from the tightening of the load.

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