Consider This In A Duluth Winter Vehicle Recovery

We're hopefully still a way off from our first snowfall in the Twin Ports, but it will be here before we know it.

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Less than ideal weather leads to motorists finding their ways into ditches on roadsides and often that means someone will come along and offer to pull them out.

While a nice gesture, there are of course dangers with helping pull someone out of a ditch.  Besides the other traffic on the road, how you attach to both vehicles and what you use can in itself cause a not ideal situation to be even worse.

While geared more towards off-roading, I saw a Facebook post that is an important reminder for anyone who might help in a vehicle recover situation:

I'll be the first to admit, in helping someone out before, I've hooked up vehicles like this, until I learned how deadly it can be.  Sometimes it is the easier way to hook-up, but it's obviously not the safest.

The towing ball on hitches are generally not designed to handle the snatch force of a recovery strap, especially if the vehicle is really stuck.  So, as we get into less than favorable weather conditions, just make sure you are making good choices with vehicle recovery, so you don't end up with damage or worse, someone killed.

Consider actual tow hooks or tow points on a vehicle, and make sure you are using recovery straps designed to handle the force applied when helping someone out.