Gettin' Stuck - Again!

March 04, 2014

The weekend after Jess got the truck stuck in a field, I got it stuck again in a different field. Fortunately for me, Jess had not accompanied me down to the ranch that weekend, so I was able to call her for help. She drove down with the car and picked me up.

Once I arrived back home, I immediately ordered a winch, winch rope, winch carrier, and about 200 feet of additional cable. During the previous week I had been doing a lot of research and had decided to purchase a Warn hydraulic winch. From what I've read, hydraulic winches will last a long time and are very powerful. However, one downside of these winches is that, unless you have experience with automotive hydraulic systems, you are going to need to pay someone to install it for you. For much of the week I had searched for a mechanic specializing in installing these winches, but could find no one in my area willing to do it. The only people I found worked on ATV winches. By that time, it was the weekend and I decided to chance it without a winch. I remember thinking to myself, "I'll be careful."

When my wife and I finally got home after the second debacle, I decided that, rather than order the hydraulic winch, I would order the Warn Series 12 DC Industrial Winch. This is a 12 volt electric winch, which I should be able to connect to the truck's battery. Unfortunately, when I placed the order, I had not realized that: 1) it was going to take a long time for the winch to be shipped to my address, and 2) the winch carrier designed to be able to mount the winch to my 2008 Ford F-250 had been discontinued. That meant that, in addition to waiting for everything to arrive, I would have to fabricate my own winch carrier. These discoveries were all very frustrating and during that week I began to find myself occasionally day dreaming about possible contraptions I could rig together with combinations of logs, chains, and pulleys. Most of them were too complex to be worth trying though.

On the Friday before this past weekend, I stopped by a Tractor Supply Company store to pick up a few things I needed for the weekend and noticed their assortment of what are sometimes called "cable hoist pullers." The largest one there was rated for 6,000 pounds and, after clearing it with the wife, I bought it.

The next day we drove out to the ranch and tried to pull the truck out with the cable hoist puller. At this point I would like to state that I actually recommend against anyone else trying what I am about to describe. Our truck weighs over 7,000 lbs, the 200 feet of cable we used had a break point of around 11,000, and the puller was rated for 6,000. If you do the math, you will quickly see that we were cutting it pretty close and I could have just as easily ended up being injured or killed if the cable or puller had failed.

Anyway, in our first attempt, I connected my towing equipment in the following order: truck, nylon strap, high-test chain, puller, 200 feet of cable, another high-test chain, tree. With this arrangement, I began tightening the line by swinging the ratcheting arm on the puller. Jess sat in the truck with it idling in reverse (the equipment was hooked to the back end of the truck). Pretty soon the entire line of cables was stretched taught and it took everything I had just to pull the handle one click tighter. This made me extremely nervous as I could see and hear the cable straining further each time I tightened it. Finally, something gave and it wasn't the truck. Instead, a set of six cable clamps on the 200 feet of cable slipped and went flying past me. I hadn't tightened the clamps enough of one on the connection. I decided to give it up for good. How quickly we forget.

Later that day, I was back at it again. This time the order was: truck, nylon strap, high-test chain, 200 feet of cable, puller, 2nd high-test chain, tree. For some reason, being further away from the truck made me feel safer, but it was probably an illusion. In addition to changing the equipment order, we also dug out more of the soil from around the truck's tires and placed a stack of large diameter logs under the towing strap a few feet from the trucks bumper. The effect of the stacked logs was to cause the truck to be pulled both backwards and up rather than just backwards. This time we also started out by putting the truck in neutral rather than reverse. These changes appear to have made a difference. As the puller took in the slack and the line tightened, pulling the puller handle became more difficult until I was again having to pull as hard as I could to pull the handle one click forward. However, this time, rather than the cable giving, the truck began to very slowly creep backward. At first it only moved a quarter inch, but then it moved a full halve inch. We then decided to shift the truck into reverse and allow it to idle that way. At that point I only had to pull about two or three more click and the truck suddenly lurched backward into the pile of logs. We then placed the truck in park, loosened the tow line, removed the logs and tried slowly backing the truck out. Like magic, the truck climbed up out of its prison and stood free again in the field.

The spot where I sat with the cable hoist puller.

A view of the truck after it had been freed. The front bumper had been removed the previous week in anticipation of the new electric winch, which hasn't arrived yet. You can see the place where it became bogged down in the distance.