How To Use And Store A Ratchet Strap - A Complete Step By Step Guide

welcome back to the

store

. Hello, today I am going to post a video about

ratchet

strap

s. I recently bought a new part from Power Equipment, took my trailer out to go pick it up and when I was there tying it up I was using some.

ratchet

strap

s and the guy I bought it from was talking to me while I was tying everything up, he said, you know, the funny thing is that there are a lot of people out there who make what you're doing look really difficult and anyway, we talked about that a little bit, I didn't think much about it until I was driving home and I thought about it a little more and I was like, you know what?

That's a little frustrating for some people and it really is a simple mechanism and system to use, it's just that there are a lot of people who have never been taught it and frankly, you know it when you buy your ratchet straps at the

store

. I don't think they really come with instructions that tell you exactly. how to use them, that brings us to today. Today I'm going to explain to you the system that I use, how I use it, how I store it and maybe a couple of mistakes to avoid, so anyway, let's get to that and uh, we'll catch you on the other end, okay for purposes of demonstration.

I'm going to use my dump trailer today. It has D-rings on all four corners that I can tie down to, so these are some of the most common ratchets. straps that you are probably going to use I have probably seen or come across this one being the most common um you can pick them up almost anywhere um they are a 1 inch strap that generally has a capacity of between 3 and 700 lbs, these 2- in the straps there are straps with more industrial or commercial classification. I think they're rated up to 10,000 pounds, something like that, maybe a working load of 3500.

The straps on these are much thicker, so that's what I'm going to use them for. For demonstration purposes, it's like I said, it's a little bit easier to work with, so I want to start by looking at the ratchet strap here and the ratchet itself. Many people will wind their leash this way and there is nothing wrong with that. but the ratchet is actually attached to the strap and when you unwind it, you almost feel like if you detach the strap from the ratchet, somehow it's not going to work properly and that's just not the case, as I store my ratchets this way.

They are not attached, they are just stored this way for easy storage, it's just that a lot of people in the commercial industry when they use 2 inch straps like this, they usually store their ratchets and their straps like this separately, so my advice to you, He is the first one out of the door. Look at ratchet straps as a two-part system and not a one-part system, so that the first part is the ratchet itself attached to a fixed length of strap and then, at the end of that strap, a hook the second part being the strap itself which has one end free and then the other end is attached to a hook so again two pieces so let's start there that's where I like it I said I think it comes into play a lot of confusion, um, come on, uh.

I'm going to put you on a tripod and I'm going to start attaching this to the D rings and I'm going to walk you through the process. Okay,

step

number one, you're going to want to grab the ratchet and you want to grab it. the hook on the end of the strap attach and hook it to your ding or your truck or whatever you need to attach it to so you can secure your load um this is the next point of confusion for some people If it were me I would leave the ratchet closed if you open it.

This is where some of the confusion comes in because you have so many different openings that many people will start to stick the leash in places it shouldn't go. and then you end up with a big mess and then you get frustrated and you can't tie down your load and you're having a bad day, so my advice until you get familiar with the ratchet strap and how it works and that you should leave the ratchet closed, is a lot easier to deal with a closed ratchet than an open one. The next thing I'll advise you is that this is called windless and windless is basically any cylinder you can. wrap a chain, straps, rope, anything around it, that is, and use it to secure a load, that's what windless is, okay, so this is the windless, in the middle of this windless, we have a slot that's where we're going to end up, insert the tie the free end of the strap into the other end of this ratchet strap system, okay, so re-clip your ring or whatever you need to secure your load, hold the ratchet closed and get its position without wind so that it is horizontal to any platform. you're using and then we're going to insert the strap into this slot, so let me grab that strap and we'll go from there, okay,

step

number two.

I hope you can listen to me as I go through this. I'm going to grab my strap and I'm going to unroll it and I'm going to take the hook to a corner and I'm going to bring the free end back to the ratchet at this point you want to go through the strap and make sure it's straight and not tied because a lot of times when you have it hooked up, as you can see here, it's all tied up, so this is where you want to leave everything in order and stay unprofessional so that you can not have any problems when you're securing your load, okay, so I'll take it right to me ratchet and then I'll insert it through the hole in the windless, let me get you a little closer. closer, so I'll show you again, we'll take the free end of the strap and it'll go right through the slot on the windless device.

Right now, here, the next thing you're going to do is take your strap and immediately throw it right over the top of your windless device, okay, you don't have to do it a lot of times people will try to stick it under here once it's over, they'll get it underneath or they'll try to go around the back and again you can see how if this ratchet was open, it could be really confusing. Well, again we're going to go through the windless system slot, grab the free end and pull it immediately. right on top, okay, let me take you out again and we're going to take the slack out of this strap and attach it to the other end.

We have what looks like a mess, but we're going to fix that. real quick, you're going to take the free end of the strap on this side and you're just going to pull it through to get rid of all the slack because you've loosened the slack to the point where you feel pretty. Comfortable again, go back and adjust the strap to make sure it is straight. Put the hook back on my D-ring. Pull the black off the strap again and you can see that there are no bends in these straps. It's okay if you were tying a load. on an open trailer you'll want to put half a turn here and put a half turn there so you don't get a horrible song playing when you're in your truck with the windows open going down the highway.

So, and I mean, honestly, if you don't give it a half turn, it will drive you crazy until you stop and give it a half turn, so do yourself a favor and get out of the door if you're in an open trailer, in general, get used to give this strap a half turn that goes over your load, not the slack end, okay, so I'll do it real quick, it's a half turn, now we're going to take out the slack. Again, okay, now we're ready to secure our appearance. Let me get you a little closer. Next, you're going to grab the free end of the strap and pull it, no need.

Be Superman here, but you just want to put some pressure on it to make it tight. The next thing you do is grab the ratchet, give it a couple of pulls and really all you're doing here is winding it up. around the windless so you have a little bit of pressure on the strap and on your load, it is at this point that you want to check your strap to make sure it is where it needs to be on your load. make sure there are no sharp edges on your load, if so make sure you put something underneath because during transport it will eat one of these straps, once you have determined your straps are where they need to be and you've got a piece of cardboard or you know I'm in the transportation and garbage disposal business um I put pillows I put carpet I put cardboard um carpet pad under my load so it wouldn't eat my strap because your load will move, if you're transporting something with pneumatic tires, it will definitely move, so this is the point, like I said, where you check it once you've determined that everything is okay.

To get back on your ratchet, give it a few more pulls until you can almost play a song with it and you'll be good to go if you're using two straps to tie down your load, which I'm guessing you probably are. Simply repeat this process as many times as necessary. Now we have this free end of the strap. What do we do with it? I'll show you. First let's tie the free end and the strap. Make sure your strap is fine. straight, it has no kinks, it's not twisted in any way once you've set it, go down to the other end, make a loop, take that loop and just move it right into your ratchet and I work it all the way back until I'm around 2 and 1/2 feet like you see here, so what I do is I attach my coiled section of the strap.

I take these 2 and 1/2 feet and I run them down and then I take them to my coil. and I put it through the middle once I've put it through the middle now I have a loop on this end and I pull that coil back through the loop and I tighten it up nice at this point you can just pull it down and leave it like that and it will work okay or you can come back here and paste it through this loop right here if you want it to look a little better. Another thing I wanted to touch on real quick if you can see my The ratchet here is

complete

ly closed, which I've seen sometimes when I work with other people and they use ratchet straps.

I'll see, okay, pay attention here, that strap is not locked. This handle will move so you need to make sure that when you're done and you're securing the load that it's all the way down and locked, see how that won't come back up now if you leave it up just a notch like this, this is free so we need to make sure that it is in the locked position, which is now fine. We have transported our cargo where it needs to go. We get to the other end and we're going to unbuckle our strap here. It's okay, it's that simple and it's like that once.

If you've done this a few times, it's obviously going to be faster for you at this point when you drop the load, lift the mechanism here, bring the ratchet all the way back and then when you get it. its rearmost wood position just hit it and that will release the load for you. Well, at this point, all you have to do is simply pull on the free end of the strap and you'll have all the slack in the world. Okay, take off the strap. At this point, take your free end, throw it through your wind, okay, because now you're going to put away your leash.

I always make sure again that it is in the locked position. We're going to wind it up, so the first thing I do is grab my ratchet. and I run the fixed end of the strap around and I take the hook and I hook it and a lot of these companies will design their ratchet strap system to work like that, in terms of length and being able to hook, okay? What I do is I grab the free end of my strap and I hook it, so now I've got it hooked there and then all I do is start wrapping it up and I'm not going to bore you by wrapping all of this up. above, so I'm going to get to the end where I have it rolled up and show you how I tie it.

I have it rolled up. The first thing I'm going to do is pull on this, tighten it as much as I can, okay, once I've got it tight, I'm going to take the free end and I'm going to roll it up, keep it a little bit loose and then I'm going to put it under and then I'm going to tighten it and that that's it, this is how I keep them it's nothing, it's nothing just extraordinary, it's very common, but it works for me, what I just showed you with this 2 inch strap will work with all the smaller 1 inch straps too , so I hope it helped you.

I hope that gave you an idea of ​​ratchet straps and how they work. The next time you go to tie the load it will be a little easier for you. Thanks for watching. See you in the next video.