Mar 31 2011
Important Ratchet Straps Information for Truck Drivers
The well known fact is that the assembly of strap webbing and ratchet buckle usually called ratchet tie down, but if we use cam buckle in place of ratchet buckle in the assembly we have cam buckle tie down, it’s as simple as that. Most likely these cam buckle straps are used on pick up trucks or passenger cars for luggage tie down, and small cam buckle(1”) are more popular than big ones(2”). Ratchet buckles are different, there are 1” to 4” ratchets, and they can be quite heavy duty and can stand all kinds of abuse, the most commonly used on commercial trucks are 2”, 3” and 4” ratchet tie downs, they have working load limit of 3,333lbs, 5,400lbs and 5,400lbs respectively, these assemblies have design factor of 3:1, thus the minimum breaking strength is 10,000lbs, 16,200lbs and 16,200lbs respectively.
So far we discussed about tie down devices for flatbed trucks or similar commercial vehicles, there are another kind of ratchet straps for semi trailers, ratchet e track accessories , these tie down equipment will be used with E Tracks installed inside the semi trailer. By estimation, there are almost 80% trucks on the road are box trucks, so these e track straps are supposed to the most popular ones by volume. The e track straps usually have working load limit of 1000lbs, which is only 30% of the 2” flatbed tie downs, and the breaking strength is only 3,000lbs based on design factor 3:1. It’s easy to understand that why e track straps are not as strong as regular ratchet tie down straps, inside the box truck the loads already have strong support, at least there is no risk of falling off, all the e track straps will do is to fixate the loads more than tie them down.
We already discussed the design factor of ratchet straps, it is 3:1 and for the record all this says is that safe load limit of tie down straps is 1/3 of it’s breaking strength, for comparison purpose we know that the binder chain has a design factor of 4:1, which basically says that for the chains the working load limit will be 1/4 of their breaking strength, which indicates that tie down chains are designed for tougher environment than tie down straps are in. Nylon and polyester webbing are used in making tie down webbing, for different applications people will choose different material accordingly. The typical application for nylon webbing is motorcycle tie down, while polyester webbing is ideal for tying down concrete pipes. Following watch list is essential for making tie down webbing, abrasion, elongation, breaking strength and use environment. There are mandated criteria for breaking strength and elongation of the tie down straps , while the abrasion and environment are mostly estimation and subjective sometimes, different area may have different requirements. Therefore the manufacturer may have to make these tie downs to different standards.











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