Advice for purchasing a winch please!

Hello Everyone!

I recently purchased a trailer on which to haul my tractors and equipment. I would like to get a powered winch to assist in loading and unloading. How large of a winch do I need? Are some better than others? Do they all use seperate batteries or do some plug into the truck? my heaviest piece at this time is a John Deere A.

Your thoughts are appreciated!

Buy a winch that will lift 1.5 times the trailer capacity. That way you will not be tempted to overload the winch with a dangerous pull. JimN

Buy the biggest one you can afford and then don't look back. I own 3 of them and at times the biggest one isn't enough and it has a straight pull of 7000lbs. Thats a double cable by the way. I have the one on the truck and hooked up to the truck battery. I also have one I can put on the trailer but when its used I also use another battery just for it. By the way when you buy one read the fine print. I have one that says 6000lbs but then in another place it says 2000lbs for straight pulling
Hobby farm

if you use only one truck to pull the trailer you can hardwire it to the truck using the plugs like on many wreckers cost more than just sticking a battery back there but you can leave the truck running so you don't run out of power and your battery gets charged between loads. I agree buy the one that you can afford but stay away from the cheap ones that don't have reverse and only pull when you tighten a hand nut they are not very good in my experience. make sure you have alot of cable so that you can double it back to the trailer and use a block to pull load it will increase the power of the winch. If you only plan on buying one winch set it up so you can put it on a hitch that way you can still get yourself out of a jam when needed as you can install a receiver in the front of your truck also.

Bigger is better. Get the biggest winch you can afford. You can load light stuff with a heavy winch, but you can't load heavy stuff with a light winch. Also, as someone else noted, power out is a very useful feature for unloading. A decent winch will also have a clutch to release the drum when you want to pull the cable out quickly.

As Old points out, cheaper winches tend to be advertised based on how much rolling load they can move, not on the actual line pull. Also, keep in mind that the rated capacity of an electric winch is based on the first layer of cable wound on the drum - as the drum fills with cable, the diameter increases and line pull decreases accordingly.

As far as an on-board battery, any trailer big enough to need a winch to load will also need electric brakes, and the winch battery can be used to supply the backup power to the electric brakes. Mine is wired to charge from the tow vehicle, just like the battery in a travel trailer. I prefer to have a separate battery just to ensure that I never inadvertently run down the tow vehicle battery.

I have a deep cycle battery on the trailer, and have never run it down loading something, even when we had to use the winch to move the load around before pulling it up onto the trailer. I also almost always use a snatch block with anything heavy just to slow down the speed, plus it also cuts the load on the winch in half.

Keith

I have a 12000 pound super winch battery power on the trailer,and the battery recharges itself off of the truck, When i bought my new trailer last year i got the winch with it best thing i ever did. Hauled a 880 the other day for a friend winch pulled it up with no trouble at all.

Hi Joe,

Before you buy anything read this website. It will give you good suggestions on how to winch and what the different types of equipment does and how it's used.

Besure and read up on how snatchblocks work.

I don't agree with 100% of what the website states, but in general, you can't go wrong with the info given.

T_Bone
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