What NOT to Use for Vehicle Recovery: Ratchet Straps, Chains, and Tow Balls

Three items show up in a lot of “emergency kit” lists that don’t belong anywhere near a stuck-vehicle recovery: a ratchet strap, a length of chain, and a tow ball. All three are common, all three look strong enough, and none of them are built or rated for the load a kinetic recovery pull actually creates. Here’s what the manufacturers themselves say about each one.

Erickson, ARB, Factor 55, WARN, and Subaru are trademarks of their respective owners; RiggingOps is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.

A strap, chain, or ball that fails under a kinetic pull can turn into a projectile in a fraction of a second, so treat the manufacturer’s own instructions for every piece of gear as final; where they differ from this article, the manual wins. A kinetic recovery stores real energy in a stretched line, and that energy has to go somewhere if a strap, hook, or attachment point lets go. Keep every bystander well clear of the line and both vehicles for the full length of any pull. Never load any component past its rated capacity, and never substitute one category of gear for another because it looks close enough.

The 5-Second Answer

Why “Rated for X Pounds” Doesn’t Mean Rated for Recovery

A number stamped on a strap or a chain link answers one question: how much static, steady load can this handle. It doesn’t answer whether the gear can absorb a sudden, dynamic shock, which is the actual physics of a kinetic recovery pull. Our WLL vs MBS explainer and recovery gear ratings pillar cover this distinction in depth: the short version is that a rating assumes the load profile the manufacturer tested for, and none of the three items on this page were tested against a kinetic recovery load profile. The same split shows up on a tool people reach for when there’s no winch: a come-along’s manual publishes a rated capacity and then warns separately about dynamic loading, which come-along vs winch works through from the manufacturers’ own documents.

Can You Use a Ratchet Strap for Vehicle Recovery?

No. A ratchet strap is designed to do one job well: hold a fixed, controlled tension on cargo so it doesn’t shift in transit. Erickson’s own 2 in x 27 ft ratchet strap with double J-hooks publishes a 3,300 lb Working Load Limit against a 10,000 lb breaking strength, a roughly 3:1 safety factor, in polyester webbing, marketed under “Tie Downs” for load securement. Nothing in that spec, or in any ratchet-strap manufacturer spec we could find, addresses dynamic or shock loading.

Two mechanical problems compound this. First, the material: polyester is a low-stretch fiber by design, the same category tow straps use for static towing, and US Cargo Control’s own comparison states plainly that “tow straps should not be used in the recovery of stuck vehicles simply because they are less stretchy and can more easily break under the pressure a recovery entails,” the same low-stretch polyester construction this rope-vs-strap distinction turns on. Second, the hardware: rigging vendor USA Ratchet is explicit that “the hooks on ratchet straps aren’t meant for the aggressive forces of towing. They can disengage or break, creating a dangerous situation on the road.” A metal S-hook or J-hook that lets go under tension becomes a projectile, the exact failure mode this site warns about for tow-ball hooks below.

The ratchet mechanism itself adds a third issue: it’s built to hold a static load against slow creep, not to release energy smoothly the way a kinetic rope’s elastic stretch does. If a ratchet strap is the only thing you’re loading against a moving pull, you’re combining a low-stretch material with hardware not rated for shock loading and a mechanism that wasn’t designed for either. For the strap types that are actually built for this job, see recovery strap vs tow strap vs kinetic rope.

Chain vs Strap for Off-Road Recovery: What the Chain Grades Actually Rate For

Chain looks like the strongest option in a recovery kit, and by raw breaking strength it often is. That’s exactly why it’s dangerous here: chain’s strength isn’t the problem, its lack of stretch is.

Grade 70 (transport/binder chain). This is the yellow-chromate chain sold for load securement, tie-downs, and towing utility work. US Cargo Control’s own Columbus McKinnon-manufactured 5/16 in Grade 70 chain spec lists a 4,700 lb Working Load Limit and an 18,800 lb break strength, and states directly: “Grade 70 chain is not approved for overhead lifting.” That’s a securement rating, not a dynamic-load rating.

The reason goes deeper than a lifting-code technicality. Rigging supplier HHI Lifting explains that Grade 30, Grade 43, and Grade 70 chain “are never manufactured or heat-treated for overhead lifting” because “they lack the specific alloy composition, the precise quench-and-temper process, and the rigorous individual proof testing required to survive the dynamic shock loads of an overhead crane pick.” American Cable & Rigging puts it more bluntly: Grade 70 “should not be used for overhead lifting,” calling it “a trucker’s chain, built for fastening and placing, but definitely not for carrying loads in high places.” Both descriptions are about crane work, but the underlying physics, no proof-testing against dynamic shock loading, applies just as directly to a kinetic vehicle recovery pull.

Grade 80 (alloy lifting chain). This is the heat-treated alloy chain that is shock-rated and individually proof-tested, which is why it’s the grade legally approved for overhead lifting under NACM, ASME, and OSHA guidance. It’s tempting to read that as “Grade 80 is fine for recovery, then,” and that would be a mistake. Grade 80’s shock rating is built and tested around a controlled crane pick, a load transferring onto a stationary hook, not the elastic energy-absorption a kinetic recovery pull requires. We could not find a single chain manufacturer, at Grade 70, Grade 80, or any grade, that publishes a rating for vehicle kinetic recovery use. That’s a real, stated gap in what the industry sells; it isn’t a case of this site declining to look.

The physics explains why the gap exists rather than getting filled with a workaround. A kinetic rope or snatch strap does its job by stretching 20-30% under load, storing the moving recovery vehicle’s energy and releasing it smoothly (see the mechanism explained in full on our recovery strap vs tow strap page). Chain doesn’t meaningfully stretch at all. Snatch a stuck vehicle with a chain and there’s no elastic buffer between the sudden load spike and the chain, the shackles, and the recovery points on both ends: the full shock transfers almost instantly instead of gradually.

Chain does have one legitimate place in a recovery kit: WARN’s own comparison recommends a choker chain over a webbing tree saver specifically for high-abrasion anchors, like skidding a downed tree, because chain handles sharp or abrasive contact better than fabric. That’s chain used as a static anchor wrap, not as the elastic pulling line itself, and it’s the one use case where chain’s lack of stretch is exactly what the job calls for.

Can You Use a Tow Ball as a Recovery Point?

No, and this is the most-cited warning of the three, because a failed tow ball becomes a projectile rather than just a failed pull. ARB’s guidance states a tow ball “is not made of high-tensile material” and “has been known to fail” with “the potential to become a lethal missile.” Factor 55 gives the identical warning for receiver balls in its own tow-strap-versus-recovery-strap guidance. JACO Superior Products explains the mechanism: tow balls “are made for vertical pulling, not stretch-and-snap kinetic loads. They shear off and become projectiles.”

The reason is straightforward once you see what a tow ball is engineered for. It carries a steady, mostly downward and forward load from a trailer coupler, a load profile with no lateral shock and no sudden release. A recovery strap or rope looped over a ball instead pulls at an angle the ball was never designed for, and nothing about the ball’s shape is built to retain a strap loop under tension in the first place: it can simply slip or shear free. A rated recovery point or a load-rated hitch shackle mount, by contrast, is engineered specifically to take that off-axis, dynamic load. See our full breakdown of tow hooks vs recovery points for what’s actually rated on your specific vehicle.

No Tow Hook? What CUV and AWD Drivers Should Use Instead

Not every vehicle has a factory hook cleared for recovery use, and the coverage varies by manufacturer more than most owners expect. Subaru’s own Outback, Forester, and Crosstrek owner’s manual authorizes its front hooks for emergency use only: “the towing hooks should be used only in an emergency,” with an explicit instruction not to apply excessive load and to remove the hook afterward because leaving it mounted “could interfere with SRS airbag operation in a frontal collision.” No load rating, winching capacity, or Working Load Limit figure appears anywhere in that manual, and Subaru never uses the term “recovery point” for this hardware. That’s a materially different posture than Jeep’s Wrangler manual, which recommends using both front tow hooks together for off-road recovery.

If your vehicle’s manual reads like Subaru’s, that’s a real gap, not a reason to reach for a tow ball or a length of chain. A hitch receiver fitted with a load-rated shackle mount, seated with a load-rated pin rather than a standard hitch pin, turns an otherwise unrated attachment point into one. Factor 55’s HitchLink 3.0, for example, is manufacturer-rated at 18,000 lb WLL for Class V 3-inch receivers. If your vehicle has neither a manufacturer-rated recovery point nor a hitch receiver you can fit one to, that’s a call-a-professional situation rather than an improvised fix.

How We Chose

Every rating on this page comes from a manufacturer’s own product page, a rigging-industry supplier’s published spec, or a manufacturer’s owner’s manual, cited inline. Where no manufacturer publishes a rating (a chain grade rated specifically for vehicle kinetic recovery, for instance), we said so instead of estimating one. Full methodology at our review methodology page.

Call a professional rather than improvising a recovery when you’re dealing with a rollover, a vehicle on an unstable slope, a water recovery, a damaged recovery point, or any pull you’re not confident calculating. For the gear that is built for this job, see our recovery strap vs tow strap comparison and the vehicle recovery techniques hub.