Which ASME Standard Covers a Recovery Hook: B30.26 or B30.10?

If you go looking for the standard that governs a hook, ASME B30.26 is an easy place to land. It is titled Rigging Hardware, and a hook is rigging hardware in ordinary English. The enumeration inside B30.26 does not agree.

This page sets out what each of the two volumes actually scopes, and what follows from the difference. The short version is that hooks live in their own volume, and that volume does not set the one number most readers came looking for.

A note on what this page is not, before you read further: it is not a claim that anyone is getting this wrong. That assumption is what sent us looking, and a deliberate search for real examples of B30.26 being cited for hooks did not find any. The finding here is about what the two documents say, not about who has misread them.

Scope: what this page covers, and what it does not

This page is about which published standard applies to a hook, and what that standard does and does not specify. It is not a claim that any particular factory tow hook on any particular vehicle is or is not rated for recovery. That question is answered by the vehicle manufacturer’s own manual, and this site covers it separately.

Both volumes are paywalled, and this page is explicit about what that means for its own sourcing. Three tiers apply below, and each claim belongs to one of them:

• Corroborated against a publicly readable scope statement. The ANSI Webstore listing for the current edition of B30.26 publishes the volume’s scope statement in full, free to read, and it is linked in the sources. The scope enumeration in the next section matches it, and hooks are absent from it in the current edition, not only in the older one whose clause text is quoted further down. ANSI Webstore is an authorized reseller; ASME’s own standards catalog was returning errors across the site while this page was written, including on links ASME itself serves.
• Reported clause wording. The clause-level language quoted here, from the scope, design-factor, and removal-criteria clauses of ASME B30.26-2015 and ASME B30.10-2014, was read from copies of the volume text that circulate outside ASME’s authorized distribution. This page does not link those copies and does not treat them as an authorized source. Read as: this is the wording those copies carry. Verify it in your own licensed copy before you rely on it.
• Secondary summary. Where currency of the newest B30.10 edition is claimed, it rests on a rigging training provider’s published summary, named in the sources, not on this site reading the newest text.

Nothing below is presented as a figure this site measured. This site does no testing.

What B30.26 actually enumerates

B30.26’s scope clause applies the volume to detachable rigging hardware used in load handling in conjunction with equipment described in other volumes of the B30 series, and then names that hardware:

Two things follow. The first is that the omission is not an oversight of drafting: a volume that lists eye nuts and wedge sockets by name has not simply forgotten hooks. The second is that B30.26 says where they went. Its References section lists ASME B30.10, Hooks, as a separate publication in the same series.

The scope clause also carries a sentence worth reading if you are using this hardware outside industrial lifting, which describes most off-road recovery: detachable hardware used in applications other than those detailed in the volume is to be used only in accordance with the recommendations of the manufacturer or a qualified person. That sentence covers most off-road use of this hardware, and it points back to the manufacturer rather than to the standard.

Where hooks actually live

B30.10 scopes itself to the fabrication, attachment, use, inspection, and maintenance of hooks used for load handling purposes, in conjunction with equipment described in other volumes of the B30 series. It splits hooks by how they are loaded: hooks supporting a load in the base, meaning the bowl or saddle or pinhole, are one chapter, and hooks that may be loaded somewhere other than the base are another.

That split is the more useful half of the standard for a recovery reader, because loading a hook anywhere other than its base is exactly what goes wrong in the field.

The part that changes what “rated” means

Here is the finding that makes this more than a filing question.

B30.26 specifies design factors for most of the hardware it covers. B30.10 does not specify one for hooks. Its design-factor clause requires that a hook withstand the stresses imposed under normal operating conditions while handling loads within the rated load, and then states that the hook design factor shall, as a minimum, conform to those specified for the equipment or system in which the hook is a component.

A hook, in other words, inherits its margin. It does not carry one of its own.

Read that table across and a single sentence like “ASME sets a 5:1 design factor on rigging hardware” turns out to be three different statements. It is accurate for shackles at ordinary sizes, for links and rings, and for adjustable hardware. It is wrong for large shackles, where the minimum drops to 4. It does not apply at all to wire rope clips and wedge sockets, which are held to a connection-efficiency percentage instead. And it is not something B30.10 says about hooks in the first place.

If you have seen a page state that B30.10 requires a 4:1 or a 5:1 hook design factor, that number is not what the design-factor clause says.

What B30.10 publishes that the off-road world does not

The recovery market sells hooks and almost never tells you when to stop using one. B30.10 does, numerically.

Three notes on using that table honestly.

The wear and throat figures both carry the same qualifier in the standard: that limit, or the figure the manufacturer recommends. Where a hook’s maker publishes its own number, the maker’s number governs. Most consumer recovery hooks publish nothing, which leaves the standard’s figure as the only published criterion you have.

The deformation row is qualitative. B30.10 gives no degree threshold for twist, so no degree figure appears here. If you encounter one presented as this standard’s limit, it did not come from the removal-criteria clause.

Removal is not the end of the process either. The standard’s wording is that a hook showing these conditions is removed from service and returns to service only when a qualified person approves it. That phrase, qualified person, carries weight in the B30 series, and it does not describe the owner of the hook by default.

The latch question, which is not what most people think

A related belief worth correcting while we are here: that a hook must have a safety latch.

OSHA addressed this directly in a 2006 standard interpretation whose own title says the requirement depends on the activity for which the sling is being used. On slings, the interpretation notes that the regulation requires slings to be securely attached to their loads but does not explicitly require the hook to be equipped with a safety latch. On derricks, a different section does call for safety-latch-type hooks wherever possible. It also cites the consensus-standard position that latch-equipped hooks be used unless the application makes the latch impractical or unnecessary.

The requirement is therefore conditional, and which condition applies depends on the equipment involved. Note the limit of what this establishes: the interpretation retrieved for this page discusses the general-industry sling and derrick sections. It is linked in full in the sources so you can read which sections it addresses rather than take a summary’s word for it.

What this page could not establish

Two things were checked for this page and are not asserted, because the evidence did not support them.

The first is the premise this page started from. It is easy to assume that off-road content routinely miscites B30.26 for hooks, and that assumption is what sent us looking. A deliberate search for real examples did not find them. The one off-road page found citing B30.26 cites it for shackles, which is correct usage. The confusion between the two volumes is plausible, given a shared series and a title that reads like a superset, but this page has no evidence that it is widespread and does not claim that it is.

The second is any numeric threshold for hook twist. B30.10’s removal criteria handle deformation in words rather than degrees, so this page gives no figure. It also makes no claim about where any circulating figure came from, because that was not established either.

A note on the links rather than the content: while this page was written, ASME’s own standards catalog was returning errors sitewide, including on links served by ASME’s own pages. The scope statements cited here are therefore linked to an authorized reseller’s listings, which publish them publicly, rather than to ASME product pages that were not resolving. If you want the volumes themselves, search the designations directly: ASME B30.26 and ASME B30.10.

How we sourced this

RiggingOps does not perform hands-on testing, and it does not hold itself out as an authority on rigging standards. What it does is read the published documents and show you where the numbers came from, including when they are absent.

Both B30 volumes cited here are paywalled. ASME’s own free standard pages, linked in the sources, describe the scope of each volume and are the citation to check first. Figures presented above as the standards’ own language are taken from the relevant clauses: the scope clauses, the design-factor clauses, and the removal-criteria clauses. Where currency of the newest edition is claimed, it rests on a rigging training provider’s published summary of what that edition changed, which is named in the sources and is a secondary source, not the standard.

Editions of B30 volumes are revised on a rolling schedule. If your work is governed by a specific edition, read that edition. If a manufacturer publishes a figure for its own hook, that figure governs over anything here.

Related reading

For what the numbers stamped on rigging hardware mean in the first place, see WLL vs MBS. For a case where the design-factor question changes the answer within a single volume, see how snatch block ratings are published. For the vehicle-side question of whether a factory hook belongs in a recovery at all, see tow hook vs recovery point, and for what happens when uncertified hardware enters the load path, see hardware store shackle safety.

This page is part of the broader recovery gear ratings pillar.