same here...just has loops at the end, and i just throw it on my reese ball (rated 6000 lbs, reese hitch rated at 16000 lbs.)

 

It dont even need loops, I can tie a knot, but I do the same as far as putting on the ball only broke a couple straps so far and no dents or injuries so I think im doing good but any safety info learned is never a bad thing

 

This is how I hook mine up. Hammer, do you think I should loop the end of the strap onto the round hitch deal on the front end or keep the shackle? I figured it would stress the end of the strap too much to have the end looped onto it instead of having it hooked straight up to a shackle.

 

I was told never to use a trailer ball as a yank or ****** point. If one should break...and apparently somewhere, one has, hence the info.
It's ok to wrap 'em around the drop, if you must. Actually, it's better to mount a D-Ring in your reciever.

 

I'm a shackle nut! I use shackles on everything. Never had one fail, but I ALWAYS put weight of some kind over the center of my winch cable, tow strap or whatever...

 

I have seen trailer ***** transform themselves from pull-point, to projectile.... They make rather large holes in windshields, or anything else they happen to encounter in their mad rush to escape..... Watched one go thru a windshield, and exit thru the back window, and leave a serious dent in the tailgate.... Luckily, no one was in the path..... The driver of the target truck had some interior cleaning to do though, and not just glass......

 

With a receiver hitch, I like to hang the loop of a 3" strap on the hitch pin. If the pin should snap (which seems unlikely) it should bend and allow the loop to escape without a metal projectile.

A larger strap won't go into the receiver hitch, but it can usually be looped around the box of the receiver, with the tag end through the loop. But I haven't tried this on a Ram truck yet.

 

I would think that the edge of the hole in the receiver would be sharp enough to cut the strap or at least fray it enough to break if you put it around the pin. That's why I like the smooth round metal on a shackle.

 

The last strap I had saw a lot of use in the 15 years or so I had it, and it showed no wear where the loop exited the receiver hitch. What wear there was was in the bends of the loops themselves, and that came from my peculiar method of connecting to the towed vehicle. I used lift straps rated 50% or more greater than the recovery strap, and would float the recovery strap loop on one lift strap connected between the tow hooks, or lacking hooks, between two additional lift straps with one over each frame rail. In this way I avoided off-angle pulls making failure more likely by applying full force to just one connection point.

While I did manage a few times to break tow hooks off of the towed vehicle, there was no really scary aftermath. Only once did the recovery strap come off of the lift strap, and witnesses said that it didn't fly off but was drug off before I got stopped. The other times it was still on the lift strap when everything came to rest. The one time a tow hook escaped from the lift strap, it came to rest less than ten feet from towed vehicle and bounced/rolled most of that distance. It could be I was on a long lucky streak, but I was satisfied by those failures that my setup was preferable to the alternatives.

And FWIW, paranoid soul that I am (I'm the one who won't do a recovery without a headache rack and at least a folded tarp over the windshield of the stuck vehicle), I like to use three energy dampers on any line of appreciable length in a recovery operation: one in the middle, and one each equidistant between the center damper and each terminal end. With luck, the flying end will never make it as far as the vehicle it's hurtling toward. With just one in the middle that vehicle is likely to get tagged -- people safe, radiator broken is a better outcome than people broken, but it's still more adventure than I'd like.

 

On the subject of straps breaking, what about Ranger tow hooks, what do y'all think about them?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEfnfOfbsi4