Secure and transport equipment safely with these tips.

It’s important to tie down the stuff you transport in the back of your pickup truck—even if you’re just driving five minutes away. An unsecured load can become a dangerous projectile in the event of an accident, flip out of the bed on a sharp turn, slide out during acceleration, and be damaged—or cause damage to your truck. You can secure lighter things with a rope (see our primer on how to tie a tucker’s hitch). But for anything heavier than, say, a push mower, you’ll want to use ratchet straps.

While ratchet straps are the ubiquitous tie-down tool, they’re not all created equal. Know your straps and their limits. Ratchet strap packaging should indicate both the working load weight they’re designed for and the breaking strength of the strap. This information should also be printed on a tag sewn into the strap. If you don’t see this information, don’t buy the ratchet straps. And you can’t assume all straps of the same size have the same working load and break strength—the weave and thickness of the webbing may be different. That 1-inch strap may have a working load as low as 300 pounds or as high as 833. Note that the safe working load for all ratchet straps is calculated by dividing the breaking strength by three.

You can commonly find ratchet straps in 1-, 1.5-, 2-, and 3-inch widths. The smaller 1- and 1.5-inch straps should be sufficient for most loads carried in a pickup truck bed, while larger sizes may be needed to secure vehicles and equipment carried on trailers. Once you have the straps selected for your cargo, it’s time to load up, tie down, and head out. We’ve got some guidance on how to use those ratchet straps to tie things down safely.

Most trucks have steel loops or hooks to use as anchor points when securing cargo. These are often in the lower corners inside the bed. Some trucks have rails along to top of the bed with adjustable and sometimes plastic anchors. You can use these to tie down light objects, but avoid using ratchet straps on them to secure heavy loads.

There are four main parts of a ratchet mechanism. They are the handle (1), ratcheting pawl (2), windlass (3), and locking pawl (4). The handle is used as a lever to tighten the strap, and it has a cam on it to release the strap when fully opened. The windlass is the spool that is spun around and collects the strap. The ratcheting pawl allows the handle to spin the windlass and wind the strap around it. The locking pawl prevents the windlass from unwinding until you release it by fully opening the handle.

When strapping something down, you’ll find it easiest to handle each strap as two parts: the long strap and the ratchet. Find your anchor point on the vehicle and hook the short ratchet end of the strap there. Next, find the place to hook the strap on your cargo, and then stretch the strap toward the ratchet. With the ratchet fully open, feed the strap, from the bottom, through the slot in the windlass, then push it down between the windlass and handle. Pull the slack out by the free end of the strap, then crank the handle to tighten the ratchet. Finally, close the handle, locking the strap so it can’t be released. To release the ratchet, pull up on the ratcheting pawl and fully open the handle.

If you have something relatively light, like a snow blower or a push mower, you can get away with a single strap. Use the two anchor points in the front of the truck bed, pulling the cargo tight against the front of the bed. The anchor points are usually low in the corners, so be sure your strap angles up and around the back of the machine, without rubbing on any sharp edges.

As with tying down with one strap, you’ll use the front two anchor points. Find a sturdy place on your cargo to catch with your strap hooks. With equipment, a structural part of the frame is ideal. The two straps should be tightened evenly, pulling the cargo up against the front of the bed. You can also use this method to secure cargo against the tailgate, attaching the ratchet straps to the two rearmost anchors.

Why did we skip using three straps? Generally, if you need a strap on the back of your cargo, you should use two. It’s safer if one should break or loosen up, and if that happens with just one on the back, the cargo will be able to move around.

With large and/or heavy cargo, situate it over the axle and secure it at all four corners. Use one ratchet strap going to the anchor points at each corner of the bed. Hook the cargo at each corner, tightening either the front or back two first, and then the remaining two. Keep the tension as even as you can.

When using ratchet straps, you’ll almost always have a length of loose strap left hanging once everything is tightened down. You’ll need to prevent these strap “tails” from blowing around. Straps flapping against painted surfaces can damage the finish. But in the worst case, they could flap outside the bed and get caught in your wheel.

If you have a short tail of strap, you can tuck the end into the ratchet and crank it in a couple of clicks.

If you’ve got a long tail of strap, coil it into a roll, pull some loose strap through the coil, flip that loop over the coil, and then pull it snug.

Brad Ford has spent most of his life using tools to fix, build, or make things. Growing up he worked on a farm, where he learned to weld, repair, and paint equipment. From the farm he went to work at a classic car dealer, repairing and servicing Rolls Royces, Bentleys, and Jaguars. Today, when he's not testing tools or writing for Popular Mechanics, he's busy keeping up with the projects at his old farmhouse in eastern Pennsylvania.

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