Jumper leads, tow ropes and snatch straps: what's actually in date in your kit

Pulled into a rest area south of Barcaldine a few years back and got yarning with a bloke who'd just watched his mate's tow rope let go mid-recovery. Snapped clean, whipped back and put a dent the size of a dinner plate in his own bullbar. Lucky nobody was standing where that thing came through. He'd had that rope in the tub since about 2009 and never once looked at it before that afternoon. That's the thing with recovery gear — it lives in the dark, gets wet, gets baked on the roof rack, and nobody thinks about it until the one day they need it to actually work.

Denise reckons I go through our recovery tub more than I go through my own wallet, and she's probably right. But six years on the road has taught me that half of what people carry is either the wrong tool for the job or so far past its use-by that it's more dangerous than useful. So let's have a proper look at what earns a spot, what doesn't, and what "in date" actually means for gear that isn't food.

Tow rope vs snatch strap — they are not the same thing

This one still catches people out and it's not a small point. A tow rope is rigid, it doesn't stretch, and it's meant for towing a vehicle along under its own control — think being pulled off the tar to a workshop, not being yanked out of a bog. A snatch strap is the opposite. It's designed to stretch, store energy, and use that stretch to pop a bogged rig free with a run-up. Use a tow rope like a snatch strap and something's going to break, usually a recovery point, sometimes worse.

We carry both, and they live in separate bags so I'm not fumbling around at 40 degrees trying to work out which one I've grabbed. The strap gets checked every trip for fraying, UV damage and any sign the stitching's pulling. Nylon straps don't like sun. Leave one hanging off a roof rack for a couple of years in the Pilbara and it'll look fine until the day it isn't.

Rated recovery points matter here too — and I mean actual rated points bolted to chassis, not a tow ball. I've seen a tow ball come off clean and become a projectile. If you're running the sandier tracks like the Simpson Desert French Line or the Oodnadatta Track, get bogged eventually is not an if, it's a when, so this stuff wants to be right before you leave the servo, not sorted out in the sun with everyone standing round watching.

Jumper leads and the flat battery nobody plans for

Jumper leads are the most boring bit of kit in the tub and the one that gets used the most, in my experience. Not for some dramatic bush recovery — usually it's because someone left the fridge lid open overnight or the kids ran the interior light for three hours at a free camp. A decent set of leads, heavy gauge, proper clamps, earns its place every single trip.

The mistake I made for years was buying the cheapest set at a servo in a panic and then never upgrading. Thin cable, weak spring clamps, and they'd get warm just cranking a diesel. If you're running a decent-sized diesel tourer, you want cable gauge that can actually shift the current without cooking itself. It's a cheap fix and one of the few bits of gear where spending an extra thirty or forty dollars properly changes the outcome.

These days most of what we deal with is a dead auxiliary battery rather than the main one, because we're running a fridge, lights and a bit of comms gear off it full-time. If you haven't worked out your actual power draw, that's worth sorting before you rely on jumper leads as your backup plan — there's a decent breakdown of the sums in sizing your 12V fridge to your battery that'll save you a flat pack one morning at a showground.

The shovel, the boards, and the stuff people skip

A decent shovel is non-negotiable and I don't care how flat your tyres are on sand, you'll dig eventually. Folding ones are handy for storage but I'd rather carry a proper long-handled one that doesn't fold at the worst moment. Recovery boards — the MaxTrax-style ones or a budget equivalent — have saved us more times than the winch has, and we don't even run a winch on the van, just the Troopy. Air compressor is the other one that gets skipped because people think a tyre gauge and a bit of luck will do. It won't. If you're deflating for sand or corrugations, and you should be, you need a way to reinflate back to road pressure once you're back on the bitumen, and doing that with a bicycle pump is not a plan, it's a joke Denise still brings up. There's a good rundown on actual pressures worth running in tyre deflation for sand and corrugations if you haven't settled on your own numbers yet.

Checking "use by" on gear that doesn't have a use-by date

Here's the bit people miss. Food's got a date stamped on it. Recovery gear doesn't, so you have to make your own rule. Ours is simple — every strap, rope and shackle gets a proper look before each big trip, not just a glance. UV damage on webbing shows as fading and a slightly fuzzy texture rather than smooth. Shackles get checked for hairline cracks, particularly bow shackles that have taken a hard load once already. And anything rated gets its rating checked against what we're actually towing, because vans have a habit of getting heavier over the years without anyone noticing — there's a good explainer on that creep in payload creep that's worth a read if you haven't weighed your rig lately.

I'll admit I ran a strap two seasons longer than I should have once, purely because it "still looked fine." It probably was fine. But "probably fine" isn't the standard I want for something that stores enough energy to break a bone if it lets go. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has published safety guidance on snatch strap failures for exactly this reason — it's not a rare event, it's a known failure mode, and most straps carry a maximum working load rating stamped or tagged on them that's worth actually reading rather than assuming.

Comms and navigation — the other half of "recovery"

Recovery gear gets you unstuck. Comms gear is what gets help to you if you can't get yourself unstuck, and I reckon it belongs in the same conversation even though people file it separately in their heads. A UHF radio is standard kit now and most tourers have one, though not everyone uses it properly — channel etiquette matters more than people think when you're queued up behind road trains or convoying through somewhere like the Gibb River Road. There's a solid guide on that at UHF radio channels and etiquette. Beyond UHF, if you're heading somewhere genuinely remote — the Anne Beadell, the Gunbarrel, the Simpson — a UHF radio talks to nobody outside line of sight of another UHF radio. That's fine on a busy track, useless on an empty one. A satellite messenger or, better again, a satellite phone is the difference between a bad day and a genuinely dangerous one out there. Check current advice through your state's road authority or the relevant park service before heading into anything remote, and always carry a way to raise help that doesn't rely on someone else driving past.

What actually stays in the tub

After six years and a fair few false starts, here's what earns permanent space for us: a snatch strap and separate tow rope, two rated bow shackles, a set of decent jumper leads, a long-handled shovel, recovery boards, a tyre gauge and a 12V compressor that can actually keep pace with a set of light truck tyres, a UHF radio, and a satellite messenger for the properly quiet tracks. Everything gets a look before a big trip and gets binned the moment it looks tired, not "probably still okay." I reckon the biggest change in my thinking over the years isn't about what to buy — it's about treating this gear the same way you'd treat a park with a stay limit sign, worth reading properly rather than assuming the last bloke got it right. Cheap insurance you hope you never cash in, but you want it in date when you do.

A few questions worth asking before you leave the driveway

Is every rated item in the tub actually rated for the vehicle you're towing now, not the one you had when you bought the gear? Has anything spent more than a couple of seasons baking on a roof rack in direct sun? Do you know the difference between your recovery points and your tie-down points, because they're often not the same bolts? And has anyone in the van other than you actually looked at how the gear works, in case you're the one who ends up needing rescuing? Ask them now, in the driveway, not halfway up the Birdsville Track with the light going and the flies starting to bite.