Spent $240 on a cheap winch for my trailer and it paid for itself in one weekend

Alex Lee · 2026-09-24T07:30:05.246216+00:00

So I tow a small flatbed trailer for hauling stuff around town, and for the longest time I was doing the whole come-along thing by hand. You know, the hand crank ratchet strap method. It worked but it was slow and one time a strap slipped and the handle smacked me in the shin and I limped for a week. Last spring I finally caved and bought a $240 winch from a local farm supply place in Springfield, nothing fancy, just a 3500 lb model with a 20 foot strap. First real use was pulling a dead riding mower up onto the trailer after it died in the tall grass behind my shed. The winch dragged it up in maybe 30 seconds. The come-along would have taken me 20 minutes and a lot of swearing. Then about a month later my neighbor's old Ford Ranger got stuck in the mud at the end of our gravel road after a big rain, and that same winch yanked it out from a tree at the edge of his property. He tried to pay me $50 but I told him to just buy me lunch. Now I'm wondering if I should have gone bigger, like a 5000 lb model, just for safety margin. Anyone here using a 3500 on a small trailer and had issues with it bogging down on heavier loads?

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Spent $240 on a cheap winch for my trailer and it paid for itself in one weekend | Auto Gear Discussion - Vivisector