Ep. 18: Mechanical Sympathy

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Welcome to gear Talk Podcasts on the Hospitals with me
as always, Jordan's budd is here. This week we've got
Clay Croft coming in to chat with us. Clay is
from x Overland. X Overland is a company that's doing
content around overlanding. If that doesn't mean anything to you, overlanding,

(00:37):
just look this up on Wikipedia. As they defined it
is also known as four wheel dot four wheel drive touring,
self reliant overland travel to remote destinations where the journey
is the principal goal. I think that's a pretty good definition. Basically,
it's car camping in badass rigs that are built out

(01:00):
to like go through across over crazier stuff, probably than
I do on regular basis, but like they're pushing the
limits where they're going. You can obviously go check out there.
They've got a great YouTube channel with all kinds of
cool places they've been. They've done this all over the world.

(01:22):
They've gained a lot of experience about, uh, you know,
with just like going through crazy stuff. So we figured
it'd be very advantageous for us as hunters and anglers
who often get you know, drive down roads that you
know aren't quite perfect and you can get yourself in
situations and Claike is going to walk us through how

(01:45):
to base how to get unstuck. He calls it vehicle immobilization.
There's two kinds. We've got basically getting stuck where you
can't use your wheels anymore, and then you've got mechanical
immobilization where or no, do you call it elect mechanical
mechanical and electrical or was it one or the other
breaking down? Breaking mechanical okay? And then with within that

(02:09):
you could have electrical breakdown where you could have you know,
and engine quits work and uh or you know, battery
goes out, whatever it might be. So anyways, we're going
to talk to him about uh, basically about getting rigs
unstuck and what you might need to have with you

(02:29):
so that you can feel confident getting getting into you know,
crazier locations to go find a big bull elk.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, we we talked about my latest vehicle immobilization a
while back in a different episode. I got stuck and
I pulled myself out with the wind.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
That's right. You have to ask him if that's what
he would have done too.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, I'm interested to hear about those recovery boards. He's
going to talk about some recovery boards. Have not used those,
but heard a few people that have, So yeah, it'll
be a super interesting episode.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
I'm excited to talk to them all right before.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
We get Clay in here, though, what have you been
up to, Jordan?

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (03:11):
This last weekend, as we recorded, it was a Memorial
Day weekend, we went out and did a little bit
of bear scouting. We've just seemed to have a there's
just a ton of snow up in the mountains.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Still.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
There was one road that usually is open at the
beginning of May and it just now opened about four
days ago, so trying to get in there. That's where
we're gonna do some bear hunts. So we ripped around
on the side by sides a little bit and went
up some roads that were all had trees knocked over
on them and we ran into snow, and so just

(03:44):
trying to logistically get figured out where we can even
get to this next week on this hunt. And then
other than that been spring gosh, spring organizing and trying
to break all the gear out and figure out what
needs tent steaks and what needs new guidelines tied on
to it and you name it, doing some fixing stuff.

(04:08):
Got the side by sides in getting all the clutch
is getting pulled apart and cleaned and YadA YadA, just
like all the spring cleaning things for getting ready for
the summer in this fall. So that's what I've that's
what we've been up to the last little bit.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
What about you.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
I'm making a note right now that says email Chili
regarding condition of crew tepee because you just reminded me
when you talk about tent steaks and guyelines. I was
when we did that bear hunt. We used some of
some Meat Eater geared for our crew tent, and yeah,

(04:48):
I was not happy with the condition of it when
I pulled it out of the pulled it out. It
was definitely not been checked since the last hunt went on.
And I can tell you what the last hunt that
teepee went on was when all Clay Nukeom and Steven
Ranella and the Meat Eater crew took it up to
Alaska and we had zippers that weren't working good. There's

(05:08):
burn holes in it, there were The guyline situation was
just horrendous. I mean, it's not that you can't have
five different types of para cord. But I mean stuff
that had been you know, three pieces tied together and
just tied in crazy locations, like it just wasn't put
away ready for the next person. So luckily we have

(05:31):
a gear manager and he's hopefully he'll be able to
bring the hammer down on whoever's responsibility that it's.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Supposed to be and bring it back to life.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Yeah. No, which is great. It's easy to do on
the I mean taking an hour and that tent would
be rocking and rolling again. But I actually, when we
were just camping this weekend doing some late season turkey
hunting my seak outside Redcliffe, I'd pitched a few really
bent tent steaks and hadn't replaced them, and so I
was not fully secured, and uh maybe through just fine,

(06:03):
just kind of had to be smart about which uh,
you know, which spots of my little TP I wanted
to stay down on which ones I didn't. But yeah,
super uh, super smart thing to do. It's probably best
just to buy like a hundred pack. That way, you
always just have extra ones in the garage or in
the truck or whatever. And and all of a sudden

(06:27):
when you're like, oh man, look at that thing because
the bent ones. Man, I've tried hammering them back and
they just seem like once you bent them once, it
just bend the second and third and four times so
much easier. You know.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, they say that's why you shouldn't press them in
with your foot. It is because they'll bend easier. If
you're trying to press them in with your foot and
you hit a rock or something, it'll like bend them over,
Whereas if you have like another rock or a hammer
or something, it'll like knock the stake through the rock,
or if the rock is impassable, then it just won't
go and you have to change locations for it.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
But that's interesting. I know you've told me that before.
I'm still I'm still a little incredulous about that. I
need to talk to a real like a physics professor.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
I mean I still do it. Oh yeah, I still
do it, but I I've heard that you should not
do that.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
It's better to I just don't understand how it's better
to pound it. I would think that even the pounding
it would bend it all the same if you if
you hit a rock. But I don't know, maybe there
could be something to it. Let me see, Yeah, Memorial
Day weekend. For me, it's my birthday weekend. And uh.

(07:35):
And so we decided to go turkey hunting. I was
gonna do both daughters, but then with a buddy of
mine and he's got one boy. But so the youngest said, well,
I'm gonna be the third wheel, so I'm balance. So
luckily we've got family in town. She was able to
stay with them, and we went turkey hunting, and man,
it was fun, good camping. But we definitely experienced late

(07:59):
season turkey hunt, which means that I think that quite
a few of the gobblers were gobbled out. That's a
fun way of saying that, just like they weren't playing
ball anymore. We found one that was gobbling. He didn't
really he would gobble at everything, but was not interested
in the coming of the call. And whether that's from

(08:19):
pressure or just from being late in the season hard
to say. But so I sent this young man, Grady,
on a bushwhacken mission, and I just stayed back and
would hit the box call every you know, two three
minutes and just see if I could get that bird
to gobble so that he would give away his location.

(08:40):
And so he and his dad. I know, my daughter
was sleeping, and he and his dad were just sitting
there chilling, chit chatting, kind of glassing over to where
we had seen the bird go and kind of took
a little while. And after a while we're wondering, man,
wonder what's going on? Is he on him? Is he not?
We hadn't heard the bird gobble in a while, so
I hit the box call I got, I think, two

(09:01):
more times, and later Grady said, man, I had no
idea where he was, but then you made him gobble
two more times and I got to beat on him
and I had cover between him and I and I
just he had to sprint across the field get behind
the cover. And this kid's pretty amazing. I think he's
out there. I think he's twelve now, and he's like

(09:23):
I knew he was right behind this little ridge and
I just peeked over that little ridge and he looked
at me, but it was too late and he boomed him.
So we got one bird out of the deal. But man,
we put in some power loops. Power loops, especially for
eleven and twelve year olds. I think every day we
did roughly ish. This is basically by doing math by

(09:44):
counting how many steps the iPhone says you took. But
we had a couple eighteen thousand day eighteen thousand steps days,
which I think are roughly two thousand steps is a mile.
That's what you find online. So yeah, do the math,
you know, eight nine miles. And you know, kids, my

(10:07):
daughter forgot her hiking boots, so she did this all
in insulated muck boots in seventy five degree weather. Never
complain that was good. But anyways, we could not rustle
up another gobble, talk to two or three hens I
think in two days that would talk back to me.
But just couldn't get anybody to gobble again. So you're

(10:29):
left to think that it's either just over or you know,
you know, we don't hunt a high density turkey area
in a lot of places in Montana, and so maybe
just the drainages that you checked it and have turkeys
in them. But it was tough. And again I can't
say it was there was no turkeys or just the

(10:49):
end of season or what what. We did have a
really cool day. It was the first day. Six bears
in one day.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
Six nice.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, like we're sitting there hunting turkeys, looking at a
beautiful little meadow, thinking, man, this is this is where
i'd be if I was a turkey, nice little strut zone.
And all sudden Grady is like, oh no, we're looking there.
A couple of elk walk through there. It's kind of
like a young bull. He's got I don't know, six
inches of antlers poking out, and then it might have
been a spike behind him. They kind of come trotting

(11:22):
through all happy, and we're glassing them. And then Grady says, well,
look right behind where those elks just were, there's a bear.
I'm like, no way, and uh, sure enough, nice sized
black bear just sitting there chilling.

Speaker 4 (11:35):
You know.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
We're watching it and like, oh this is great, you know,
like National Geographic got some elk seeing a bear. Five
minutes later, a big old cinnamon dude pops out right
below this black one. The best we could figure probably
a mating pair, right, that's what we're thinking. Yeah, they
kind of they There wasn't anything too romantic about the encounter,

(11:56):
but definitely the you know, the black bear did a
few or the black faced black bear did a few
circles and then sort of wandered off and the cinnamon
colored bear, which looked the same size or bigger than
the black one, kind of filed the same trail and
then followed that black one. So we figured sound and

(12:17):
a board doing their thing. Well, we go around, We
basically go off the ridge. They went right. We went
on the left side of the ridge, and we're standing,
you know, over a little on a little precipice and
make a few calls. Grady walks out there a little
farther and he's waving us all over. Immediately, I'm like, oh, sweet,
maybe he glassed up some turkeys. He's like, there's a

(12:38):
bear in the top of that tree. Like what, there's
no way. You just like looked over there and saw
a bear in the top of this tree one hundred
yards away. Sure enough, we glass it. There's two cubs
in the top of this ponderosa pine, and like, wow,
that's that's the cool deal. So again, best we can
figure is that probably when that boar rolled in that

(12:59):
sal ran those two cubs up that tree, and then
you know, just keeping safe from the board, they went
and you know, doing their thing. I'm guessing she's gonna
come back and get them. So at that point we're like, wow,
amazing day, right, four bears, like I don't know, ninety
minutes two hours later walking down another ridge and just

(13:19):
we're on a big loop and or no, we had
set up. We're calling and we look up on the
hill and here comes the you know, medium sized adolescent
bear kind of rolling through middle of the day. All
of this too, and then again we kept hiking, and
later towards the end of our little loop, we're walking,
you know, down a drange and look up on the

(13:41):
hill and there's a medium sized bear just sitting on
his haunches and looking at us. So there's a chance
that that one could have been I mean, we were
within a mile probably where we saw the one running,
so we could have seen the same bear twice. But maam,
you know I hunted for a whole week two weeks
weeks ago and saw two light bears and just out

(14:04):
Turkey hunting scene.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
Sick, so new new bear spot.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, it could be. The quote is pretty low in
the zone. I don't think it's known for having a
lot of bears. Quota closes pretty quickly. But yeah, I
guess you could go there and hunt them up. It
could be fun. So yeah, sweet AnyWho.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Well, Yeah, speaking of just what we were talking about earlier,
getting gear ready and stuff. For our listener question this week,
we had Brock Wilson send an email in and he
was asking, in the early season, or I would say
in the spring season as well, is it worth taking
a floorless tint just to have to buy an insert

(14:49):
or a tarp basically just an insert for the bugs
making the floorless tent a floored tent. And I know
when you when we were getting ready to go to Alaska,
you did a little video on your FLORALSS setup and
then you you had a nest in it as well,
which is basically it's a floor with a bug netting.
And you got a few questions just like this, like
why are you using a floralless tent and then getting

(15:12):
an insert to make it floored? You basically have a
floorid tent. Why why are you doing that?

Speaker 3 (15:18):
What? What's your what was your kind of take on that?

Speaker 1 (15:22):
Well? I think that the my loss for words here
and gives you options, right Like the one that I
use most often is the seak out side Redcliff or
the Cemarron. They're pretty much the same thing. The Red
Cliffs advertised as a six person. Cimarron is a four person.

(15:47):
I think I usually drop both those down to uh
down by two. We've actually done our whole family in
the Cimarron. It's just you know, a little bit tighter.
But you gotta remember too with these floor less shelters,
right and again options so you have the outer shell,
you can just have like the single layer. Then you

(16:09):
can put in a liner, right just like you just
like you have two layers. In most any kind of
just a free standing backpack, classic backpacking tent, you're gonna
have condensation on your outer layer. It just happens, right,
So if you have that second layer on the inside,
whether it's a screen or like seac outside basically makes

(16:30):
these very thin white liners, it gives you that protection
from that condensation when you're moving around in there. A
lot of times I don't run those, but it's there. Right.
Then you also have the option to add in a ness,
which is like you said, it's basically just one hundred
percent mesh with a with the floor that will also

(16:50):
act sort of as a second layer as well as
keeping you, uh you know, free free from bugs. Definitely.
When we hunt now in the spring in Montana, we're
always using those nests because of ticks. A lot of
ticks around and uh there's the big dog ticks, so
you really don't have to worry too much about what

(17:11):
they about what they carry. But you know, nobody likes getting,
you know, ticks all over them, having to have full ticks.
So yes, I get once you once you do put
that in there. But it's like a lot of other tents,
you don't have the option to run with or without.
It's kind of like it comes one way as it is.
Even though even that being said, like this past weekend,

(17:34):
it was just my daughter and I in a tent
and we had one nest set up. We both slept
in there, all of our gears on the other side
of the tent. It's very spacious, very roomy. I can
stand up in it get dressed. That's a huge plus
for me. And and the big thing is is that

(17:54):
you have like your sleeping zone that can stay dry,
tick free or whatever, and then your gear zone because
it's floorless, you walk in there with your boots on.
Let's just say you come back to camp and it's
it's a downpour. Right in car camping, we had these
little healing ox camp triers with us super small, kind

(18:16):
of sit lower the ground, so they're perfect inside a teepee.
But it's pouring rain. Jump in there, open the zipper,
two people get in there, zip it down, the nest,
sleeping bag, all that stuff is off to the side
staying dry, and you're in there soaking wet, but you
can there's enough room that you can take off your
rain gear, put it off to the side, take off

(18:37):
your you know, muck boots or whatever boots you're wearing,
put them off to the side. And you didn't have
to take the boots off before you got into the tent,
right to do that, because most of the time standard
backpacking set up there's a small little vestibule, but you
have to sort of undo your laces as you're crawling in,

(18:59):
and then you pop your boots off real quick, leave
them under the vestibule and crawl into the main tent.
Right yep. And I think that's just like that, going
through that motion right there is worthwhile for me to
have that the bigger space of the floorless tint, so
you can so you can basically walk in and and

(19:20):
the same thing in the morning. Right, you just have
a lot of room to get dressed, put your boots on,
you're sleeping zone, all that stuff. Still staying super tidy,
dry clean, but you've got the space to you know,
it's a deal with wet gear and dirty gear and

(19:43):
not just not feel crammed. There's so much bigger, there's
so much more room.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah, the space to weight ratio. Like you could have
a basic two man backpacking tent that caught or that
weighs four pounds, and you know it's set up to
where two people can stay, can sleep side by side
in it. And then you can have something like you're
talking about Cimmarron. You can have with the nest and
the pole and all the steaks and all the things.

(20:09):
You might be at four pounds maybe, but you have
so much more space, especially when you're comparing it just
to that little tent for two people. You can have
two people sleeping ways apart from each other, plus room
for all their gear, and then plus you can run
a stove with it in the later season. So that's
just it, and that's just an extra I think, folks,

(20:32):
and sometimes too, like you know, in the spring you're
talking about, and I think sometimes in the summer at
lower elevations you'll want You'll want that nest for like ticks,
and then there is like a bug issue there can be,
But in September, if you're just hunting the high country
like for mule deer and your way up above alpine,
there's not really that many bugs up there. There really

(20:55):
isn't like it gets pretty cold at night, like you're
not gonna be fighting on know, there's exceptions to everything,
but a lot of times those times I'm just taking
I'm just taking the floorless, just the canopy with me.
I'm not taking a nest, so I'm even lightening it
up more than that and saving on space.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
So in those situations, all you really are bringing it
for is because you need shelter from rain, wind, possibly
snow and uh yeah, and people I think to have
a there's a misconception that somehow water is gonna go
down the tent and then just like start immediately seeping

(21:36):
inwards into this floorless shelter. It just doesn't happen. Maybe
in super crazy wet environments you might have to dig
a little trench around the outside, but actually we did
have to do that once in on Prince of Wales.
I mean that's a place where it rains eleven feet
a year. It's the only place I've ever had to

(21:57):
do that. Yeah, you can use them and sometimes if
you set them up in the right spot and it's raining,
I've done this on bear hunts and it's still raining,
but you can still there's there roomy enough where you
can have the door still propped open and still be glassing,
you know, across a drainage, and sure your window of
you know, the width of your of your field of

(22:22):
vision is a little it's smaller. But look, you're you're
dry and comfy inside of a tent, not having to
sit out there in your rain jacket. You're in your tent,
but you're still hunting and you're comfortable. And uh, you know,
for me, a lot of it comes down to I'll
hunt harder and I'll hunt more the more comfortable I am. Right,

(22:44):
it's so much easier to turn back and head to
the truck when uh, you're wet, you can't get dry,
you can't come you know, can't bring everything back to life.
It's harder to keep that positive mental attitude. So mm hmm, yeah, man,
And overall versatility, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
Yeah, superware of it. Yeah, super versatile. So we'll go
through it later. I'm sure when we're like digging deeper
into camping stuff. But yeah, I think that that covers
a question pretty good.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
All Right, you got any new and interesting gear that's
come across the Gear desk recently?

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, I wanted to talk about the new GoPro, the
go Pro Hero eleven. I've gotten quite a few questions, like,
you know, cameras and things are getting smaller and easier
to like take and document your hunt and do things
like that. I back the last time I used a
GoPro I think was a Hero like the Hero fours
and fives, I think, and I just wasn't ever a

(23:44):
super big fan of them. Like the battery. I always
had battery issues just trying to keep them charged enough.
And I decided to go back to a go Pro
just I actually have a digitscoping adapter on the front
of it now so I can put it on my
spotting scale.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Oh cool.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
So yeah, that is from a company called times Up.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
It's the scope can adapters.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
And why did you do that instead of instead of
just running your iPhone with the phone.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yeah, so I did both.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
And some of it is because I think I have
traumatic experiences of my phone getting full on memory as
I'm recording and all of a sudden.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
I can't use my phone to do that.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
And then sometimes for me it's just really nice having
especially when we're filming some of these times, I do
a lot of self filming stuff. So being able to
put it, have it on a dedicated camera and get
a memory card out of that camera and put it
onto a computer. I don't know, that just seems a
little bit simpler to me. But and some of it, man,

(24:57):
it was just a new It was a new thing.
I saw that you could put your GoPro on his
body scope, and I'm like, I think I should try that,
so well, uh, we'll see how it works. But overall,
the gop it's been super cool. We took it to
Hawaii and when we were snorkeling, I had it like
on a little pole underwater, And these new ones you

(25:18):
don't have to have like an underwater case like you
did the old ones. They're just waterproof on their own,
and yeah, like sticking it underwater and we were filming
fish and stuff. I don't know, it's just super cool.
They've they've they've come a long ways in the last gosh,
however many years. That's been at least seven since I've

(25:40):
since I've tried them. So yeah, the gear, the Hero eleven,
it's definitely worth a look.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Uh. I look forward to seeing the some content and
shots you get from mm HM. We recently got to
try out a bunch of crispy boots and I've actually
been trying to the brick Stall. Am I saying that right?
You've already tried that one, and then the Altitude. I've

(26:09):
been trying both of them. Both good. I'm gonna talk
a little bit more about the Altitude today. Lightweight. I
don't want to say it's quite I'm trying to think
of what I could compare it to Oslo Fugitive, which
has been a very popular boot with the hunters over
the years, the ASO l O Company. Some people say

(26:35):
a solo Oslo. They made a boot called Fugitive. Solomon
has theirs that's sort of like a runner Hiker that
a lot of people like. I think it's an XO
X a pro three D like mid maybe seeing along
those lines. It's not quite as running shoe is that boot,

(26:55):
but it and but it doesn't have quite as stiff
of a soul as that fugitive from Oslo. So I
like it for that reason. Soft souls are comfy and
they're quiet, but then you sort of you give up
a little bit of stability and a little bit the

(27:17):
ability to really dig into the side of a hill. Again,
being near two hundred pounds size twelve foot somebody, the
only ways a buck fifty sixty seventy might not put
the torsional flex into that onto that boot that I do,

(27:37):
and it's gonna happen. It's gonna feel just fine on
your foot going across, you know, going side hilling. Just
the last couple of hunts I've been on, I've worn
them a little bit, and once I got onto side hills,
I definitely felt like I was just sort of, I guess,
overworking the boot and I was wishing I had a
little bit more just stiffness.

Speaker 4 (28:00):
You know.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
They rate it as a two point five out of
five on their website as far as stiffness of the
mid soul. But again, like we talked about in that
podcast that we did with Candle from Crispy, Yeah, right,
the boot doesn't get stiffer as it goes up in size,
which I think is something that boot manufacturers are gonna

(28:23):
start thinking about later because obviously that same stiffness and
the same boot for one hundred and fifty pound person,
it's going to feel a lot stiffer than for the
two hundred pound person. It's just you know, putting a
lot more against that boot. But overall, I would still
recommend it. Just for me, it's probably I think a

(28:43):
lot of people. Again, lighter people could probably use it
for September elk hunting in the mountains a little bit
too saw for me. I like to just have a
little bit more gerr in the boot, and the brick
stalls very well might be the the answer to that.
I haven't checked what stiffness they say about that one,

(29:05):
but i'll cover off on that. It's a four, okay,
so supposedly. Yeah, so there you go, a good bit
stiffer rating from the company that makes them. But yeah,
I think for spring turkey hunting, you know, hunting stuff
that's you know, not mountainous country that altitude is a

(29:25):
sweet little boot comes in at a pound and a
half per boot, so definitely, you know, i'd say it's
on the lighter side. There's a lot of boots out there.
They're all going to come in around the vote for
my size. For size twelve are going to come in
around two to three pounds, So anything under two I
think per boot is on the lighter side. So yeah,

(29:47):
been happy with them. Check them out. If you're looking
for something that's light, comfy, easy, sneaky. If you're going
doll sheep hunting, not the boot for no.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
No. If you're playing on having a really heavy pack, yeah,
probably not the boot for you either.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
No. And again, if I if I knew I just
had to do ten miles on a trail all the
way back to the truck, maybe I was coming back
for my second load of meat, I'd go heavy pack
with that boot, no problem. But if I was coming
off the side of a mountain, uh not, not the
right boot.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
All right, Well, when we come back, we'll be talking
with Clay from ex Overland about getting us unstuck.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
All right, we're back with clay Croft. Clay, how you
doing today?

Speaker 4 (30:48):
I'm doing great. How are you?

Speaker 1 (30:50):
I'm doing well? Thank you? Tell us real quick before
we jump into how to get riggs unstuck, But just
tell me what got you into this thing? That's called overlanding.

Speaker 4 (31:03):
Well, I got into overlanding before it was really known,
at least here in the US as overlanding. That kind
of came later.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
So what did you call it when you when you
got into this thing.

Speaker 4 (31:14):
Well, my knowledge of it at the time was where
most of what we would say the industry sees it
now is like car camping and remote places.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
I was.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
I was a hunter. I was a backpacker, a climber,
and so I was using my truck to go far
off places and stay there. And then as soon as
I had kids, I wasn't able to do the long
term backpacking and long term hunting trips and stuff. So
I was based out of my vehicle a lot more.
And that's where I always liked vehicles. I always liked
building trucks, so this was a natural progression for me

(31:47):
to start working on vehicles more. And then eventually, after
a few years of doing that, I kind of looking
around the off road the four x four world. I
came across a magazine called over and Journal, and I
was like, oh, my goodness, there's a whole magazine about this.
But people travel the world by their vehicles. This is

(32:07):
what I want to do. So that's that's when I
was really introduced to the term overlanding, which takes what
we do here in the US, you know, on a
weekend warrior basis, to a whole new level of traveling
around the world with your vehicle.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Right, Yeah, yeah, you've got to ship a vehicle across
an ocean. That's next level.

Speaker 4 (32:30):
Yeah, yep, And that's a whole lot of fun. It's
a big adventure. But we learned how to do all
of that by doing what we do here at home.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
Right, what vehicle did you start with?

Speaker 4 (32:43):
I started with, let's see, it was a nineteen let
me see you that's a good question, two thousand and
one Tacoma four door and modified it up so I
could sleep in the back and go go down the road.
And since an I've built almost exclusively Toyota short of
a couple different trucks.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Man, I would love to get into that topic, but
I think we say say that for a for another
gear Talk podcast episode, because I was noticing looking at
your website that a lot of a lot of the
builds are Toyotas. You guys have done a few others,
but uh, it's definitely that it's owned by the Toyota.
But yeah, we'll get into that another one. Let's talk

(33:27):
about how to get trucks unstuck. I like it that
you helped us build out a outline for today's podcast
and you called it a vehicle immobilization, which is like
a real fancy way if you like called your texted
your friend and said, hey, I'm immobilized.

Speaker 4 (33:46):
Yeah, Like what do you you sound smart?

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yeah? Are you stuck? Yes, I'm stiff.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
You are stuck?

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, but you did you did say there's two kinds
and that and one is loss of traction. And that's
like loss of traction seems like it's a very tidy,
you know, way to call it, but it's actually within
loss of traction, it's you know, that's a very broad thing,
you know, basically saying you're stuck and you're stuck because

(34:14):
your tires are not moving forward. But before we get
into that, the other I guess type of mobilization is
what you called systems, right, yeah, yep.

Speaker 4 (34:28):
So basically your your vehicle has life systems. It's got electricity,
it's got fuel, and it's got mechanical function. Right, So
you if any one of those three things breaks down,
you will also be immobilized. So if your electrical system,
your battery quits, or if your transmission goes out or

(34:49):
a diff breaks or something like that, then you're essentially
stuck as well.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (34:55):
So that that topic really boils down to just making
sure that to prevent being immobilized in that way, you
need to have really good maintenance. Comes down to maintenance
and what we call mechanical sympathy. This is something that

(35:16):
not a lot of us were taught as kids, but
like how to how to drive your car or your
truck or your so that it lasts a really long time,
or to make good decisions in the back country when
you're going up certain routes or going down certain roads
that won't jeopardize the vehicle because it's too hard on it.

(35:36):
So you have mechanical sympathy that says, you know, I
probably shouldn't do that because if I do do that,
one of those systems mechanical, electrical, or fuel, by chance
might fail. So I shouldn't do that in the first place.
And that's going to keep you from being immobilized in
that regard. And then yeah, does that make yeah?

Speaker 1 (35:58):
No, No, that's yeah. On hundred percent makes sense, And
I like mechanical sympathy. That's a great, great term. I
hope you guys. You guys should have a t shirt
that says X.

Speaker 4 (36:08):
OVERLI can be sympathetic to your rig. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
But yeah, before we get farther into that, let's talk
about the most common yeah, which is loss of traction.

Speaker 4 (36:21):
Loss of traction.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
Yeah, and you you broke it down a bunch of
different versions of loss of traction. But uh, it looks
like by your list, you sort of like tires are
are number one.

Speaker 4 (36:35):
Yeah. Basically, loss of traction means that you no longer
have the power of the engine, can no longer turn
the wheels, or it's turning the wheels too easily. I
suppose you know your wheels are spinning. So loss of
traction can come from your tires being gunked up, being
stuck in the mud. It could be due to being

(36:58):
high centered. How many of us have gone in somewhere
and drove over something and the frame rests down on
the dirt, and now the tires spin and now you're
resting on the frame. It happens a lot in the
back country, right, So there's where loss of traction no longer.
Are your tires able to move you forward?

Speaker 1 (37:16):
Got it?

Speaker 4 (37:17):
Yeah? So that's really tires is where the problems start.
One of the best things to prevent loss of traction
is to it seems so basic, but have the right
tire for your vehicle and the environment that you're going into.
So a lot of us could. If you hopped on

(37:38):
a highway tire and went down into the mud, you're
not going to do very well. If you're going to
be on a slick, greasy road in the back of
eastern Montana, highway tire is going to do. Do you
know favorsy guys working on a truck in the background.
You can probably hear that right now.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Yeah, a little bit, a little bit, that's all right,
it's good, good, good to know you got got a
busy shop going there, and I have to think they're
putting tires on. Let's just jump into tires. I mean,
I guess you can talk about you know, brands you like,
but I mean, is it there's the whole how many
plies a tire has, and then obviously the tread pattern

(38:19):
and tread depth. I mean, when you're like, I'm trying
to think how to best phrase this when you're looking
at buying a new set of tires and you're like,
like you just said, you got to be buying and
looking to put on this stuff for the conditions you're
going to find yourself in. But that being said, it
seems like most of us use our truck for driving

(38:41):
around town, driving kids to school, and going to get
groceries for ninety some percent of its life. And then
there's a little bit where you go get to have
fun where you actually are putting the tires to use.
I mean, are you using two different sets of tires
for something like that? Do you have your city tires
and then you have what you put on when you're
going to through Montana you might encounter gumbo.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
Well, yeah, So there's a few ways to approach this,
and families approach it differently, I suppose as well. So
some of us only have one one vehicle that we drive,
and if we only have one main vehicle, that's when
having a couple sets of tires is really going to
be the best bet. If you're doing ninety percent of
the time you're on paved roads here in town, you're

(39:25):
doing some highways, like a good highway tire is obviously
going to be the most efficient for your lifestyle. But
if you get off grid a bit, you're going down
for service roads, you're poking around in the woods a bit.
Maybe you could offset the benefits of the highway tire
for more of an aggressive tire which would roll you
into an all terrain. Does pretty great on the highway,

(39:47):
does good around town. Still got pretty good tire whear,
but it has enough aggression to and stiffness and toughness
that you can rely on it in the backcountry. You know,
tree is in like little Bee back country. Not we're
not driving off the roads or anything like that. That's
you know, it's I want to specify that when I

(40:07):
say that this is you know, the forest service getting
to the trailhead or exploring through some mountains. The altrain
tire is going to be a really good tire for you.
It even does pretty well in the snow. Now, if
you're going to be in more environments that are really

(40:30):
uh rocky, really sharp shale, then you kind of want
to step up into a tougher tire, which you get
to usually in the mud terrain style tire. Now much go.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Ahead ahead, I'm just going to say what exactly makes
a tire tough.

Speaker 4 (40:51):
Sure, So a tire is made of compounds of rubber compounds,
and every tire manufacturer has their own chemistry of tire compounds.
That's what kind of that's the science, that's the magic
sauce between tires, you know. So like you look at
a toyo and they're really stiff. They're really they got
a lot of their rubbers really like solid, their blocks

(41:15):
are really stiff. You can go to now look at
like any winter tire. What makes a winter tire really
good is that the compound is really soft, and then
when it gets really cold, it still maintains its ability
to flex even though it's sitting on extremely cold ground.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
So and that helps to have better grip. And if
the rubber compound is stiffer, you lose grip and you're
sliding more.

Speaker 4 (41:40):
Exactly now, your winter tires were made of softer compounds,
it's gonna wear out faster. That's why you don't drive
around on your winter tires all the time.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
They do really great.

Speaker 4 (41:49):
In the winter, but if you drive around on them
all summer, you wouldn't have them very long. That's that's
why you go to a normal you know street tire,
because the compound is stiff enough that you'll get the
mileage out of it and get them the bang for
the buck.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
Got it.

Speaker 4 (42:07):
So the third tire typically is your mud terrain tire,
and that mud terrain tire will have a stiffer compound.
It's made to spin essentially, so the stiffness it's it's
designed to not chunk, you know, like if you're spinning
a tire, the rubbers not chipping chipping off, and it's

(42:30):
meeting new new.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Surface or rocks.

Speaker 4 (42:33):
It's tougher in that way, and then the gaps between
the lugs are wider. And the whole reason that is
that way is because a tire moves you forward by grabbing,
especially in the mud and snow, by grabbing new material,
and as it spins, it throws it out the back
and then it allows it to grab new material on
the front and keep moving forward. This is a very

(42:57):
limited situation, like how often can you think you've been
that stuck? But that's when that tire really shines when
you're in loose, muddy stuff, so you can throw out
out the back and grab new manterially on the front
and keep you moving forward.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
Got it, and it's so it's interesting because I thought too,
I didn't know that those are actually start to get harder.
I actually thought that maybe they remain somewhat supple, so
that that, I guess squishiness would help you grip the
rocks if you got into some sort of thing where
you're like actually climbing, you know, rocks or over some

(43:33):
boulders and stuff, that that softness would help you grip.
But you don't. You don't need that. You still need
just tough and stiff in that situation.

Speaker 4 (43:41):
Well a little it's kind of both because when a
tire's brand new and the lugs are really tall, it's
a lot softer than when you get to say, like
fifty percent of the tirewear. So your tire never performs
the same day, the same exact way from day to
day because your lug or your tirewear is being reduced.

(44:01):
So as you know, if you've got a brand new
set of mud tires and you went to Moab and
wanted to go on the slick rock, it's going to
do really, really well. There's a lot of flex because
the lug is really tall. It's going to grip stuff
and you're going to go up the trail, no problem.
Now if you get down to the last, say twenty percent,

(44:22):
you're getting into the tirewar indicators. There's just not enough flex.
The rubber is still hard enough that it's a safe,
reliable tire, but there's just no height anymore to give
it that much more flex. That's where more siping is
what it's called. The cuts and grooves into the lugs
start to matter because it allows it to maintain traction

(44:43):
and softness through the lugs life the tire lugs life.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
Interesting.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
Yeah, there's a lot too. Tires. I think of them
like shoes. You know, you have hunting boots that do this.
You have you may even have an the hunting boot
that you know is for water, more water or cold temperatures.
And then you've got you know, climbing shoes to go climbing.
You know, the compounds and the way they're designed to
do different things. So they really isn't one tire fits all.

(45:15):
If there is one, it would be the all terrain.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
Tire, okay, And but there's within all terrain tires. I mean,
there's this's got to at least a dozen solid tire
manufacturers that make a solid all terrain. But it just
they they're not all created equal, right.

Speaker 4 (45:31):
No, And they if you were to look at a
lot of them, they're going to have they all have
their chart right like pluses and minuses, benefits and setbacks.
And if you were to really dive into what tires
best for you, you'd have to spend a lot of
time researching. Bottom line, most of these tires from the
top manufacturers in the all terrain world come from great

(45:53):
A Tires like Continental Michelin. So like be if Goodrich
is owned by Michelin, General Tire is owned by Continental.
All these top manufacturers of good good tires build get
into their sub brands there b B level tires. That
doesn't mean that it's a B level quality, it's just

(46:15):
not the top ownership.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
Interesting, Yeah, so hold on, you said be of good
Rich is owned by Michelin, So you're saying that the
Michelin tires are you're actually going to get a better
alterrain there than if you buy the be of good
Rich Allterrain.

Speaker 4 (46:31):
As far as I know, I'd have to look this up,
but Michelin doesn't actually make an alterrain tire that competes
with BEF good Rich. They let their sub company be
of good Rich make those tires, got it? Because they're
different markets essentially, you know, and a lot of the
Continental and the Michelin they they spend their time. And

(46:52):
this is my assumption. I don't really know all of
this for facts, but you know, they're they're in the
semi world. They're in the the map production of tires
where there's a lot of rubber meat in the road. Uh.
And then you have your sub sub brands that are
dealing with a lot of the the consumer stuff, which
is us you know.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
I see. So your your assumption is that consumer brands
and consumer tires don't make up the majority of their
income and their business.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
Uh. I don't know on the revenue side. I do
know when it comes to their who they're talking to
and the volume of rubber that they're having or tires
that they're having to make in size right yep.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Interesting, So back back to like switching between a couple
of different kinds of tires. So my scenario right now,
I have some toy open country mpts on my pickup.
Right now, we're kind of getting out of the winner
and we're still going to do a little bit of
spring stuff like, it's still pretty snowy and muddy up
in the mountain, so I'll keep them on a little longer.
But I'm starting to think about getting a new set

(48:04):
of tires, like an AT to run through the summer
and then the first part of a little bit of
the fall and then switch back to the empts. Is
that kind of a rotation that you would recommend, so.

Speaker 4 (48:17):
The empties, Yeah, it is a good way to go.
A lot of times I do the opposite.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
I do.

Speaker 4 (48:24):
I run mud terrains from spring to through the end
of fall, when you're going to see your muddiest, nastiest situations. Summer,
You're going to see a lot of rock in a
lot of dirt, so I want the toughness of it.
And then when I go to winter, I actually go
to my all terrain tire because all trains have a
better They have better road matters in the winter, so

(48:49):
they have more siping in them there. They're really a
lot better in snow and on ice than a mud
terrain is because a mud terrain has large blocks, a
lot of contact, heavy contact patches, whereas an all train
tire has a lot more siping, the smaller blocks less
gap between the blocks, and it does a lot better

(49:11):
in the winter.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Since since you've mentioned it quite a few times and
I'm familiar with siping, but I think, just like if
you can't give us like the two minute version and
really explain siping, because I think some people, I mean,
you did say that it's the cuts in the lugs,
but really go just a little bit deeper and explain siping.

Speaker 4 (49:32):
Sure, so siping.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
It is.

Speaker 4 (49:36):
It is just that is the amount of cuts that
from the top of the lug down to the main
part of the carcass of the tire, which allows the blocks.
You know, if you think of think of an alterrain tire,
it's got all these little patches of contact patches that
touch the surface right, and then there's group bigger grooves
in between those lugs. Well, siping will go even smaller

(49:59):
than that. The those cuts go into those lugs individually,
and that allows the lug to have flex itself versus
just being a solid piece of rubber between all.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
Yeah, so how does that flex then help the tire?

Speaker 4 (50:14):
So that it does it it does two things for
the tire. It helps the tire stay cooler and because
there's more air between it basically allows the tire to
cool off and then it helps on the micro let's
see the micro traction. So all the little not grooves

(50:36):
and bumps and roughness of the surface of the road
or trail, those little teeny sipings can help grab and
grip on those little things. And that's why a winter
tire has tons of siping. If you go look at
like a blizz Ac Michelin Blizzak tire, it is full

(51:01):
of little zig zagged cuts into the into the tread
and that's why it's so good in the winter.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Yeah, I've heard of the siping and the and the
rubber compounds of winter tires become so good that there's
there's plenty of tire shops that don't even recommend getting
uh the oh shoot, my lost words. Not not the cleats,
but what do you call it? The uh oh the
studs studs right? Are you on board with that or

(51:30):
do you stud your winter tires?

Speaker 4 (51:31):
I am on board with that, So I just recently
I studied a set of general all terrains uh there,
which they're called their grabber at X's and they have done.
They're really great in the winter. And then I they
also still provide studs, stud holes that you can put
studs into.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 4 (51:49):
Excuse me, but uh I, I really didn't see a
difference when I put the studs in versus when I
didn't have them, because the being in the tire compounds
are getting so good, especially on the more modern tires.
In the last like five years, we've seen compounds get

(52:10):
a lot better. Tires kind of tire companies kind of
run their technology for as long as they can before
they have to update it. But in the last five
six seven years they've gone through another round of updating
their compounds, and all of these tires are really doing
a pretty dang good job in the winter, to the
point that studs have become less important. Now a stud

(52:32):
will help you in deep ice, like when it's really
thick and it wants to bite, that's where stud's going
to come in. Come in andy and right now, like
the at they only stud the outer corners. So like
when you're turning into a corner and you're trying to
have you know, traction as you turn a vehicle because

(52:53):
you have forces acting in two directions at once, then
that's when the studs can bite and help make a
car turn and better.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
So yeah, all right, let's uh let's get into uh
we we have this note is decision tree about how
to buy, when and use cases and under that we
have applies which I definitely want to get your take
on how implies my tires need and then that will
take us into pricing.

Speaker 4 (53:22):
Sure. Well, it's kind of back to Jordan's question, like
what what are I'm going into a couple of seasons?
You know, the decision tree? What what do I buy?
You know, what do I buy? And win? If you
want to have the best winter tire, I'll just sit now.
You need to buy a winter tire. Nothing beats them.
It's it's a specifics like the climbing shoe for climbing.

(53:43):
Like you can't beat a climbing shoe for climbing.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
H No, if I can't. I got a quick example
of that. Our old house. We moved a couple of
years ago. But our old house had one heck of
a driveway. I mean the kind of a driveway where
I think see people went to think about looking at
the house and buying it, and the driveway scared way.
I mean it was half a mile and I can't
tell you what the actual grade was, but I mean

(54:06):
when you rode your bike down it, you were riding
the brakes, you know what I mean. It was. It
was a steep bugger and steep enough were in the winter.
When we bought the place, I had just the regular
BF good Rich all terrain KO tire and that was
I don't know whatever five six, seven years ago maybe,
and I would have to chain up all the time,

(54:28):
and I slid off my own driveway multiple times and
just it. It wasn't great. And that was just a
straight altrain tire. And my neighbor said, man, when you're ready,
you know, go and try these. They're the Cooper Mud
and snow I think it's a very They might have
changed the name now, it might be the snow Claw now,

(54:50):
but I think when I had my first pairs, just
the Cooper Mud and snow mins is what they called it.
And man, I put those things on and never had
to put chains on again. I mean it it was
like I went from being I don't know, the uh,
what's the superhero that slides around on the ice like surfboard.
I was that guy on my be of good riches,

(55:10):
and then I went to be in Spider man. I
mean those things just grip that driveway and just up
and down all different kinds of snow conditions, no problem.
And that's what really turned me on to snow tires.
It's like wow, yeah, like forevermore, I will have snow tires.

Speaker 4 (55:27):
Especially here in Montana when you run. I mean, like this,
this winter was tough. This is a long winter, and
having snow tires and having the right rubber that meets
the road really makes it safer. And I always encourage
people to buy the right tire for the right environment
because it's ultimately your whole family is at stake. It's

(55:48):
a relatively cheap investment to have the right kind of
traction where the rubber literally meets the road so that
you can avoid all these really costly, potentially dangerous situations.
We kind of get a little cheap with our trucks
sometimes or in our cars. I don't want to spend
the money on that, but like, what are we risking,

(56:09):
you know, sliding off the ditch all the time, going
into the bank, You're risking body damage or getting stuck
somewhere where you shouldn't be. It quickly becomes an investment
that's well worth it. When you run out the scenarios
just a little ways.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Yeah, well it falls right under that vehicle maintenance that
you talked about earlier, where if you take care of that,
then you're just going to have less problems when you're
out there doing your adventures.

Speaker 4 (56:34):
Yeah, and that's the whole reason we're there. You know.
We get to choose our adventures, and sometimes we choose
our adventure through ignorance by not maintaining our things or
you know, that's kind of the I mean, accidents happen,
for sure, but a lot of it is preventable. So
we get to choose that adventure. And I like to
keep our vehicles maintained at the highest level so that

(56:55):
I go out and have the adventure I intend to have,
not the one that I ended up with.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
Right, Okay, so let's just say we're we're going down
the decision tree and Jordan's like, all right, I'm gonna
go with this new mud terrain tire. It's gonna be
my summer and my ball haunting rig tire. She's she's
what truck do you have? How big of a truck? Jordan?

Speaker 3 (57:24):
Three quarter town and twenty.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
Okay, so how many plies does she need.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
Are you towing anything?

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Yep? What are you towing of sixteen foot enclosed trailer?

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Okay?

Speaker 4 (57:37):
So yeah, so ply really has a lot to do
with the sidewall stiffness. And there's three ply, which almost
all tires with the new modern setup two and a
half like. Okay, so let's take the all terrain tire
from or from general tire. I can speak towards this
one because I know the most about it. It's three

(57:59):
ply other than where on the sidewall, so we're talking
on the side of the tire. This is where deflection
comes from. Okay, and this is actually integrated as part calculated,
as part of your suspension system. The way your tire
flexes up and down on the road correlates to how
your suspension responds as well. So a three ply has

(58:21):
three and the plies aren't necessarily what they used to be.
Some of these terms come from old tire technology, but
they just stuck with the same terms because that's what
people knew. But like chords, for example, ten ply or
ten corded tires, they used to literally be chords in
the tire h It is a little different now, but

(58:43):
they still use the term chords because the technology is
better than that, but they can equate it to what
the chords used to be. Is that if that makes sense?
So sure?

Speaker 1 (58:55):
Anyway, when you say when you say chords like like rope.

Speaker 4 (59:01):
Yeah, they used to be like steel banding and chords.
Back in the day. It was literally chords wrapped around
the main carcass of the tire and gave.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
It and that would go out on the outer.

Speaker 4 (59:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Okay, so how does that affect if that's on the outside,
how does that affect the the sidewall? Uh?

Speaker 4 (59:26):
So you have it doesn't Well I guess it probably
does if you talk to some physicists. But there you
have your side wall deflection up and down, and then
you have the stiffness of the main carkness of the
tire which is in your chords. And this is about
the extent of where my knowledge of how a tire
is built ends. So I don't want to get too

(59:49):
far and put out any misinformation because ultimately it matters
kind of but not really, Like I don't focus on
this too much. I know that when I'm towing, when
I asked your about what you know, how are you using?
You're going to want a heavier plied tire with stiffer
cordage because of the weight that you are requiring the

(01:00:11):
truck to pull, and what is going to be on
that rear axle because you have all this tongue weight
axle weight. If you have too soft of a tire
in both sidewall and cordage, it's just going to be
like a it's just too soft. It's not going to
hold up and it's going to wear out quickly. But
the reason you don't want too heavy you of a
cordage of a tire and too much sidewall if you're

(01:00:31):
not toying, is because it'll ride like a wagon.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
It'll be a terrible driving experience.

Speaker 4 (01:00:37):
So that that's what you're kind of balancing out as
you are looking to buy what tire.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
What about toughness in general with higher plies, Like I
don't know, ranch life, we always went with a ten
ply because we've always said, like nails don't go through.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
It is easy.

Speaker 4 (01:00:57):
It's true, it's true. It's just there's more matisial on
the on the tread right there underneath it. So you
have your lugs on top and then you have the
cordage underneath and there's just a lot more there. They're
just it's a stronger, stiffer tire. It doesn't allow things
through it. Excuse me, but that excuse me goodness. That

(01:01:23):
works well on ranch trucks because you're often towing. You're
you're really utilizing those trucks for ranch work, so you're
willing to give up comprove the comfort of a lesser
ply tire with lesser side, lesser sidewalls, that is more
supple and goes down the road a lot nicer. If
you hop into a RAM thirty five hundred with a

(01:01:46):
ten ply and three three ply sidewalls, go drive down
the highway and then hop into a twenty five hundred
that has eight ply cordage and only like a two
and a half sidewall, you will notice the difference. You
won't feel all the final little vibrations, all the all
the little cracks in the road that you would with

(01:02:06):
a with a heavier, stronger tire. So just because it's
tougher doesn't mean it's really the one you want because
you have to live with it every day, But it
might serve the purpose of its use case, got it? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Okay, So she decided on the she she's gonna go. Uh,
I don't know, eight pliz or whatever. Sure, how much is?
It seems like they got a lot more expensive, and
they got more expensive when the rims got bigger the
tire it seems like there's less rubber that you're buying out,
but somehow the tires got more expensive. So talk about

(01:02:44):
just general pricing, I guess. And then also uh like
with with brand names, like how like are you paying
more because it's the Nike of tires.

Speaker 4 (01:02:56):
Great questions, So let's let's talk about brand first. Just
knock that out. Your top brands. They are running the
latest rubber compounds, the newest technology because they are competing
for the top slot when you get into your subtires.
A lot of them are made in China. They're running
off of technology that is twenty plus years old, but

(01:03:19):
it still works and that's what makes them cheaper. So, yeah,
you are buying a little bit of brand name, I suppose,
But they are aggressively competing with each other and their
warranties and their tirewear and all the forums in the
world out there, you know, everyone talking about it. So

(01:03:42):
the top brands really do provide the best tire I
don't think you're paying too much for any one name
over the other to some degree. We'll let the internet
debate that forever. But so and then what was it?
What was the other question? The others half of that?

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
I guess it's just general pricing. But it sounds like
if they're all competing, then really the pricing is not
going to differ that much, right.

Speaker 4 (01:04:14):
Yeah, So now it comes down. You were talking about
wheel size, rim size, so we have you know, standard
used to be fifteen inch rims. You know, every truck
had a fifteen inch rim for a long long time,
so they made thousand, millions and millions of tires at
fifteen inch rims. So this is getting into economies of scale,
is best I know of how all they price this.

(01:04:36):
So when you get into a twenty two inch rim
and you want a thirty five inch tire on a
twenty two inch rim, there are very few of those
wheels and entire combinations out there, and so therefore the
economies of scale say they have to charge more for
it because they're not selling so many of them. That's
what makes them more expensive. That's on the extreme side. Nowadays,

(01:05:00):
the common wheel size is now to seventeen inch wheels
and eighteens. You're seeing other OEM's original equipment manufacturers like
Toyota for and all these you'll see twenties coming out.
That's usually for lucks. Usually it's seventeen to eighteen inch
wheels because the brakes have gotten bigger. Back in the day,

(01:05:22):
are fifteen inch wheels accommodated fifteen inch sized brakes, you know,
the littler trucks and the technology. Now we're getting into
heavy tow packages, towing more, pulling more, hauling more, and
that all requires much more stopping power. So therefore the
brakes got bigger and the wheels got more tall or rounder,

(01:05:48):
so it can stuff a bigger break in there. So
those seventeens and eighteens are a lot more commonplace now
and then just like anything else. Right now, we've seen
a lot of rice increase due to supplying demand and
manufacturing the ability to get the materials and the cost

(01:06:08):
of the materials. You know, tires are made of oil.
Oil has been pretty high for the last year and
a half, so you know, just the the base material
of that is starting at a higher price point. So
everything floats with economics.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
So what's Jordan going to be looking at to be
paying a first setate for average to get herself a
nice quality tire that she can depend on.

Speaker 4 (01:06:36):
Man, I think right now you're seeing anywhere between. What
depends on do you know your wheel size? I'll bet
it's eighteen's it's eighteen, Yeah, I guess on the thirty
five hundred, seventeen or eighteen, you're going to be looking
at two hundred and seventy five to three hundred and
seventy five dollars a tire, just depending.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
On they really they really went up.

Speaker 4 (01:07:01):
They really did. There is even a rubber or a
tire shortage that occurred in last year across manufacturers, so
that also drove prices up. We've seen a reduction in
the different sizes offered, because, for example, if you have

(01:07:21):
a seventeen inch thirty five inch tire, but the most
common size is a seventeen inch wheel in a thirty
two inch tire, they're going to reduce the thirty five
inch tires because it takes a whole lot more rubber
to make one of those than it does to make
a thirty two inch tire, and that's the one they're
selling the most of so they are reducing some of

(01:07:43):
these bigger tire sizes so that they can meet the
demand of the more common sizes. So we've seen all
kinds of stuff, and that's why prices are up. Availability
is down on certain things. So if you find the
right tire size and it's a decent price right now
at least where we are today in time, probably buy it,
you know, because it's there. So yeah, And so if

(01:08:08):
you're going to be changing your tire size for any reason,
make sure you buy that fifth tire, because you don't
want to have a thirty five inch tire or a
thirty three inch tire on all four. And then your
spare tire is a thirty two That might get you
home off the trail a little ways, but you would
not want to go down the highway with that offset

(01:08:28):
and your tires. You will burn some stuff up, you'll
wreck you'll wreck some trucks. So make sure that if
you're increasing your tire size that you do it all five.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
That's a hot temp rate there, all right. Anything else
under the subject of tires that we missed, or you
feel like we need to just touch on before we move.

Speaker 4 (01:08:50):
On, if you're still just really wondering what is the
best tire for me, take a hard look at the
all train tire because it does everything pretty dang well.
Does it do everything perfectly? No, but that's why it's
an all terrain tire. And they're they're fantastic, and they

(01:09:13):
work great for hunters, they work great for the ranch truck,
and they work great for getting around town and and
the winners. So are my personal vehicles. Run an all
terrain tire on our lan Cruiser year round and it's
it's the good, perfect tire. I can do everything with it.
If you're wanting more specifics into the winter tire, that's obvious.

(01:09:35):
Or if you want more aggressive toughness, spend the extra
go into a mud terrain and but it's going to
have its limited uses when it works the best. You know,
all terrain is really the way to go if you're
just wondering what to get.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
Okay, so we've got we've got tires covered. I'm trying
to think how we should tackle the next part. So
does does that count? That that kind of counts as
as we originally started this conversation with saying, hey, what's
your top five vehicle recovery items like what are the
things you need? Good tires counts as one of those

(01:10:30):
five recovery items, correct.

Speaker 4 (01:10:33):
Yeah, start you should start with it, got it you? Okay,
So that trickles down from there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:40):
Exactly, so you might not even need to you know,
you don't have to use the word stuck or immobilize
if you start off with good tires. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:10:50):
Yeah, hopefully it get you where you need to go.
And uh, because it's the right size, the right tire,
the right pattern for the environment that you're operating in.
But then other things happen, right, we still exceed the
traction of a tire, we exceed the clearance of a vehicle.
Things happen, and that's where we need to be prepared

(01:11:12):
in our immobilization first aid kid, so to speak. From there.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
Okay, and so we'll get into each one. But the
rest of the items that you had on your list
were air compressor, recovery boards also known as traction boards,
a jack of some sort, and then a strap.

Speaker 4 (01:11:33):
Yep, yeah, these are all critical. The reason air compressor
is like the first one we put on there is
because that is typically the first thing that fails. While
we do have good tires, it is where the rubber
meets the road, and that's where we see the most
failures in a vehicle is in tires. So having the
ability to fix a tire is pretty critical. So having

(01:11:57):
some plugs and an air compressor, whether it's one that
you can plug into your battery or that's one full
time built into your truck like a lot of overland
vehicles have, that allows you to fix a flat and
keep moving without having to take the tire off the vehicle.
It'll get you off the trail, get you going, and
in that in my opinion, is much safer in many

(01:12:17):
ways because you're not having to lift the vehicle take
things off in the back country where other further accidents
could happen, allows you to repair the tire right there
and keep moving.

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
And what's what's the cadillac of air compressors right now
that are not in your vehicle.

Speaker 4 (01:12:35):
Vy air is a really good one. And then ARB
out of Australia makes there the same compressor that they
put inside vehicles, they put in a box for a
portable version and that's what we run.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
Okay, So really the air compressor is kind of a
two part deal. You need an air compressor and then
you need some plugs and plugs. If you never done it,
I haven't. I haven't done it myself maybe a half
dozen times. But they're really quite simple. Yeah, it's not hard.
It's something you can you can watch one YouTube video
on it and know how to do it. And now

(01:13:10):
you're equipped in the back country to solve your probably
your number one problem, which is a flat right. I
mean you literally with a with a small little I
don't know what the tool is called, but you literally
stick it into the hole with some adhesive and then
when you pull it out, the plug stays, the tool
comes out, the plug stays, and then I don't know,

(01:13:30):
is there even a cure time or do you just
go ahead and just and just start putting air in.

Speaker 4 (01:13:35):
You start putting air in it, and that is the
next trick. You put air in it, see if it holds,
and if it's still leaking, you put another plug in
right next to it. You know, you just keep jamming
plugs in there until it stops leaking. My experiences, it's
usually one, maybe two, but it's usually one. I had

(01:13:55):
an extreme case in Greenland with an arctic truck tire
where we play twenty into one, but I was twenty
into a gash. Yeah, and it was a special plug
system that has They were blue and they had this emulsifier.
I think that's the term for it. That when they

(01:14:16):
all get next to each other, they bond and build
and then they adhere to the rubber of the tire
and built a patch. Essentially, we built a massive plug.
But that was running a forty four inch tire built
for running at two pounds of pressure.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
And what caused the a gash that big? We ran
over a rock in Greenland. Yeah, that was sticking a
sharp rock YEP, and gashed it. But we're running at
two pounds of pressure two psi. Which gets me into
another topic on how to run that.

Speaker 4 (01:14:52):
If we'd like to talk that airing down that that's
a topic we should talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):
Yeah, because if you have an air copressor, then I
guess that opens up the ability to do this right.

Speaker 4 (01:15:03):
Yep, And airing down is a very good technique if
you I didn't learn about this until I got into
the off road scene, Like I didn't learn about it
from ranching when I was growing up, or my dad
who is a semi truck driver ran tires and all kinds.
They don't air down. They run an exact psi all
the time and then they just leave it right. Well,
if you have the ability to air down, you can

(01:15:25):
really dramatically change how your tire performs so you can
get better ride quality. But say you drive around at
forty psi on the highway and daily life.

Speaker 1 (01:15:37):
That's pretty calm on a dirt road. What's that? Fortysi
is pretty common right in a chuck tire.

Speaker 4 (01:15:44):
Yeah, probably thirty five to fifty psi is kind of
the ranges of what truck tires run at. Just depends
and a little bit of personal preference in there too,
So yeah, you get a like my ram, I run
fifty psi on my tires as soon as I get
on a trail, or I was just down in Utah
as soon as I got off the trail off the
highway there running at fifty PSI just wants to shake

(01:16:06):
your teeth out, you know, so you air down. We
have tools for that, you know, you can use the
dirt bag version is the rock on the side of
the road. You air it down and you check it
with your tire pressure. I went down to my truck's
pretty heavy, so it's I just went down to thirty PSI,
which gave me the deflection and the tire that I
was looking for. There's no magic number to what you

(01:16:27):
should air down to because it's really based on the
deflection of the tire and how heavy your vehicle is.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
And when you say deflection of tire, yeah, explain that sure.
So as you take air out of the tire, your
tire is going to change its shape, especially at the
contact patch of the ground. Most people think it gets wider,
It doesn't. It gets longer like a snowshoe.

Speaker 4 (01:16:51):
So eighty percent of the length is in its or
of the increase in traction patch is in its length.
It gets longer. Twenty percent only folds to the sides
as it comes down. And that's why when you look
at an all terrain and a mud terrain tire, they
have a really aggressive side wall right there at the

(01:17:11):
top because when it airs down, that sidewall starts to
make contact with the ground. And that's why their three
ply right there because it needs to be strong enough
to take to go along rocks and things like that
without puncture. So yeah, if you increase that traction patch,

(01:17:32):
now you have more rubber on the ground in a
lot of ways that it will increase your flotation, So
if you're in really deep stuff, it'll help you stay
on top, and it'll also give you a much better ride.
So the other day when I went from fifty psi
to thirty psi and it was like cushy, you know,

(01:17:53):
it's like I was riding on a cloud, you know.
And that saves the rest of the vehicle from all
the vibrations that start at the ground and go up
into the into the truck. Everything's not shaken apart, and
you're maintaining having mechanical sympathy for your vehicle by airing down.
Now you need to make sure that you air back
up before you hit the highways because an air down

(01:18:14):
tire generates a lot of rolling resistance, which creates heat.
So if your tire is too far, too low, just
imagine running around town on a really low tire, it's
going to destroy it due to heat. So you air
it back up and off you go.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
And the heat is only caused because there's just more contact.

Speaker 4 (01:18:35):
More contact and deflection. So as a tire rolls, say
like at the top of the tire, it looks normal, right,
but then as you look at the bottom of the
tire where the weight is squishing it. It's all deformed
right there. So that action of cycling through those two
forms over and over and over and over and over
again generates tons of heat. And if you've ever had

(01:18:58):
a flat tire where going down the road, all of
a sudden you blow a tire and then by the
time you come to a stop, that sucker is almost
so hot you can't touch it. It's because of that,
all of a sudden, it was going through tons of
deformation and built extreme heat right off the bat. So
it's a thing you need to be aired up, which

(01:19:20):
brings us back to having an air compressor gives you options.
You can repair a tire and you can air down,
get the ride right, the proper ride that you need
and traction, and then you can air back up when
you hit the highway and head home.

Speaker 1 (01:19:37):
Okay, do you want to get into right now how
that could help you get unstuck or should we kind
of roll through all the pieces of the of getting
unstuck and then and then work into how to actually
use them.

Speaker 4 (01:19:52):
Sure, I'll touch on it real quick, because airing down
does increase your ability to get out of many stuck situations.
For so a lot of times, say you've got a
tire that's slipping or two if even just airing down
a little bit, which allows more contact patch to touch
the ground, it also allows the tire to deflect more

(01:20:14):
because it is deforming. As it goes around, it'll grab
new material, but then as it's coming out of where
the material is, it flexes more and releases that material.
So it does help you clean the tread by being
a bit aired down because of it's moving more and
it helps fling the stuff out. That makes sense, and

(01:20:35):
then you have more contact patch with the ground and
gives you better traction to get out. Now, if you're
high centered, this isn't going to help you right because
your wheels aren't just touching the ground anyway, you're gonna
have to put something under it. But in other situations
like snow, sand, mud, being aired down is very beneficial
to your traction.

Speaker 1 (01:20:54):
Okay, so I had a thing this winter. We're actually
just taking out the trash we have to dump our
own trash and dumpsters, and it hadn't been plowed and
it was I don't know, a solid foot maybe a
little bit more. Someone had driven in there and made
it out. I went plowing in there, thinking if they
made it out, so will I. Well, I get in there,
and all of a sudden, all four wheels are spinning

(01:21:16):
and we're moving sideways, and it was just a matter
of time until we were immobilized. Do you think there
was a chance that I could have gone from forty
to fifteen and climb my way out of there or
was that too much to ask for just airing down?

Speaker 4 (01:21:33):
Probably too much to ask in that situation, because what
was causing you to not be able to get out?
Was it the height of the ruts?

Speaker 1 (01:21:43):
I'm guessing it was just the amount of snow, right,
Like I could never get down to something that I
could actually grab. Gotcha, Well, I mean I chained up
and I drove right out of there, So.

Speaker 4 (01:21:54):
Sure, okay, So it wasn't a clearance problem. It was
a flotation problem. So yeah, it probably would have knowing
what I heard there going down. So as you air down,
think of it. It's an exponential curve. It's not like
if I go to from forty pounds to twenty pounds

(01:22:15):
and from twenty pounds to ten pounds, is the same
amount of floatation increase? No, you'll gain some from forty
to twenty, but from twenty to ten is like, I
don't know, meatball math four times as much.

Speaker 3 (01:22:30):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:22:31):
So getting into those sweet spots where you actually really
do start to see a lot of increase in your
traction and your floatation happens down there in the lower pressures,
and it happens very quickly. So you might only need
to go from twenty pounds to eighteen pounds and that's enough,
or if you need a little bit more, only go
to fifteen pounds and you've actually increased it by quite

(01:22:52):
a lot. This all depends on the way to the vehicle,
on the truck and the tire, and it just takes
some experimenting with your own vehicle to figure it out.
But it might have It might have given you the
floatation that you needed.

Speaker 1 (01:23:05):
Huh.

Speaker 4 (01:23:06):
So interesting ranchers, Back to quick tire size here, a
lot of ranchers like pizza cutters. You've heard the term
pizza cutters. I want a tall, skinny tire. Yeah, that's
because a tall, skinny tire does benefit you more often
than a big wide tire. Airing down a tire getting

(01:23:28):
flotation only starts to benefit you past one hundred and
ten percent of your vehicle's clearance. We can get real
techy here. So you only want a wider, longer, taller
tire when you've exceeded one hundred and ten percent of
your clearance of the vehicle, at least in snow, sand

(01:23:49):
and mud, because you're dragging the vehicle underneath, right, So
now you need flotation to get up above it until
then A taller, skinny tire has more contact pressure. So
think of a railcar, a railroad car. All of that
weight is sitting on one inch on the rail and

(01:24:10):
it has all the traction it needs because it has
all that downforce on a very small contact patch on
the rail. So that's how our locomotive can go down
on steel wheels because of the weight on a very
small piece of rail. Okay, now we don't want that
in our cars because it would be terrible to drive. Right,

(01:24:31):
they're on rails. They can do that, they can get
away with it. So we have other factors that we
have to deal with, but the principle remains. So you
only want a wider tire, taller tire when you need
that floatation past one hundred and ten percent of your clearance.
It takes a second to think about, but because you
kind of got to visualize it in your head.

Speaker 1 (01:24:51):
Okay, yeah, so it's it's basically, once you're clear, you've
exceeded clearance, right like you got it? Your yourself into
a spot where. But again, this wouldn't apply to being
high centered, would it, Because if you're taking air out,
you're only going to get more high centered. Correct, So

(01:25:12):
this would be clearance in mud snow type conditions, correct,
got it?

Speaker 4 (01:25:18):
Where if you don't want to get high centered a lot,
then you get into taller tires because it just keeps
you above a lot of the things that would cause
you to be high centered.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
Got it. But if I was in my situation, I
was digging down too far and I was probably getting
bogged down by all the other snow around me. Right
my vehicle, the frame itself is starting to just push
against snow and the tires can't push me through that.
You're saying that I possibly could have aired down, gotten

(01:25:49):
more flotation and it would have just lifted me up
above that level and I could have drove it driven
out exactly. Wow, I'm getting educated, are you, Jordan?

Speaker 3 (01:26:03):
Oh? Yeah, big time.

Speaker 2 (01:26:05):
So with that, but that wouldn't really work if like, Okay,
this last spring, I was out shooting content and I
went to turn around in a poll out on a
four service road and there was like a bunch of
snow that had been packed in and melted and went
to ice and YadA YadA, and I basically was just
I wasn't stuck under the frame at all. I was

(01:26:27):
just stuck on my wheels. I guess it's just ice.
It was just spinning on its Yeah, there wasn't really ruts.
It was just I was trying to break through some snow,
but it was so hard that it just stopped me.
And then when I tried to back up, it was
so slick underneath that I just couldn't get any attraction
backing up. That's where I think like traction boards would

(01:26:48):
have been real nice, but airing down my tires in
that situation wouldn't.

Speaker 4 (01:26:53):
It may have. Maybe it's tough because now we're getting
into like specific conditions, but it would have been one
of the tools in your toolkit that you could have used,
especially if you didn't have traction boards or things like that.
That would be one of the first things you do
and you go incrementally, right, you just air down a
little bit more. Does that help? Oh, let's go a
little bit more. And then you get to a point

(01:27:14):
where you're like, yeah, maybe I shouldn't go any further
lower in my tire pressure. This isn't working. But you
might have found a delta point in there where that
tire pressure may have helped you in that situation.

Speaker 1 (01:27:26):
Is there a point where it can get dangerous or bad? Like,
is there a low end where you're like, hey, if
you're running the average truck and you're running forty psi normally,
like I would recommend don't go below this number.

Speaker 4 (01:27:40):
Yeah, tire manufacturers have their number. I think general tire
is like twenty two psi. They don't want you to
run below twenty two psi on the trail. Below that
you're becoming a test pilot for those tires to see
what they're capable of. They wan't warranty them if you
ran them, you know. But you know me personally, I

(01:28:03):
do run pressures below twenty two pounds, but it's usually
in shorter distances, like we would call this emergency pressures.
So there's because we know that going from like twenty
two pounds to say, fifteen psi. There's an exponential increase
in flotation between those two numbers because the tire starts
to deflect a lot more between those pressures, which also

(01:28:28):
we know creates heat and all that stuff. But if
you're running slow and you're not doing high speeds, you
can maintain that you can take take care of the
tire when it gets really low, like real emergency pressures,
I would say, well, and again it depends on the
weight of your vehicle. Like if my Ram thirty five
hundred with a camper on the back and everything was
down at fourteen psi, I'll bet that rim would nearly

(01:28:50):
be touching the ground, you know. But if you take
a Tacoma with nothing in the back, straight off the
lot going down to fourteen psi, you're going to be like,
is that is that tire aired down? I can't tell,
you know, you know, it's just because it's due to
weight and tire size and all these things. Right, So
you're really looking at the deflection how the tire is
behaving under the pressure that you've given it, and you

(01:29:14):
can tell as soon as you get low enough where
you can start to see the tire roll in a corner.
That's when it's getting dangerous that you will roll the bead.
So a tire is mounted to the wheel with the bead,
it's kind of kind of glued in there and pressed
against the bead or the rim of the tire with pressure.

(01:29:36):
If you exceed the forces that it can hold, it
will peel it off the rim and instantly lose all
your air and you'll be on the ground. And you're
now getting into a reseat the bead situation, which is
very doable, but it takes work, and you've got to
have the right tools.

Speaker 1 (01:29:55):
That's gonna say. And those tools aren't in our top
five item list, right.

Speaker 4 (01:29:59):
No, we could throw that in there. Actually, uh, we
have a recovery strap in here, a max tracks recovery.
We could just throw in there a ratchet strap, a
two inch ratchet strap, really bomber ratchet trap, because that's
what you would need, and an air compressor to reseat
the bead. So you put the strap around the middle

(01:30:19):
of it, yep, and you just ratchet it down, ratchet
it down, ratchet it down as tight as you can,
and you basically you're squeezing the inside of the tire
on the rim as much as you can, which is
causing the edges, the the bead of the tire to
want to pop out because you're squishing the middle and
you just ratchet it down as tight as you can.
That's why you need a really good one because it's

(01:30:40):
going to take a lot of effort. If you have
those ten plaid tires, this is gonna you're gonna be sweating.
It's gonna be a lot of effort. Yeah, So you
get that as best you can, and then you hit
that with a shot of air and help that punch
out and reseat the bead, put some more air in
with your air compressor, and then you can release the
ratchet strap and air up the rest of the way.
There are other meta kids out there that are far

(01:31:02):
more dangerous that you've probably seen all over the internet,
where you shoot a bunch of ether in there and
light a match and see what happens. We do not
recommend you do that unless you really know what you're doing,
so we'll just leave it at that.

Speaker 1 (01:31:18):
Yeah, okay, all right. So next on our list of
recovery items top five here for Clay is recovery boards.

Speaker 4 (01:31:30):
Yeah, hands down, hands down, And this is above a winch,
because a winch takes skill sets, so very you got
to have the right tools. You should probably have a
little bit of training. You got to know what to do,
You've got to be in the right environment. So that's
why I met a max track or a recovery board.
Traction boards, however, whatever you want to call it, comes
into play because anybody can use them. They're extremely safe,

(01:31:54):
they weigh nothing. Then you throw them in the back
of the truck and you're just there. They're waiting for
you when you need them, and they help in a
lot of ways. So Jordan, back to your situation where
you d yeh been kind of sunk down. You got
broken through the crust on the top and it was
super soft underneath, and you just couldn't get the momentum

(01:32:16):
again to get going right. Because your immobilization falls down
to two things. You either need traction or momentum. Because
if you have a lot of momentum, you cannot have
a lot of traction and get through stuff right. You
can just plow your way through it. If you don't
have traction, you can't get momentum. So this is where

(01:32:36):
recovery boards come into play. You put them, you give
the tire the appropriate runway to get momentum back. So
you put them under your tire, you kick them in.
In your case, in the snow, you would kick them
in as far as you can, doesn't matter what traction
board you use. You do not want to spin the
tires on the traction board because it generates excessive heat

(01:33:02):
very quickly. And alike on max tracks, it says molded
right into the traction board, it says no wheel spin.
So you kick them in as far as you can.
You've probably aired down a little bit so your tire
has better grip already.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
And quick questions do you need to do you need
to do any shoveling like beforehand?

Speaker 4 (01:33:24):
Oftentimes yes, and these work great as their own shovel.
You flip them over and you just use them to
dig themselves. So what you're wanting is the best approach
angle or departure angle from the tire to wherever you
have to get up on top of. You don't want
it to be extremely steep. You know, you want it

(01:33:44):
to be the lowest angle possible because that's going to
increase your chances of success. So get that kicked in there,
shovel out the stuff that you got to shovel out
and then get them pushed in there, go to four
wheel drive, and then either drive forward or drive backwards,
depending on your situation. That's another benefit of traction boards

(01:34:05):
because they work in both directions, whereas a winch does
work primarily in one unless you have extremely good skill
sets and lots of stuff to make it go in reverse.
So traction boards they weigh nothing, they're cheaper than a wench,
they require no electricity or hookups or and they get

(01:34:28):
you out of most things.

Speaker 3 (01:34:30):
And you like these Max tracks.

Speaker 4 (01:34:32):
Max Tracks, they're the original. The owner is a good
friend of mine. I'll always preach for Max Tracks. Their
compounds are the best. They're single point injection molded. There's
a reason they cost more. They hold up far better
in the cold.

Speaker 3 (01:34:45):
Yeah, but what do you think about the Mini ones?

Speaker 4 (01:34:48):
I have a set of the Mini Ones, and I
actually have friends that are traveling around the world and
a tundra with a camper on the back, and they
chose the minis just to save weight and they are
getting around the world world on the minis. Yeah, so
they're pretty cool. They're made for side by sides and stuff,
but people are finding more uses for them than just that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:09):
I'd say, what are they roughly three feet long? The
regular sized one? Yeah? Yeah, Which is there an instance
where you would use them sort of? I don't know,
as steps to get out of a longer problem where
where Okay, you got really stuck. You put your traction
boards in, you were able to move forward three feet,

(01:35:30):
but then as soon as you rolled off the traction boards,
you're stuck again again. Just pull them out, reset them
forward to your tires and just keep moving forward like
that three feet at a time. Is there or any
other tips that you would do?

Speaker 4 (01:35:44):
Then the beauty is to have your buddies have a
set as well. You didn't have four, now you have eight,
and you can literally build a road and get out.
We have done that. We did it in British Columbia
several years ten years ago now, but we were using
winches and max tracks at the same time because we

(01:36:06):
were so epically stuck and we just built the Egyptian
road one in front of the other, one in front
of the other for a mile and we got oute forever.

Speaker 1 (01:36:15):
What kind of conditions?

Speaker 4 (01:36:18):
Now we were in British Columbia, let's he was in February,
and we were just driving down some of their backcountry
roads and we got hit with a massive snowstorm in
the middle of that trip, and the road that we
had to go down to get out had not been
traveled yet, so we were just buried. So we used

(01:36:39):
all the tools at our disposal through some of the
worst patches, which involved like eight or twelve max tracks
and winches.

Speaker 1 (01:36:48):
Okay, and you said instead of having four, you'd have
eight if your buddy had a set, which means that
you're carrying four on it, because I think I just
got a set for my birthday, but I'm pretty sure
I was only given two. So do you recommend carrying
four of these things if.

Speaker 4 (01:37:05):
You're in snow?

Speaker 1 (01:37:08):
Four is?

Speaker 4 (01:37:08):
Really it gives you so many more options. Probably fifty
sixty percent of the time you can get out with
only two. But having a set of four is really
the magic number, got it? Because that allows all four
tires that have traction with a four wheel drive to

(01:37:29):
find traction and push and extract, versus relying on only
two tires to hopefully have enough traction to get you out.
You know, And when we're talking about big hunting rigs
and heavy stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:37:41):
Four is good.

Speaker 4 (01:37:42):
So your next birthday or Father's Day coming up for something,
maybe a couple more.

Speaker 1 (01:37:48):
I'll ask for two more.

Speaker 2 (01:37:49):
Okay, yeah, Well next you have like a high lift
jack or a hydraulic jack.

Speaker 3 (01:37:56):
Is that just to change your tire or you use
that for more things?

Speaker 4 (01:38:01):
Well, a high lift jack can be used for more
than just changing a tire. They be They can push
and pull, so you can spread things apart with them,
or you can lift things up. So they are a
very handy tool. That's why farmers and ranchers make sure
they're in the back of each truck. Because they can
build fence with them. They can winch things closer together

(01:38:22):
with them. They can lift a lot of stuff, they
can pull things out. High lifts are very multi they're
the multi tool of a off road vehicle. But they
do come with risk. You need to really know what
you're doing. You need to a lot of people have
gotten hurt by them. You know. The rule of thumb
is always wear gloves, have WD forty. If your high

(01:38:45):
left jack isn't working, it's probably because it needs lubrication.
So you always if you have a high left jack,
you need to have a little bottle of WD forty
taped to that thing, you know, and so you can
lubricate it to get the springs and the pins working correctly. Uh.
And then you never when you're operating it. You never
put your face over the bar as you're lifting something,

(01:39:06):
because if it slips all that way to the vehicle,
is going to fling that bar back up. And a
lot of people have lost some teeth and been pretty
hurt by those things. So I just need to know
what you're doing. Still one of the best staples out there,
that's why we have on this list. I hydraulic jack.
There's a couple of companies out there that make these now.
Eagle makes one and ARB And it's a hydraulic piston.

(01:39:30):
So you you has a handle that you hydraulically lift
something and you can use a valve to lower it
much safer, but it has limited use. It can't multi purpose.
Is a high lift, but they're much safer and that's
actually what we carry now in our vehicles.

Speaker 2 (01:39:49):
Nice that's what I have too, like a high it's
a it's a big I think it's a big red.
I'm not sure who makes that, but it's like a
big red hydraulic jack. I think it's a two ton
maybe yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:40:00):
Yep, perfect, And you want to try to have two
times the weight of the vehicle on your jack to
be as safe as possible. Of course there's safety margins
above that, but unless you know exactly who's built, they
always have at least two times the weight.

Speaker 1 (01:40:15):
Yeah, to be so. But in the case of getting unstuck,
how would you use these jacks in a would you
ever use it and just I'm stuck in deep snow
or I got stuck in a mud hole situation, or
where does it come into play in recovery?

Speaker 4 (01:40:32):
Yeah? Absolutely, So your high lift or your high centered situation,
you got to lift the frame up and then so
what you can do is you can lift the vehicle
up and then block underneath the tires and then drive
off of it. Versus trying to chip out whatever you're
high centered on. You actually just physically lift the vehicle

(01:40:53):
and fill the hole. Maybe you've dug your tire spun
and you sunk the the truck onto whatever you're high
centered on, lift the vehicle, fill in the hole with
whatever material is around, rocks, more sand, tree branches, whatever
you got to do, right, and then you set the
vehicle back down and drive off.

Speaker 1 (01:41:14):
So yeah, got it.

Speaker 4 (01:41:15):
And if you have to swap a tire, perhaps your
tires so badly damage that you can't repair it with
a plug, then you will need one of these tools
to make a safe tire swap it in the back country.

Speaker 1 (01:41:28):
And the reason you won't be able to use just
the jack that the truck came with is.

Speaker 4 (01:41:34):
Well, hopefully you can because it's still the best option.
It just but the jack that your vehicle came with
is very limited in its reach, so it's built for
the stock's tire size and on flat ground and the
concrete in the shop, so you either need to be

(01:41:55):
able to lift the jack up with a block of wood.
American Expedition vehicles may an awesome stand that takes your
factory jack and lifts it up and supports it. So
when you put a taller tire on, now you've lifted
the vehicle right, that allows your factory jack to still
lift the vehicle, so you and then there's situations when

(01:42:20):
a factory jack just won't work. So let's take your
high centered in the snow, getting a jack under there
under the you know, digging out the snow, trying to
get a jack to work under an axle when you're
high centered, versus getting a high lift jack out being

(01:42:41):
able to of course, you need the proper mounting position
on the vehicle that won't damage it rear bumper, side
rails or using a tire lift with the high lift jack.
But that allows I mean, you have sixty inches of
lifting capability versus maybe the thirteen inches or well or
so tops of a factory jack.

Speaker 1 (01:43:04):
Got it. Yeah, okay, so it sounds like we could
do a whole other podcast just on you.

Speaker 3 (01:43:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:43:09):
Yeah, high lift jacks.

Speaker 4 (01:43:10):
The short story there is carry both, okay, because if
you can use the smaller one, it's it's safer, it's
more calculated. We use them all the time. But when
you need a high left jack, you need a high
left jack.

Speaker 3 (01:43:22):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:43:24):
Yeah nice. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:43:25):
What about recovery straps?

Speaker 4 (01:43:27):
Now, well, this is this is a simple one. If
you are with a buddy or someone comes along, uh,
extracting somebody with a recovery strap is going to probably
be your quickest solution. Someone that can come up behind
you who still has traction, hook a strap up to
you and pull you backwards. Now, I must say that

(01:43:51):
This is a recovery strap, not a toe strap. A
toe strap has uh is a static line, has very
little flex. It's designed to toe with constant force. You know,
get your truck to the shop and that's.

Speaker 1 (01:44:09):
That's what you buy normally. If you just go down
to O'Reilly and you buy one of those straps, you're
gonna be buying a toe strap, right.

Speaker 4 (01:44:15):
Yeah, And anymore they offer both right there. The recovery
strap has become very popular, Like go down to O'Reilly
or Murdocks. There's gonna be a toe strap on one side,
and then there's gonna be a recovery strap on the other.
And a recovery strap is dynamic, so it stretches and
that helps take the load of when you back up,

(01:44:37):
it expands like a rubber band, and then it loads
the energy into the strap and lifts and pulls the
other vehicle out versus just slamming it like if it
was a steel cable. You know, that's really hard on stuff.
Back to that mechanical sympathy, and because I'm thinking of
it right now, never ever ever recover anyone from a

(01:45:01):
toeball of a hitch.

Speaker 1 (01:45:05):
I guarantee you seventy the people listening, they are like, oh,
I did that. One did that? I know I have.

Speaker 4 (01:45:12):
So a toe ball is designed to take static load
straight down from a trailer yea tongue weight. It is
not designed to take the im massive energy load from
the side they shear. And now what you've done is
effectively made a slingshot. So you've slapped your toe strap.

(01:45:35):
That is dynamic, it stretches, you throw it over the
toe ball, your buddy backs up and that towball shears
and it's wrapped in your toe strap and it flings
it through the windshield of the recovery vehicle. And just
a couple of years ago, a family, a dad was
killed with his family in the car doing this thing,

(01:45:58):
this very thing, So it.

Speaker 2 (01:45:59):
Is everybody that was killed killed doing the same thing.
Got stuck in the ditch and they they were trying
to pull him backwards and they hit the end of
it and it broke. The ball off, went through his
through the topper, through both windows of the topper back
window of the pickup, and hit him in the back
of the head and killed him.

Speaker 1 (01:46:18):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:46:20):
Yeah, I mean that's enough right there, guys, Like, if
you're listening out there and you see this happening on
the trail, you need to stop someone from doing it.
Holy and now yeah, the uh, the solution is take
the hitch out and put the pin in it. Just
thread it through the hitch and then use the pin
because the pin is designed to take that load, not

(01:46:43):
the hitchball.

Speaker 1 (01:46:45):
Okay, because those those toes straps or recovery straps have
But so are you saying don't ever use a toe
strap in this situation always or or or or can
you sometimes get away with it?

Speaker 4 (01:46:59):
Well, if you're stuck, you're stuck. You got to use
the tools at hand. But if you have your option,
you will not use a toe strap. If you do
have to use a toe strap, you will find you
will take it to tension. You will never shockload it right.
So you can, if all you have is a toe strap,
hook it up to both vehicles, back the one up

(01:47:20):
until there is proper tension slowly you know there's tension
on the line, and then you use it in a
static line, just backing up smooth, don't let it go
to slack, and then load because the strap's not going
to stretch something. Whatever is the weakest link will break first,
whether it's a bumper getting ripped off a truck or

(01:47:43):
the trap the strap braking. You just don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:47:47):
And the recovery straps do they come with pre formed
loops at the ends, just like a toe strap. They do, yep, okay.
And so you would just take your pin out and
then kind of shove that loop into the I guess
the receiver in there, and then run the pin back
in And that's how you would That's that's you're saying,
that's a viable way to attach the strap to the

(01:48:10):
to the vehicle.

Speaker 4 (01:48:12):
That would be the minimalistic worst case scenario, how you
would hook that up. The best case scenario is that
you carry a hitch recovery system. It's just another hitch
that you put in there that you were allowed to
put a clevice into it where you hook the strap

(01:48:34):
to the clevis and that clevis attaches to the receiver
and use all the strength of the towbar through that
and it's still relying on the pin, but it's much
more efficient. There's no sharp edges, and they're very affordable.
They're you know, forty fifty bucks for one of those.

(01:48:54):
I have mine sitting in the back. It slides into
the receiver. It replaces the ball and then it just
has an end on it that you can put a
d ring. A lot of people call them d rings,
but it's a clevis. You put a clevis in there.
A bow shackle is technically its name. Put the bow
shackle through the strap into the hitch there and off

(01:49:14):
you go. You you are safe.

Speaker 2 (01:49:27):
I have another example of what not to do Y
when I was when I was I don't know, I
was in high school.

Speaker 3 (01:49:34):
I think.

Speaker 2 (01:49:36):
We were doing stuff with the tractor. I got the
tractor stuck. My dad went to pull me out. Well,
dealing with what you have, we have. We have a
giant recovery rope. It's like that that big you know,
just like a huge one for the tractor or whatever.
We didn't have our d ring, so we had a
piece of chain that we chained around. So what we

(01:50:00):
did was we hit the end of that, the chain broke.
The whole thing's loaded, comes back at me and goes
through the windshield of the tractor. And what probably saved
me was it hit the front of the hood of
the tractor first and then bounced up into the windshield,
so it didn't come all the way through the windshield
at me. But another example of like, don't do that.

(01:50:21):
It could have been Yeah, I could have been pretty
badly hurting. That scared both of us.

Speaker 4 (01:50:26):
And uh, you're lucky to be that's you're lucky to
be on this podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:50:31):
No, I know, yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:50:32):
All right, Well, let's so what do you do? Because
obviously it's like, Okay, you got your setup, so you
can rig your shock to be connected properly to the strap.
But you're let's just say you do your you are
pulling out a stranger and they don't have they don't
have any of this, and they don't have the hooks
that are built into a lot of rigs. Now either,

(01:50:53):
what are you attached to? And how sure?

Speaker 4 (01:50:55):
So I carry stuff for the for the other guy
who's not prepared, and I do it selfishly because I
don't want to damage my stuff because you got to
help them, Yeah, and especially here in Montana, and you
know it's the way of the West, right, we help
each other. Yeah. And so there's straps that you can

(01:51:20):
buy that can wrap an axle. There's which is still
not your best situation. Anytime you can use legitimate toe
points like people's hitches or there are some factory recovery
points that come from the factory that are legitimate. Not

(01:51:40):
all of them are. So some of those hooks that
you see on the bottom of trucks, those are only
to be able to be tied down on the assembly line.
Oh really yeah, or to help in towing the truck
whatever it is, to the dealership where it will be sold,
and they stay on it. So they're not always the best.

(01:52:01):
So you use your best judgment there depends on the
forces that you're going to use and all that. How
have you ever, recovery is this? Some of those little
hooks really aren't the best, So just be smart. I
carry extra straps that I can wrap things with and
attach my dynamic straps to with bow shackles or now

(01:52:26):
a really common thing is soft shackles, and they're even better.
We've pretty much replaced all of our d rings with
soft shackles. They kind of look like Chinese finger traps.
They have a loop on one end and a knot
on the other and you can slide them open and
wrap it around and put the knot through the opening,

(01:52:50):
and that's actually what you use to recover from. It
creates a closed system and it's fabric. They weigh nothing
and they're super strong.

Speaker 1 (01:53:00):
Wrap that around pretty much anything, right, You could wrap
that around an axle if you had to.

Speaker 4 (01:53:05):
Yep, there's good flexibility to those two. So I carry,
you know, being me the industry I'm in, I carry
bow shackles and I carry soft shackles, but I carry
mostly soft shackles. Now, I keep a couple of the
other bow shackles with me, but like, I'll carry four
soft shackles.

Speaker 1 (01:53:23):
And will you, will you Clay be able to do
us and all of our listeners a favor and maybe
run through a lot of these items that we've talked
about and just make up a quick list with a
couple examples and links to some of these items, because
I'm sure, like right now, I'm like, I'm trying to
pay attention to our conversation, but I'm thinking I need
to make a list. Yeah, sure of stuff I need

(01:53:45):
to go by.

Speaker 4 (01:53:46):
So the probably the most trusted, it is, the most
trusted recovery company in the United States is warn They've
been around for seventy five years. This is their seventy
fifth anniversary this year.

Speaker 1 (01:53:57):
Same ones that make the winches, right, they.

Speaker 4 (01:54:00):
Make the winches, but they also make all the recovery stuff,
so they are in the business of recovery, so they
have great snatch straps. They have great kits that you
can buy, and to me, it's a no brainer to
buy the kits. They have their Epic kit, they have
the New Factor fifty five. It's a company that they
purchased really high end stuff if you're looking into the

(01:54:21):
very best. But they have their budget kits too, which
are perfect for the hunting truck. It comes with a
little bag, it's got everything you need in there to
run a winch and to have safe extractions in tow.
It's a no brainer to just buy the kit. And
they're on Amazon. I would say support your local off

(01:54:44):
road shop or shop that has it. That would be
much better. But yeah, they're easy to get, they're widely
available and that's a great place to start. Beyond that,
Max Tracks Same Recovery store. Where you know your off road,
your your dark horse, customs, your wherever you are in

(01:55:06):
the world, there's an off road shop pretty close or
a good shop online that can support you there. Try
to support those local businesses as much as you can.
They go for about when are they three hundred a
pair now for max tracks. Ye, and that again buy once,
cry once when it when when it comes to that,

(01:55:28):
because they're going to hold up then they have great warranty.
What else have we got? We got High Left Jack
High Left is. Don't buy the Chinese version there. It
comes down to how they're made, the metallurgy and the
quality of the metal. So buy an American Maid High
Lift if you can. The Hydraula Jack ARB is probably

(01:55:54):
the easiest one to get a hold of, and they
are also sold at the same place as these other
ones are all the recovery straps, et cetera. What else
we got Tire repair kit AARB makes a great one.
You can eat The slime version at Walmart is yeah,
pretty dang good.

Speaker 1 (01:56:10):
You know I've used that too. Yeah, that's Meat Eater
Crew approved. Because we saw often travel and then just
rent a suburban that in rental vehicles. I'n't even heard
of other groups like going and buying new tires and
having them put onto their rental vehicles to when they
go in and do a hunt for a week and

(01:56:30):
then just eating the cost of that. But anyways, we
haven't done that, but we've bought those kits that you're saying,
those green slime ones at Walmart, And I mean we
had a trip in New Mexico where I mean we
had to go back to get more plugs. I think
because we were ripping through so many tires. It's just
that weird kind of sharp rock I guess that was
on these roads and the tires were super cheap. And yeah,

(01:56:54):
rental tires can get you in a bad place real quick.
But yeah, those uh, those green slime kits, I can
tell you they.

Speaker 4 (01:57:00):
Work pre day and good. And these uh portable air
compressors from arb or vay Air you can fly with
them and oh cool. Yeah, throw them in the box,
put them in as part of your check checked luggage.

Speaker 1 (01:57:14):
The rental car hilarious.

Speaker 4 (01:57:15):
You know, the most capable off road vehicle in the
world is a rental car, and everyone likes to use
them like that too, So make sure that you carry
with what you've done there. Have a tire repair kit
and an air compressor, and you can you can tackle
a lot of stuff. It brings you a lot of
peace of mind.

Speaker 1 (01:57:32):
Yeah yeah, until you just have worn through all the
tires and then you realize you got to start swapping
tires from one rental to another, just so you can
get the broken tires down into town to get them fixed. Yeah,
that's where we got to on that trip. All right,
Let's uh, let's see that was the top five items,
but there's a few additional options and I carry some

(01:57:54):
of these things. Let's rip through a couple of the
those are top five and I'm kind of surprised that
a shovel didn't make your top five kit.

Speaker 4 (01:58:03):
Well, if you have recovery boards, you kind of already
have a shovel, I see. So if definitely you're going
to carry more than five things, you should, you know,
but for the sake of you know, keeping things simple,
the best five things. But yeah, quickly into number six.
We have like the first aid kit. We called it

(01:58:25):
the vehicle first Aid Kit, and that has tire repair,
a shovel. A first aid kit should be in every vehicle,
not one that's in your pack. It's one that's dedicated
to the vehicle, YEP, headlamps and recovery strap, which is
part of just that first aid kit that you know,

(01:58:45):
go buy that kit from warn or whoever Max Tracts
makes one to whoever. Just have that as part of
your vehicle first aid kit. Yeah, and a shovel. A
shovel is a shovel. You don't have to spend lots
of money on a shovel. There's lots of ways you can.
But uh, you know, even if you go get that

(01:59:05):
rental car and you're hunting somewhere and flew from Montana
to New Mexico, roll into you know, home depot and
buy the fifteen dollars shovel with a long handle, as
flat as it can be so you can get under
a stuck vehicle. Don't want one with a lot of
curve to.

Speaker 1 (01:59:19):
It, so you would recommend more like the square shape
what do they call it, like a transfersion, like.

Speaker 3 (01:59:26):
A scoop shovel.

Speaker 4 (01:59:28):
I always go with the spade, Okay, yeah, go spade, Yeah,
just because go ahead.

Speaker 3 (01:59:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:59:37):
One I've been using for snow is an avalanche shovel
because they're smaller, not quite as wide as like a
regular scoop shovel, and they're just more compact. The handle
can telescope at least the ones that we have perfect. Yeah,
it's just like it's small, super easy to use, and
you I like it.

Speaker 4 (01:59:57):
I think every year Costco does a on cheap snow shovels,
and a lot of our cars around here have a
Costco snow shovel thrown in the back with all that stuff.
So if you want to go really high end, you
get into demo shovels. They're made out of salt lake
and they're they're like the Gucci of snow shovels, you know,

(02:00:18):
or cars with specialty mounts and all that stuff. We've
worked with them for years too, and good stuff. But yeah,
have a shovel, have.

Speaker 1 (02:00:28):
A shovel, Okay, And then you had a couple additional
options written down there to number one with battery jump.

Speaker 4 (02:00:35):
So some of this comes down to just rounding out
back to the immobilization due to power or due to
fuel or due to you know, mechanical stuff, right, so
battery jump back. The next most likely thing that happens,
what would make you immobilized is you have a dead battery.
You can't you know, you you were excited on the

(02:00:56):
trail that morning, you left the key on a little bit,
and by the next day when you come back after
your overnight, your truck is dead. So have and you're
at the end of a trailhead. Hopefully you're hunting where
no one else is, so there's probably not anyone else coming.
You need to be self sufficient, have a battery pack
with you. You can jump yourself with one of those

(02:01:18):
tire chains we've talked about that that they can be
extremely beneficial and really deep snow when you've got to
keep moving and mud to back east will in eastern Montana,
you'll use these in the gumbo and they'll get you
out too, because it's just it's just grabbing a lot
of material and throwing it that's allowing you to move forward.

(02:01:38):
A winch, you know there we've talked about simple things
that require no skills and you know, or hookups, but
there's a time when you need a winch. You need
a winch because you're working with heavy machinery. At this point,
your car's weigh a lot and if there's a certain
point where you need true recovery mechanical advantages of a

(02:02:01):
winch to get you out. A five can jerry can
five sorry, five gallon jerry can of gas or diesel,
and it'll help that that guy you come across, guy
or gal that you come across. It'll allows you to
be a good neighbor or it'll get you out if
you make a mistake, you know, or whatnot. And then

(02:02:23):
carry your factory jacks right there. That's on there, and
your optional additions. Make sure you have your factory jacks. Yeah,
and then other stuff simple things. Fuses, you know, that's
the next thing that could cause something to go wrong.
Make sure you have spare fuses in the club box. Yeah,
that gets pretty far. And then a toolkit, you know,

(02:02:44):
have some basic tools. Go to home depot or wherever
and buy the the general one hundred and fifty piece
set or whatever and have it sitting in the back
so that you can.

Speaker 3 (02:02:55):
Do some bas how to use it too and know
how to like know how to fix stuff.

Speaker 4 (02:03:00):
Yeah. On there, work on your own cars a little bit.
You know, we're all real busy and we're trying to
save as much time as we can in places. But
you know there's an advantage to working on your truck
a little bit and have that experience before you before
you need it.

Speaker 1 (02:03:14):
Well, what would you say is that is the common
mechanical failure that can actually be fixed in the back country.

Speaker 4 (02:03:22):
Right off the bat, obviously is tires fixing. That's the
most common failure point and have all these different ways
of being fixed. As we discussed, Let's see what else.
I've seen a lot of lug nuts, sheared off tires,
you know, carry some spare lugs. That's fixable in the field.

(02:03:46):
Let's see hoses usually, but you know a lot of
these are avoidable if you're really into the maintenance of
your vehicle. Look at it. My grandpa always used to
say that your truck talks to you. Just listen it.
Just the squeaks, the sounds, the new vibrations, and chase them.
Don't just assume, don't normalize. Say what is that? And

(02:04:08):
go find it? And that'll that'll keep you out of
being immobilized a lot.

Speaker 3 (02:04:18):
Awesome.

Speaker 1 (02:04:20):
Okay, last, but not least, a lot of stuff you
gotta carry, keep organized, keep, most likely hopefully tucked away
and not really using. So where do you put all
this stuff? What's give me?

Speaker 4 (02:04:34):
Like?

Speaker 1 (02:04:34):
I know, there's the ex overland version of organizing, and
then there's also the hey, like can I just chuck
it in a five gallon bucket and bungee cord it
to the you know, the front end of my bed?
Like what do you recommend there?

Speaker 4 (02:04:48):
Yeah? So uh. Number one, make sure you have it
even if you don't have a way to secure it
very well, make sure you do have it on your
next adventure. These things to save to save you from
the adventure you don't want. But storage solutions is the
next big topic here, and we use all kinds of things.
There's drawer systems that you can order that fit into

(02:05:11):
the back of your SUVs or truck beds. Decked is
a good one outback solutions from a RB Goose Gear
out of California. There's a lot of systems that we
can get into later on organizing your truck. But the
important thing here is the principle called load and lash,
and this applies to more than just the stuff that

(02:05:33):
we're throwing in the truck here. This applies to your
equipment and your gear, and your rifles and your bows
and all that have a way to secure it down,
strap it down. Because in the event of an accident,
a lot of people are hurt in rollovers and in
accidents by the materials inside their car, not the accident itself.

(02:05:55):
People have been killed by the things that don't need
to be killed from the stuff flying around the vehicle.
So the way I look at it. When I'm doing
best practice. I look at my vehicle and said, okay,
I'm going to have a rollover today. How does my
vehicle look? What do I need to throw a strap
over it? And especially when you got kids and all

(02:06:16):
that stuff, think that one next step because it may
not be your fault, maybe somebody else hitting you or
God forbid you know, look at Okay, if I have
to roll over today, what do I not want flying
around to hit me? And get into load and lash principles.

Speaker 1 (02:06:34):
And how do you commonly do that?

Speaker 4 (02:06:36):
Ratchet straps, Yeah, we do so toolboxes in the back
of trucks that are bolted to the vehicle, not just
sitting there. They need to be bolted down otherwise you
have a huge missile that's just ready to go. Straps, netting.
You can get some pretty cheap netting at auto stores,

(02:06:59):
sportsmen and all that they carry netting that you can
throw over things and load and lash down using seat bolts,
using the bottom of seats, however they're attached. We've even
gone and bought climbing anchors for walls that you then
thread a different bolt through the seat and now it
becomes an attachment point. For a care beaner, so you

(02:07:21):
can utilize those places to keep things latched, lash down
and tight.

Speaker 1 (02:07:28):
Got it? Get serious? You don't want to come see
my setup because obviously I've got a way to just
kill my whole family riding around when I go.

Speaker 4 (02:07:40):
It's certainly all guilty of it.

Speaker 1 (02:07:42):
Yeah, but I usually try to keep it between the
mustard and the mayo, as they say, And I don't
I drive slower than faster anymore. And yeah, but I
will take a lot of these these tips and especially
the stuff around safety and put it to use. This
has been great.

Speaker 3 (02:08:00):
Lutely.

Speaker 1 (02:08:00):
Anything else, Jordan or Clay that you guys feel like
we missed or we want to cover off on?

Speaker 2 (02:08:08):
No, there's so much more stuff to dive into. We'll
just have to have you back on.

Speaker 4 (02:08:12):
I'd love to. Yeah, I feel like we're very thorough
today with the topic at hand. I feel great about it.
I would say we did have down here the why
why after this whole podcast why would you do this?
And we wrote down here these items and the knowledge
of how to use them allow you to be the hero.

(02:08:32):
Being prepared allows you to go further, you know, and
that's it. You know, you can be the hero to
someone else who's having a bad day. We all have
bad days out there. You have the tools, and we
as adventurers out there, need to be prepared and this
allows you, hopefully give you some steps to being more

(02:08:52):
prepared out there.

Speaker 2 (02:08:55):
So yeah, and I can tell you after being stuck
like a kajellion times every time time I'm like what
I would give just to have recovery boards or I
should have bought that or whatnot, Like gosh, it's it
just really derails a weekend, derails your entire trip when
something just goes wrong that could have been preventable.

Speaker 1 (02:09:17):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (02:09:18):
Yeah. And if you did have all the stuff in
your weekend goes wrong, well then you were prepared for that.
You know, it's not due to you, it's due to
other circumstances. That's that's where that's the kind of adventure
mishap that I want, is when I was prepared for
but I couldn't overcome.

Speaker 1 (02:09:37):
Yeah, you could overcome it. Yeah, yeah, all right, let's
do it just to to finish up, if you have
the time, play, let's do a couple scenarios and then
just tell me how you would best to get out
of here. Because I almost got stuck turkey hunting. A
couple of weeks ago. We went and hunted and it
rained for three days straight. Wasn't like real crazy heavy,

(02:09:59):
but just now stop. And the roads to where we're at,
they're not quite I wouldn't call them, you know, Missouri
river breaks gumbo, but it I mean they were getting
slick and boogery, and I mean, you know all the
adjectives for those types of roads where your tires are
just completely caked and filled. And it had dried out

(02:10:19):
just enough, and I was like, well, we wanted just
to drive the road a mile, just to save us
the hike of a mile. We were running out of
time and it had gotten a little tacky. You were like, oh,
let's go and try it. Well, of course, you know,
ninety percent of it's just fine. We'd come around this
corner and there's a pretty big we're just like to
be like a puddle. I thought, Oh, I'll just ease

(02:10:40):
right through it, no big deal. Well, that corner happened
to be extra clayey, extra gumboie, and I got right
to the middle of this puddle and then all of
a sudden, all four wheels just spinning now I got
lucky and just started doing the old drive punch it,
reverse punch it, drive punch it, And after I don't
know ten twenty of those, I somehow wiggled my way

(02:11:03):
back out of there. I really thought that I would
that it did not seem as though I was gonna
make it, because it was just so viscous right that
that mud, and it just seemed like I was going
deeper and I was. Although I was throwing a lot
of moisture and sort of this muddy soupy mess, it
wasn't really moving much. So let's just say I I

(02:11:25):
get to the point where I do that for ten minutes,
back and forth, back and forth, and it's just not moving.
My tires are still spinning. I'm not high centered, but
the this, this whatever, super viscous muddy mess is not
allowing me to get out of this hole. What's uh,
and we've got now I've gone and done done my shopping,

(02:11:46):
I've got all this stuff in my truck. What's how
would you get out of there? Great question?

Speaker 4 (02:11:52):
Uh, so we have this saying, yeah, it went in doubt,
throttle out. You know that can be to your advantage
as long as you're you know, a thousand decisions are
going to be made quickly in your head. Whether that's
the right decision, We're not going to wargain that right now.
You made that decision, and because you still had traction

(02:12:14):
and we're able to get a little bit of momentum,
you thought you could get out, okay, But then there
came a point in your story when you realize that
you were stuck. When you realize you're stuck, stop because
that's the least amount of stuck you're going to be
at that very moment. So how often times I'll just

(02:12:35):
give it a try one more time? Now you're super stuck. Okay,
So as soon as you realize you're stuck, you're stuck. Now,
a lot of guys and possibly gals have ego around
getting stuck. The ego goes away. A lot of us
around here, we don't have ego around being stuck anymore.
It's just part of the scenario. So when you're stuck,

(02:12:58):
you're stuck. Okay, I've identified that's where I am, and
then the next thing is going to be what's going
to get me my traction or my momentum next, the
path of least resistance first, then determine if that's really
the best. So more than likely your max tracks or
recovery board placed in the right spot, because you're so

(02:13:20):
close already, is going to get you out of there
the fastest, So placing those getting the momentum back, and
maybe putting some of those boards in some of the
spots that you know, as you've accelerated, you kind of
get into those money spots and you sink into things
and you kill your momentum. Throw your boards down in

(02:13:42):
that so that when your truck does get to it,
it has new found purchase and can continue to accelerate
out kind of patch the road, so to speak. So
you might need a couple under the wheels to get going,
and then a couple out in the worst spots and
give it a go. That would be my next choice.

Speaker 1 (02:14:00):
And with a full drive vehicle, assuming it's the whole,
is all things equal that you're stuck in and it's
twelve inches of watery mud, you know in the back
and in the front as well, would you go on
the front wheels more than the back wheels or is
it going to be six is? As to where you
put those.

Speaker 4 (02:14:20):
Boards depends more than likely when you got stuck, you
probably had a sense of what tires were spinning. Unless
you were running full lockers where your axles are locked through.
You're going to have an idea of what my front
driver side was spinning and my rear passenger side was spinning.
That's where you're going to want to put your max tracks,

(02:14:44):
got it, because those are all of your power through
your four wheel drive system, through your transfer case and
the diffs, the open diffs are being lost to the
path of least resistance, so give them some resistance. And
the other thing you can do is you could just
set a little bit of e breake pressure if you want,
which applies a little bit of pressure to that one

(02:15:05):
wheel that's spinning. If you don't have lockers, you can
apply even on older cars. The newer cars kind of
override this now, but you could apply just slight amount
of brake pressure and then accelerate through the brake pressure
because it allows the wheel to not want to so
easily spin off. Yeah, so that's that's a left foot

(02:15:27):
right foot brake technique that just apply a little bit
and then you kind of massage it. You see where
it works, and sometimes it's just enough to get you
get all four tires moving again.

Speaker 3 (02:15:40):
Nice.

Speaker 4 (02:15:41):
Yeah, And then looking at the weight of the vehicle.
So if you have a pickup with nothing in the back,
all of your weights on that front axle over the engine,
So that's where gonna you're gonna have the most amount
of traction potentially there that so your front tires might
be pulling you out before your rear tires push you out.

Speaker 1 (02:16:01):
Got it. But for whatever reason, when you do chains,
they always they say not usually not to put them
on your front tires. Is that just because when you
turn the tires the chains they're going to beat up
your fenders or what is the reasoning for not putting
chains on front tires?

Speaker 4 (02:16:17):
Uh? Yeah, there's a lot of Yeah, I put chains
on my front tires.

Speaker 1 (02:16:23):
You do.

Speaker 3 (02:16:24):
It's a clearance issue.

Speaker 4 (02:16:25):
Clearance, especially the new modern cars have that upper control arm.
There's a lot of clearance problems. So you run a
risk when you put chains on because now with the
new modern vehicles, we have all these sensors that go
into the wheel sensors and the antilock brakes and all

(02:16:45):
kinds of stuff go the speed sensors. Sometimes, just know
that if you put chains on and it all goes wrong,
you might be disabling and breaking those things that you'll
have to repair later. The rear typical has more clearance
in the wheel wells and less going on that a
chain is safer to put there. But yeah, in a

(02:17:08):
muddy situation, the only thing is is if you only
have chains on the rear and not on the front,
steering can become a major problem, right, because you can push,
but you can't steer. It can't pull you through the corner.
You're essentially relying on your front tires to become kind
of skis in a way, and you it's more of
a suggestion versus if it also has chains on it,

(02:17:31):
it'll steer by pulling through the corner.

Speaker 1 (02:17:34):
Sure, sure, all right. Another scenario, you got us out
of the mud hole. This one, I think is very
common to haunters. It's getting to be in it's in November.
Roads have gotten frozen. Thought frozen thought. But it's early
in the morning, so it's frozen from the night and

(02:17:56):
you're going along some forest service road or maybe it's
just a dirt road on a ranch or whatever, and
it's not quite the road is not, you know, horizontal anymore.
It's got a little pitch to it off. You know,
going downhill, you're cruising along in dry conditions. It's fine
because you got plenty of grip, but the snow is

(02:18:18):
set up so that it's it's getting a little bit slick,
and you get to a spot and all of a
sudden you start to get that slide and you go
and it's almost like you're rule about like, once you're stuck,
just don't make yourself any more stuck. You realize that
going forward anymore you're just gonna start slipping, and pretty
soon you're gonna have two wheels actually off this road

(02:18:39):
and on the hill, and then you're in real trouble.
So you sort of you're not stuck yet, you've put
it in park, but you're in a precarious spot right
like you're really close to losing two wheels if you
go forward. You don't feel comfortable, just like backing out
of there. What's the play there?

Speaker 4 (02:19:04):
There's an old ranch technique, an old backcountry road technique
where you can self sand the road. So you get
your shovel out and you go to the dirt hill
next to it. You're all parked out and you start
digging into the hill and you start sanding that hill
that corner with the material that you're able to extract.

(02:19:25):
If you're gonna so your shovel's coming in big time
right there. That's gonna help. That's one of the ingredients
to a cocktail that we'll make here.

Speaker 1 (02:19:36):
Next.

Speaker 4 (02:19:37):
Recovery boards. If they have the proper spikes below them,
they can dig pretty well, and you could you could
inch your way across something like that using a recovery
board because they have their own like spikes underneath them
that dig pretty good. We have used. Depending on the
extra in this case, you may be able to take

(02:20:02):
a I don't know if i'd recommend that you really
you can get into some really techy things like you know,
tying a toe strap off to a tree up high
or whatever, not letting your truck slide any lower and
use the the strap to as a pivot point. Things
like that just to assist from uh, there's things like that.

(02:20:25):
I don't know. That's that's a that's a tricky one.
I don't know if airing down necessarily would help in
this situation. Just depends on the surface. You may want
that traction from a lot of pressure, more pressure per
square inch versus spreading. The pressure just depends on what

(02:20:45):
you kind of read the road as I would sand
it first. Really it comes down to that.

Speaker 3 (02:20:52):
I feel like chains would help.

Speaker 4 (02:20:53):
The chains. If you got chains would resolve this issue.
You may slip a little bit, have a little bit
of you know, because the chains are never a consistent
contact patch. They you know, you roll over a chain,
then it's smooth and all. Roll over a chain, you
would just gather your momentum and drive through it. You
wouldn't really go slow, you'd kind of get after it

(02:21:14):
and get out at that. At that point, definitely, if
you have lockers in the vehicle, disengage lockers, yeah, because
it'll if one if they both spin, then they can
both break traction at once and then it becomes a sled.
So on an off cambridge situation where the road is turning,

(02:21:38):
say it's turning to the right, but the road leans
to the right as well, that it doesn't that's called
off camber, lockers are bad in that situation. Disengage lockers
because you want.

Speaker 3 (02:21:52):
Is that basically your traction control.

Speaker 4 (02:21:55):
Traction control depends on the vehicle that you're running, but
it is managed through the ABS system. Your braking system,
and it was managed essentially by a pump that pulses
the anti lock breaks that allows a wheel to not
slip as it starts to slip, it just breaks it momentarily.
It's like up it just with electric pulses and they

(02:22:18):
work amazingly well. Traction control would be a good option
in this at this time over lockers, because lockers are
mechanically locked, there's no forgiveness. Okay, traction control functions would
manage it better in this case. Most control is a
good option.

Speaker 1 (02:22:38):
Most people, or most newer trucks, they don't even come
with the option to lock your diffs anymore, right, I mean,
it's that's kind of few and far between, am I correct?

Speaker 4 (02:22:50):
It's coming back. A lot more have them, so that
all the new Tundras in the tierty off road format,
the new trail Hunter coming out as that. The Denali's
have that in their eighty four. The Colorados have front
end rear lockers now in some of their upfit options,

(02:23:11):
so a lot of the Fords, the Broncos do, so
they have really made a comeback in more modern vehicles.
There's kind of a gap in there from say like
two thousand to twenty seventeen. You know, there's a lot
of manufacturers even eighteen nineteen weren't putting lockers in there.

(02:23:31):
But with the rise of off road and overlanding, the
demand for lockers in the consumer base has been risen
so much that it's now a great selling point. So
a lot of these vehicles have them now in the
right package or the right grade. So yeah, they're there.
But the traction control that many more cars have is

(02:23:53):
remarkably efficient and effective.

Speaker 3 (02:24:01):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (02:24:03):
Cool.

Speaker 2 (02:24:05):
Well, I think we're probably getting pretty close to the
end of our time. Anything you want to pitch in, yann.

Speaker 1 (02:24:10):
You No, I'm good. I got way too much to
think about now.

Speaker 3 (02:24:14):
I know me too, I got a list going here.

Speaker 1 (02:24:16):
Thanks Claire, I appreciate it. Man. Let's uh, let's get
together and do it again and just we'll talk just
going car camping and all the actual camping gear outside
of the truck gear. Does that sound like it gonna
be awesome? Good plan for the next one?

Speaker 4 (02:24:32):
Sure?

Speaker 3 (02:24:33):
Cool?

Speaker 2 (02:24:33):
Yeah, And just like always, anybody has any questions on this,
shoot us an email gear talk at themeeater dot com
and we can tackle them in a future episode or
get notes going for your future episode.

Speaker 1 (02:24:46):
Thanks for listening,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 18: Mechanical Sympathy

Episode Transcript

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Ep. 18: Mechanical Sympathy

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