Safe, effective heavy-vehicle recovery during a record-breaking Spring!
“The phone just hasn’t stopped ringing” says Edwin Scott, Managing Director of Unilift Global. “Especially since the team went up to the Australian National Field Days at Borenore recently. I think that after so many years of drought, this exceptionally wet season has caught many businesses unprepared when it comes to heavy recovery. The old mantra ‘just pull it out with the tractor’ simply does not work when it’s a dual-wheel, B-double or header bogged to the axles. Businesses need to be better informed, resourced and with much greater attention to safety.”
“The sheer number of recoveries being attempted across Eastern Australia has highlighted our concern about unsafe equipment or practices. We’ve seen a number of 4wd recovery fatalities over the past few months, but imagine the devastation that could be caused by poor decisions made during recoveries on a much larger scale—the forces involved are just so much greater.
One of the biggest changes we’ve seen is the development of synthetic rope-based recovery. Heavy industry on-the-whole is moving away from traditional chain, wire-rope & steel shackles, mainly due to safety but also the wear & tear on equipment. Compared to steel these new products are smaller, lighter, easier to handle & store, far safer and much better suited to kinetic-type recoveries due to a degree of stretch.”
“While we do highly recommend producers update their standard farm vehicle recovery kit to soft-shackles, fibre winch-rope, quality straps and rated recovery points, these are only rated to 10-12 tonnes and are easily sourced locally. But many people might not know that Unilift supply soft-recovery gear for mining, forestry, construction and agriculture rated up to 500 tonnes, from companies such as Australia’s-own Black Snake, Dynamica and Unilift’s own range. It is specialist equipment, but combined with good advice & some training it could help you recover just about anything!”
Edwin Scott - For "The Land" & "Stock & Land" Newspapers - November 2022
Black Snake® Recovery Strops
The Black Snake® product range began in 2002 with their unique Nylon 4WD “snatch-um” strop and has expanded rapidly into a wide variety of vehicle recovery, towing and specialty products. Their premier product range features Kevlar® recovery strops capable of towing and recovering the largest mine-site vehicles, short Kevlar® underground mining specialty products and specially designed military strops. The nylon range suits kinetic recovery and towing of small to medium sized vehicles. With over 150 different products available and in excess of 30,000 units supplied to various markets worldwide, the Black Snake Kevlar® and Nylon range have proven themselves hardworking, durable and efficient. Black Snake have successfully carved a unique niche in the mining, construction and military industries.
Black Snake Kevlar® Strops
The endless parallel lay configuration of the Kevlar® fibres, coupled with high strength steel eyes encased in a thick, rubber cover, creates lightweight, rugged and very high break strength strops. From 4 metres up to 20 metres in length and ranging from 10-500 tonnes break strength, Black Snake Kevlar® Recovery strops are suitable for most recovery situations in mine operations and heavy duty applications. With over 22,000 Kevlar® Recovery Strops sold, Black Snake Kevlar® Recovery strops provide a practical and proven alternative to wire rope, chain or fibre rope/round-sling/webbing straps.
- Ultra high strength to weight ratio, flexibility for easy use and handling
- Low elongation of 4%, low recoil properties from the Kevlar® fibres and the thick cover provide a safe energy damping feature in case of over-loading the strop during recovery
- Abrasion/cut resistant rubber protects the inner Kevlar® fibres from the elements and keeps out oil, water, mud and dust allowing it to be virtually maintenance free
- Easy to install with various shaped eyelets available that are sized to fit standard connections. Special thimbles can also be fitted according to customer requirements
- Individual serial number and embedded RFID for full traceability
Black Snake Nylon Recovery Strops
The Black Snake Nylon Recovery Strop provides a heavy duty, industrial strength alternative to webbing snatch straps and kinetic nylon ropes. The Black Snake Nylon Recovery Strop incorporates nylon strands laid in an endless parallel lay construction into galvanised wire rope thimbles, the entire construction is then covered in a vulcanised, industrial grade rubber. This construction is very robust and has inbuilt protection for the load-bearing fibres along with excellent energy dampening qualities. With other nylon webbing straps, kinetic recovery nylon ropes and even nylon round-slings, the fabric construction make them susceptible to dirt, mud and abrasion damage. The soft eyes are particularly vulnerable to cutting and fraying from shackles, pins and hooks. The Black Snake Nylon Recovery Strop uses embedded heavy duty thimbles to eliminate cutting and fraying of the fibres.
- Abrasion/cut resistant rubber protects the inner nylon fibres from the elements and keeps out oil, water, mud and dust allowing it to be virtually maintenance free and making it far more durable than other fabric straps
- A tough, high performance, great alternative to webbing straps
- High strength Nylon 6.6 load core with high strength to weight ratio
- Very flexible and light weight for access into awkward spaces and for attachment devices
- Easy to install with galvanised thimbles embedded into the rubber casing. Perfectly matched with shackles and clevis pins
- Smooth stretch of up to 20% to assist snatch style recovery
- Individual serial number for traceability
Black Snake Kevlar® Y-Strops
LIGHT DUTY - The Y Strop uses Kevlar® to achieve a unique and lightweight alternative to 2 leg chain or wire rope sling configurations. It is an excellent towing fixture due to its ease of use and safe handling.
The light duty Y Strops are an ideal permanent addition for small to medium skid-mounted power generators, transformers, de- watering pumps, tool and equipment boxes. The Y strop is also suitable for light vehicle towing and recovery with twin point connections, common to farm, military and small to medium mine vehicles. The Kevlar® core and thick rubber cover make the Y strop perfect for snow, sand and muddy conditions. The Kevlar® Y Strop is UV stabilised, waterproof and can be used underwater as a tie-down or mooring strop.
HEAVY DUTY - The Black Snake Heavy Duty Y Strop has an extra thick rubber skin and high strength round eyes for maximum protection of the Kevlar® load bearing core. It is an excellent permanent towing fixture due to its ease of use and safe handling.
The heavy duty Y Strops are the ideal addition for heavy skid-mounted equipment. The Y strop is also suitable for medium sized vehicle towing and recovery with twin point connections, common to farm, military and mine vehicles.
BULLDOZER - The mine-site bulldozer is the towing vehicle of choice in many open-cut mining operations, quarry and construction sites. With ripper assemblies commonly attached to bulldozers, towing gear has many challenges maintaining integrity and strength in a hostile environment. Specifically designed for use with bulldozer rippers, we adapted Andromeda’s 'B’ fittings for use in the towing version of the Black Snake and introduce the: BULLDOZER Y Strop.
The bearing (contact) zone of the ‘B’ fitting is typically marked in yellow paint and is the thickest part of the cast fitting. The ‘B’ fitting is fully welded. The BULLDOZER Y Strop is a specialised, heavy duty product and can be permanently attached to skid-mounted equipment for regular moves. The user should assess the suitability of this product and towing procedures when choosing to tow skid-mounted or similar equipment with bulldozer rippers.
Unilift® Soft-Shackles & Winch Rope
Using our extensive knowledge of both synthetic & wire rope manufacture and usage, it made perfect sense for Unilift® to develop our own synthetic winch-ropes and soft-shackles to suit Australian conditions and the heavy-industry market we live and breathe!
Available to order in a range of sizes from 10-500 tonnes capacity, these winch-ropes and soft-shackles are lighter, safer, easier to work with, more environmentally friendly and easier on your rig than traditional steel wire rope or chain. Our soft shackles are available in two basic styles — a traditional knotted-style soft-shackle for connecting to a rated tow-point, or our own Unilift-designed 'thimble' shackle, which includes two woven-in thimbles ideal for connecting across a standard implement hitch-pin. We can also supply a range of sizes of high-tensile pins to suit, as well as protective covers options for extra-heavy-wear situations.
Dynamica® Bog Strops
Light weight and flexible tow strops made of high performance Dynamica ropes ensures that you don’t have unplanned stops and delays. “Bogged” vehicles are expensive and recovering them can be hazardous.The ultra-light and very strong Dynamica Bog Strops are developed for the global mining market and heavy industry market in order to offer a safer, hand friendly and low risk alternative to steel wire strops and traditional nylon strops. Both of these “yesterday's” materials are heavy, unflexible, difficult to rig and dangerous when they break.
Dynamica® Bog Strops are available in the following sizes:
| Capacity | Length | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| tonnes | metres | kilograms |
| 30 | 6 | 2.5 |
| 45 | 6 | 2.5 |
| 70 | 6 | 3.5 |
| 85 | 6 | 4.5 |
| 95 | 6 | 6.25 |
| 110 | 6 | 6.25 |
| 150 | 6 | 8.75 |
| 235 | 6 | 15.25 |
| 285 | 6 | 22.0 |
| 360 | 6 | 35.0 |
| 500 | 6 | 45.75 |
Austlift® Snatch Straps
Austlift® Snatch Straps are manufactured from 100% nylon webbing to ensure a minimum stretch of 20% and are suitable for general 4WD recovery and towing applications.
Features include:
- 10,000kg minimum break strength with a minimum stretch of 20%.
- Reinforced eyes for added protection from abrasion.
- Straps come with safety information tag.
| Capacity | Length | Ply | Width |
|---|---|---|---|
| tonnes | metres | No. | millimeters |
| 10 | 9 | 1 | 75 |
| 16 | 9 | 2 | 60 |
| 30 | 9 | 4 | 60 |
| 40 | 9 | 4 | 100 |
| 40 | 15 | 4 | 100 |
| 60 | 9 | 4 | 125 |
| 60 | 15 | 4 | 125 |
| 80 | 9 | 4 | 150 |
| 80 | 12 | 4 | 150 |
| 100 | 12 | 4 | 250 |
| 100 | 20 | 4 | 250 |
Applications
The Unilift Heavy Recovery & Towage range caters for a wide range of specialised applications including:
- AGRICULTURE - tractors, headers, forklifts, trucks
- MINING - trucks, loaders, shovels, dozers, graders, draglines
- FORESTRY - bunchers, skidders, harvesters, loggers, trucks
- CONSTRUCTION - trucks, graders, tippers, rollers, scrapers
- MILITARY - personnel carriers, low-loaders, tracked vehicles
