RLXXI

No new bumper needed, at least not for my gen truck. Hidden winch mount $200, bolts directly on frame. HF Badlands 12k winch $298.


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techrep

iTrader: (1)

Tell her you can use it to pull her and all her friends out of snow Banks this winter.

ifallsron

Tell your wife to walk out to the curb, turn around and see what you have provided for her. Then order the winch.

If I still lived at the top of Minnesota, I would have one. I drove plenty of logging roads/trails I shouldn't have and got lucky. I wouldn't take that blind chance today.

I would find a use for it in central Minnesota but it wouldn't be a necessity. There's a range of quality and strength. You're not likely to drop a grand. I vote for you to get one and enjoy it.

CO Raptor

My Raptor doesn't have a winch yet. Probably wont go that way but fit one to the wifes next vehicle a Jeep. I live in Colorado and run lots of trails all summer. I always get more use out of the winch in the winter though, which MN has plenty of. I have winched out guys several times when I had the Power Wagon. I used it to drag the truck through snowbanks instead of shoveling or beating on the truck. Pretty handy really. I would tell your wife it is for winter self recovery, which is better than freezing in your stuck truck...

bassJAM

If you have to ask the question if a winch is useful on a truck....you don't need one.

A winch can be useful for guys that do serious off-roading with built rigs in places like Moab. And it can be useful if you are new to trail riding and don't have the experience yet to know what you can and can't do. But if you don't off-road the only point in having one on your front bumper is if you just want to waste money to make your truck look like a pavement queen. Heck, I've pulled my fair share of guys out of ditches and mud pits and even then a long strap and 4x4 Low was all I ever needed.

I think your wife is right this time. If you're really concerned buy a quality come-along.

chimmike

This is awesome, but the ecoboost guys can't do it unless they relocate the intercooler.

Aragorn

Winches can be used to get yourself and others unstuck, doesn't matter if it's down town or out in the boondocks. Are there other ways to do the same thing for less? Definitely. How much will it get used depends on how much you actually use it. In the end it all boils down to how much money you want to spend and whether or not you would use it for regular tasks.

I'd love to buy a winch for my truck but as long as I stay married I can't afford it. I have to use the other and occasionally less efficient methods to get myself out of whatever I'm stuck in. That being said I haven't gone off road yet for a variety of reasons (truck still needs some maintenance work.)

MetalCutter

Maybe she thought you said wench?

Kingofwylietx

Here are some ideas from a website...

Even so, a winch is more productive than you might imagine. Besides its obvious use—hauling other vehicles or the vehicle it's attached to out of impossible situations—a winch can pull firewood up slopes and out of slippery spots, yank stubborn stumps and snags from fields or lake beds, stretch cable or fence wire tight as you please, raise gin poles or structural members at construction sites or drag heavy loads from where you don't want them to where you do.

kbroderick

Doesn't a winch provide an added safety factor for pulling out a stuck vehicle, though? With 4Lo and a tow strap, you need enough traction to keep moving the tow vehicle with the resistance of the stuck vehicle pulling against the tow point. With a winch, you can keep the recovery vehicle stationary and apply (I think, not exactly sure where the physics come down on force applied via recovery strap vs force applied via winch rope) a greater amount of steady force to the stuck vehicle rather than having to dynamically load a recovery device.

The one time last winter I got my XTerra high-centered was attempting to pull out a thoroughly stuck Wrangler. If I'd had 50' of recovery strap (or 90' of winch rope) rather than 20', I'd have been able to do it from dry pavement rather than needing to maintain traction in deep snow and getting myself stuck in the process (even after applying cable "chains"). The other time I would've loved a winch, I was able to pull a full-size rig out of a snowbank downhill from the road, but I had to chain up to get enough traction (tried it without the chains and just spun on the packed snow). Using a winch would've been a lot quicker and not involved laying on the ground.

And yes, I spent the money and took the payload hit to put a winch and bumper on my F-150. I figure I only need to use it for my own benefit once to be happy to have spent the money, and I spend a fair amount of time driving in snow by myself. YMMV, and it's probably true that if you can't say, "Man, I wish I had a winch when....", it's a bit hard to justify one.