CHAINS, BINDERS & STEEL LOAD SECUREMENT

Everything on this page does one job: holding steel freight on a flatbed. Two loads dominate it — coil and pipe — and they need different things under them, but the same chain over them.

Chain is what you reach for when webbing will not do: freight with a cutting edge, or weight a strap cannot carry. Ours is Grade 70 transport chain, stamped 7 or 70 so the grade reads off the link at an inspection. Both binders are ratchet binders rather than lever binders, because a ratchet takes the slack out in increments and gives it back the same way instead of storing it all in the handle. Pick on rating and weight: 7,100 lb WLL at 11.5 lbs, or 5,400 lb at 9.4 lbs. Both fit 5/16" and 3/8" chain.

Pipe rides between stakes. They drop into the trailer's stake pockets to keep the load off the deck edge, and they are pulled together with chain and a binder across the deck. Stakes, chain and binder are one setup, which is why they sit together here.

Coil is its own discipline. A steel coil is dense, round and unforgiving, and it is secured as a stack in a fixed order: friction pad on the deck, coil racks, timbers forming the cradle, the coil, then chains crossed through the eye plus a trip chain. Steel coil protectors go under the chain where it crosses the edge. The coil tarp is last, and which one depends on whether the coil rides skidded or bare.

Two numbers govern all of it. WLL is one third of breaking strength, and the aggregate WLL of everything on the load must be at least half the cargo weight. Ten thousand pounds or more means tie-downs at four corners, minimum.