Firstly, lets look at why exactly you’d want to jack up your vehicle whilst driving offroad, whilst attempting to back out your 4WD and then subsequently spinning tyres and digging yourself deeper is the natural first step for self-recovery, it isn’t always the right move, but if you are equipped, it can be something that doesn’t hold you back too much.

Once you have buried your 4WD to its chassis rails/bash plates and you are on your own, you might be thinking to yourself… this cannot be a good thing, which is fair enough. Even fitted with a high powered Domin8r X Winch your 4WD will have to overcome some serious forces that aren’t as simple as just giving it more boot!

So how will a jack help? You might be asking.

Well the answer is simple, by employing an offroad farm jack, you can pick your vehicle up more than 1m off the uneven surface below, this will allow you to fill in the four holes your tyres conveniently dug up for you and allow you to build up the ground underneath your vehicle, giving your path a bit more firmness than when you managed to fall in to the 4 convenient tyre sized holes, you can also employ your MAXTRAX MKII to help gain extra footing on the soft ground below.

Using an offroad high lift jack, you have the added ability to assist your winch and snatch strap recoveries, by lifting your 4WD out of the suction that wet sand and mud have on your undercarriage, and can also be used with caution for lifting the whole front end of your 4WD out of a rut or soft section of track, whilst you can push your vehicle laterally, literally shifting the whole vehicle across to firmer ground. But be careful as the forces involved with shifting a whole vehicle can be massive and unpredictable, particularly on uneven ground.

By packing an Offroad jack in your recovery gear pack, you open up a world of recovery options, with the ability to literally lift your 4WD by a meter.

How does an Offroad Jack work.

When using an offroad jack it has 2 main methods of operation, up and down, and by engaging the lift locking pin, you can easily lift one tonne worth of force by simply cycling the lever arm, through up and down strokes.

When you want the jack to lift, simply raise the locking lever into the up position, and to lower in a controlled manner, reverse the locking lever into the down position. By cycling the jacking arm in the same way, you can slowly and in a controlled way, release the vehicle back down.

SAFETY

When jacking any vehicle on any surface, it is important to firstly never get underneath a jacked up vehicle. And secondly, never put any part of your torso, above the jacking arm. In some circumstances a Jack could fail, resulting in a vehicle dropping, this could happen at full extension, and drop 2.5 tonnes of 4WD right on top of you, as you can imagine that wouldn’t end well. And whilst the locking pins are quite strong, in the case of lifting heavier loads, on the down cycle particularly the handle could fly upwards in a very sharp motion, potentially causing head or torso injuries if you have your body in the path of the long handle.

Despite the associated risks with using an Offroad jack, they are one of the best ways to simply and easily lift your 4WD up and out of a tricky situation, they rely on man power only, and when used correctly can offer one of the fastest recovery techniques around on just about any surface.

Pro Tips
If you are trying to lift a vehicle that has long travel suspension fitted, you might find that the 1m of lift is not enough to get the tyres up off the ground, if this is the case, you may want crawl under the vehicle before jacking, and employ a Hercules ratchet strap to compress the suspension to the chassis or another sturdy part of your vehicle.

This will make sure that your tyre lifts with the rest of your vehicle, and that you don’t have to jack your vehicle as high, making your recovery much safer.

The next pro tip is, if you are trying to jack up your vehicle on soft surfaces like sand or slippery mud, you may want to use an offroad jacking base plate to allow your jack to distribute the pressure over a much larger surface area, this will insure you aren’t just driving your jack deep into the soft surface!