Buying snow chains

I ordered them from quality chain corp. They seemed to have increased in price since i bought them 2 years ago... i ordered 4 singles and 2 - 3railers to experiment with... i believe the singles were like $120 a piece and the 3railers $220 or so .. they are much much more expensive now, i guess just like everything else. it may just be more economical to just buy regular chains at this point. i didnt realize they were so expensive now. but that is your decision...

in my experiments what I found is that cables dont have as much grip as regular chains (obviously) BUT they are light as a feather so dont have to fight the weight of the metal to get them in the correct place to hook them together... but that is also a flaw as well... because they are so light, you have to reverse your truck to get them to stay on the tire, to get the bottom part of the chain around the bottom of the tire... because if you try to drive forward, they just fall off the tire and u have to start all over, if that makes any sense...

now with the 3railer type of cables, i found them to be a complete pain in the ### to mess with and gave them to a buddy of mine who traded me some 3railer chains because he was getting older and tired of throwing them around.... he is still using them 2 years later with close to 100+ uses out of them with very little maintenance... the only thing that can be replaced is the connecting hardware, so i guess that can be seen as a downside because if you break a link, then you have to buy a whole new cable rather than just replace the link like you would do on a regular set of chains....

in my experiments i was running northwest montana and idaho , 2 lane highways, interstates, donkey trails, off road to jobsites, and they held up thru all of that, but didnt nearly have the grip that regular chains do. that is a huge downside, but i had the luxury of carrying regular chains where i knew if it was gonna be to icy for my cables i could throw a regular set on and be fine.... but never needed to when on the interestate or us bigger named highways.. only when i got off the beaten path..... i would recommend using bungees on the cables just like you would a set of chains, because these cables dont come with a cam lock system... it just has hardware that hooks together, and overtime the cable gets stretched out and they dont fit tight anymore.. but a bungee keeps it nice and tight .. quick and easy fix...

so with all that said, these are the ones i purchased and put thru the works to find their limits and i would buy them again... well maybe not at that price. like i said maybe regular chains are more value for the money at these current prices..kinda crazy they want that much

single cables- 2316 - Truck Cobra Cable | Quality Chain Corp

Triples - 4343 - Truck King Cobra Alloy Rollers Cable Chain w/ Cam - Dual/Triple | Quality Chain Corp

 

24.5 chains on a 22.5 tire. Sometimes ya gotta make do

 

A lot just fly off on the road. Installation problems I guess. On a bad night you could pick a full set up off the ground just in Albert Canyon. I made the mistake of pulling out the chain pliers in a chain up once. Made a couple hundred bucks, but I was there almost 2 hours piecing chains back together for people. Seems a lot of those chain racks on chillys only have scrap weight hanging off them. Tore up clevis’, parted rails, missing crossers. Saw it all that night. What’s the point of hanging them on the truck if you can’t use them?

 

My guys are the same, they’re all mountain drivers though. If they have hours and the road is open they’re generally moving. They’ve got grey hair judgement though, too much of the wrong traffic or up against the book they’ll sit it out. Things the way they are today some operations are probably better off to park them. Not everyone deals with mountain conditions on the regular, and steep and covered in snow can get real expensive fast.

 

Agreed, some outfits aren't set up for mountain driving, wrong tires, no experience, or no hurry. If you don't have to, better to park. For some weird reason, I particularly LOVED driving in the snow, most especially rural two lane passes in the West. So peaceful, just a soft jingle from the chains, hardly any traffic at all. Even better if I was making the first tracks in the snow.

Ice? Yeah, screw driving on ice.

 

I mentioned it before this my first winter in years that I wont be chaining at all. You would think I wouldn't miss it. Wrong I am going to miss it. I like the views when the snow flies it makes everything look better