4x4Review Off Road Magazine
There’s a younger side to most of us… and this inner-child thinks that spinning your wheels is pretty cool. Spinning your wheels in the winter time though isn’t. In fact, loss of traction, this time of year, can be downright dangerous.
For years people have combated this by putting a few hundred pounds of sand bags, salt, bricks or whatever else they could stick in the bed of their truck or trunk. The added weight helps to keep your rig from spinning its wheels in the ice and snow, but bags bust open, there’s likely no use for them after you’re done, and where the heck do you store them the rest of the year?
SealPak Innovations, Inc. has come up with a nifty device called ShurTrax for your car or truck to replace those bags of sand with something a little more useful. ShurTrax is a heavy-duty nylon-woven bag that can be filled with water to add up to 400 pounds of extra traction to virtually any vehicle. But don’t think for a minute that this is simply a water-filled bag. This is a heavy-duty unit with two layers of rot resistant, tear resistant, UV resistant and mildew resistant double-woven nylon. Even when not frozen, the ShurTrax has been engineered to lay flat and support up to 500 pounds of weight. Don’t worry about it freezing either; it’s designed to expand considerably.
When spring finally rolls around – simply drain the ShurTrax, roll it up and toss it in the attic.
 The ShurTrax folds up nicely into its own storage bag |
 Roll the ShurTrax out into your truck bed or car trunk |
 Using the supplied hose adapter, fill it with water to about 3 inches tall |
 The ShurTrax filled to roughly 3 inches, providing about 500 pounds of extra weight |
 Video of our truck accelerating without the ShurTrax |
 Video of our truck accelerating with the ShurTrax |
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The Review
We waited patiently for the first serious snow in the Midwest and it finally came with fury. Eight inches of the powdery stuff fell from the sky overnight providing the perfect test grounds for us.
Before we put the ShurTrax in the bed of our ’05 Silverado HD, we headed to some un-plowed back roads to let that inner-child loose. Spinning the wheels on the snowy roads was, as suspected, pretty easy for our big diesel. We took mental note of about how hard we could press the pedal to get the tires to start spinning. Test number one accomplished.
With the ShurTrax loaded up and about 500 pounds of water weight added to the bed of our rig, we headed back to the same test area. With roughly the same amount of gas pedal pressure, the ShurTrax kept the wheels from spinning. Test number 2 accomplished.
However, the ShurTrax won’t keep your wheels from spinning all together, especially in a turbo-charged engine. What we did find was that the ShurTrax provided the extra traction needed for everyday driving, but don’t expect it to stop wheel-spin altogether.
All in all – the ShurTrax is far and away a better traction-aiding device than bags of sand, salt, bricks or whatever else you can toss in your truck bed or trunk. Lastly, since our Silverado truck is my wife’s daily driver, I feel less apprehensive about her driving it in snowy, inclement weather. After winter is over though, you may find it exceedingly difficult to get most of the water back out of the ShurTrax bag. Even when we drained it as best as we could, it was still extremely heavy and took two strong men to get it out of the back of our truck. Accordingly, you might find yourself scratching your head and wondering what you’re going to do with a 100 pound bag that is partially full of water after spring arrives.
| SealPak Innovations, Inc. |
| 3007 Harding Highway East Marion, Ohio 43302 Tel: 1-866-582-9078 Fax: 1-740-382-8864 Email: contact@sealpakinnovations.com Web Site: www.shurtrax.com |
