Hydraulic vs gear/chain drive winch

Mechanical takes skill to operate and easy to majorly screw up with. It's much easier to run a hydro especially if you need to roll the truck while winching.

 

All depends on what you are doing. Hydraulic is forgiving, easy to operate. If you are new to winch trucks, I would suggest hydraulic. Mechanical is not as forgiving, but easy to maintain.

 

Before we used winches, all we had was Catheads on the drilling rigs. 1st mechanical winch we had was on. 1961 International B170, had a 21W Bucyrus Erie drilling rig mounted on it. The original means of lifting the Derrick (1piece) was a hand crank unit mounted from the factory in the 40's. My great Uncle mounted a small 12,000 lb winch behind the cab and ran the cable under the machine to the Derrick and double blocked it. Power was a forward / reverse PTO, he also mounted a long handle behind the cab and had a cable running to the clutch arm, it worked flawlessly. Used a lot of hyd winches over the years in drilling, hyd is hard to beat anymore if you get the right setup. But then again, so is mechanical if it's in good working order with a good brake.

 

Mine were mechanical, but since I sold out, I have driven some with hydraulic winches, and they are handy, but as OLDSKOOLER said, it depends on the setup. My last mechanical was a Camex T-800 with an extended countershaft 18 speed-pretty good rig and easy to run as far as mechanicals go, but the PTO drive never looked all that tough to me, so it always went out with an experienced hand. Where I see the biggest advantage to hydraulics production-wise would be on location with a bed or poles or maybe doing vertical tanks, but other than that mechanical should be fine.