My dad taught me the value of a good set of tire chains at a young age. I was probably eight years old, riding along with my dad on a spring bear hunt, and we got mired in the mud on a forest road outside of Pinedale.
Dad looked over at me and said, “This is no problem. I’ll just get the chains on and we’ll be out in no time.”
Unfortunately, he had washed out a winter’s worth of accumulated hay, trash, sticks, firewood chunks and other debris before our trip, and the chains didn’t make it back into the tool box. Worse yet, neither did the tow chain.
We dug for a while, hoping someone would come along with a logging chain, and finally, someone did. That guy already had his chains on his tires, so it didn’t take much to get us out of the soup. But from that day on, neither dad nor I went anywhere without double-checking to see that we had all our chains in the truck before we left the garage.
That’s why the first thing I buy when I get a new truck is always a set of tire chains, if the old ones don’t fit the new tires. The gooseneck hitch, tool box, and running boards always come later. I can usually cannibalize those things out of the old truck, anyway. But I’m not going anywhere without chains.
I buy used trucks, and they don’t always come with good tires. I could probably just get new tires, with a more aggressive tread than the highway slicks that came on it, but who needs to buy new tires when you can just strap some chains on them?
No, I’d rather have the chains, thank you. All that other stuff can wait. Besides, what does it matter if you have hitches, running boards or tool boxes if you can’t get them anywhere? That’s what chains are for, right?
