Thriving Off-Grid: The Top 5 Essential Overlander Recovery Tools

An Air Down tool should be in your inventory along with an air compressor for one specific reason – traction is king when it comes to Overlanding. A lot of recoveries that are done by professionals usually involve simply airing down tires to give them more traction in specific terrain. Having a good air down tool (or Tire Deflator) can really help you to get all of your tires down to a lower pressure for better traction without airing them down too low. There are several great options out there on the market but the ARB505 Deflator Kit can help you dial in your air pressure accurately and is also made from durable and corrosion-resistant brass.

After you’ve aired down your tires, get out of the hole you dug yourself into and made it back onto the open and paved roads, you’ll want to air your tires back up. Having an onboard and integrated air compressor is great but is a heavy and often more expensive modification to your truck that isn’t always useful if you also use your truck as a daily driver. That is why we’d recommend the VIAIR 400P portable off-road air compressor. This 12V unit produces a maximum of 150 PSI and comes with a 25ft of air hose. The 33% duty cycle means you can run this compressor for 15 minutes before it needs to take a 30-minute break.

Since traction is king, we’ll need to kit you out with some good all-terrain tires. While M/T tires off you a lot more traction in sand, mud, and another loose or mushy substrate, they tend not to perform so well on paved roads. A/T tires can give you a good all-around performance and will keep you on the move whether you’re on the streets or in the brush. BF Goodrich All-Terrain K02 tires come highly recommended by experts for their durability, wide variety of comparability options, and of course their great traction characteristics when properly inflated.

If you’re planning a trip where you’ll be venturing off paved roads and might encounter sand or mud, you should consider carrying rescue tracks. For vehicles stuck on soft surfaces, these portable composite ladders provide enough stability and traction underneath tires for simple, safe vehicle recovery. In short recovery, boards can get you through just about any terrain situation even if you don’t have A/T or M/T tires or even a winch. They’ll help you power through snow, rocks, ruts, and even mud. At OutdoorHub.com we recommend Maxtrax recovery boards for their longstanding reputation of solid performance as well as their wide variety of color options (if you care about that).

If all of the above gear fails you or you have a catastrophic breakage or failure, you’ll want to call in some help. To do this you can either go with a long-range radio or you can use a two-way satellite communicator. Although older models used to only send out an SOS signal, these new models can integrate with your phone or another mobile device to give you full messaging capabilities. With this tool, you can call in friends or people with the proper equipment to help you get out of a sticky situation that could wind up being deadly. For this purpose, we recommend the affordable but reliable ACR Bivy Stick which has 100% full global coverage so you’ll never be left stranded for long.