- The whole hydraulic vs electric winch argument turns on one thing people get backwards: a hydraulic winch has no speed of its own. Its line speed is whatever the truck's pump gives it.[2]
- Rick found that out before they'd even driven the truck: no PTO, and every winch on it was dead — no matter how good the winch itself is.
- Electric costs you amps. Warrior's own table for the 4,000 lb Trojan goes from 28 amps at no load to 190 amps at full pull.[3]
- Hydraulic costs you a truck. Pump, PTO, hoses, reservoir. Murphy's sells the winch and none of that.
- At Murphy's: the RV10 hydraulic is $2,499.99, the Gladiator 10,000 lb electric is $999.99. The gap is not the whole story.
- Electric motors get hot on long pulls. Hydraulic ones don't have a motor to cook.[1]
1. The winches are dead before the truck even moves
Somebody asks Rick if he's ready to drive this truck about 2,500 miles, and he doesn't know it's going anywhere. The engine's already overheating and they haven't even driven it yet. Then he names the one thing this whole article is about:
"Also, it doesn't have a PTO. Somebody rubbed a PTO off of it. None of the winches work."Wrecker Rick, 14:44, "Nobody Would Help, So We Drove 2,000 Miles to Rescue Him Free Of Charge"
No PTO, no winches. Not slow ones. Not weak ones. Dead ones, on a truck they're about to use for a recovery. That's the hydraulic side of this whole argument in one sentence, and it's worth sitting with before you get to the part where hydraulic actually wins.
2. Is a hydraulic winch really slower?
Not on its own, no. And this is the part that settles most of the argument.
An electric winch carries its motor. The motor has one speed curve and that curve is fixed at the factory. A hydraulic winch carries no motor at all. It's a gearbox and a drum turned by oil, and how fast it turns depends entirely on how much oil your truck pushes through it.
You can see that in the numbers. Warrior publishes a flow-versus-speed table on its hydraulic winch spec sheets, and on one 10,000 lb industrial model the same winch runs 5.9 ft/min at 2.6 gallons a minute of flow, and 36.1 ft/min at 15.6 gallons a minute.[2] Same winch. Six times the line speed. Nothing changed but the pump.
So "hydraulic is slow" really means "that truck's pump is small." Put a proper pump behind a working PTO and it will outrun a 12-volt winch without breathing hard. Pull that PTO, the way Rick found one missing entirely, and none of that matters. The best pump in the world isn't turning anything.
3. What hydraulic needs that electric doesn't
Here comes the bill. A hydraulic winch is useless by itself. It needs a hydraulic system behind it: a pump, usually driven off a power take-off on the transmission, plus hoses, a control valve and a reservoir of oil. Buy the winch and you've bought maybe half of what you need.
And that system is sometimes a thing you have to go find, more than once. Rick's truck has no PTO at all when he checks it, so he runs down the road and turns up one nearby — flange matches, part number doesn't, and the plan is to slap it on and see what happens. Then comes the verdict: it's the wrong pump, and it's not going to work. Lengthen the drive shaft and the pump's still wrong. Get the right pump and now the shaft's wrong. It isn't until hundreds of miles down the road, in a NAPA parking lot, with a gasket standing in for the shim the store didn't have, that Rick gets the PTO bolted down. It takes him two hours. Then he starts it up: “Oh, snap. It's working, folks.”
"Without the PTO the winches won't work. And I need those winches to do the recovery."Wrecker Rick, 52:12, same episode
That's the hydraulic trade in one sentence. You gain a winch that pulls as long as the engine runs. You take on a pump, a PTO and everything that can go wrong with them — including getting the wrong one the first time.
Murphy's sells the RV10 and the RV15. Murphy's does not sell the pump, the PTO, the hoses or the install, and won't quote you a number for that work. If your truck doesn't already run hydraulics, price that out with a truck shop before you price the winch.
4. What electric needs that hydraulic doesn't
Amps. A lot of them, and more the harder it works.
Warrior publishes the draw for the 4,000 lb Trojan, and it's a useful look at how an electric winch behaves under load: 28 amps spinning free, 80 amps at 1,000 lb of line pull, 150 amps at 2,500 lb, and 190 amps at its full 4,000 lb.[3] Look at the shape of that. The pull roughly quadruples and the current nearly septuples. A 10,000 lb winch asks for a good deal more again.
That current comes from a battery that's also running your engine. Which is why an electric winch gets cabled straight to the battery, never into a fuse panel, and why a winch pull is a sprint rather than an all-afternoon job.
Heat is the other half. BFGoodrich's recovery guide puts it plainly: "Take periodic breaks to avoid overheating the winch motor, especially with electric systems."[1] Warrior builds thermal overload protection into the Gladiator for that reason. A hydraulic winch skips the whole problem, because there's no electric motor in there to cook.
5. What each one costs, and what the price leaves out
| Hydraulic | 12-volt electric | |
|---|---|---|
| What turns the drum | Oil from the truck's pump | Its own electric motor |
| What sets line speed | Pump flow, so it varies by truck[2] | Fixed at the factory |
| Long, repeated pulls | Pulls as long as the engine runs | Needs breaks to keep the motor cool[1] |
| What else you have to buy | Pump, PTO, hoses, reservoir, install | Heavy cable to the battery |
| Price at Murphy's, 10,000 lb | $2,499.99 (RV10) | $999.99 (Gladiator V2 F-Type) |
That fifteen-hundred-dollar gap looks like the whole story and it isn't. Add hydraulics a truck doesn't have yet and the real gap widens. Start from a wrecker that already runs a pump, and it shrinks to the price on the tag.
Built to the SAEJ-706 standard with a 10:1 drum-to-rope ratio and a hydraulic full-load holding brake. For a truck that already has hydraulics. If yours doesn't, read section 3 again before you buy.
No mount, no wiring. Clips to a battery and goes in the bed. The winch you carry rather than the one you build a truck around.
10,000 lb of line pull off your battery. Armortek synthetic rope, aviation-grade aluminium fairlead and hook, thermal overload protection, IP68, 7-year warranty.
The same 10,000 lb rating, run off the truck instead of the battery. SAEJ-706, hydraulic full-load holding brake. Needs a hydraulic system you already have.
Same RV Series build, 15,000 lb of rated pull. Where a commercial recovery truck lands when 10,000 isn't enough.
6. Which one belongs on your truck
Answer one question first and the rest falls out of it: does your truck already have hydraulics?
If it does, and you're doing recovery work for money, hydraulic is the better tool and it isn't close. It'll pull all day, the pump doesn't care how long the job takes, and there's no battery slowly dying while you rig the next stage. That's why it's on the wrecker.
If it doesn't, buy electric and don't feel bad about it. Wiring a winch to a battery is a driveway job. Adding a PTO and a pump to a pickup is a different kind of project, and for most people it will cost more than the winch did.
And there's a third answer worth saying out loud: you don't have to pick one. A truck can run a hydraulic winch for the heavy pulls and still carry a portable electric one for the jobs the big rig can't reach. Different tools, different days.
7. Before you pull on anything
These are standard rules from a non-competitor recovery source, not house opinion. They apply the same to hydraulic and electric.
- Gloves on, every time. "Do not winch without gloves."[1]
- Stay off the line. "Do not stand next to or straddle the winch cable." Stand farther back than the full length of the winch line.[1]
- Run a dampener. "Do not winch without a line dampener in place." A heavy blanket over the middle of the line works.[1]
- Don't shock-load a winch line. "Do not jerk the winch line or use it like a snatch strap."[1] That's what a kinetic rope is for, and they're not interchangeable.
- Leave wraps on the drum. Keep at least 4 to 5 wraps of line on it. Fewer than that and the line can lose its grip on the drum.[1]
- Pull in line. "Do not apply side loads to your recovery points" and "do not winch at an angle, it creates unsafe load tension."[1]
- Electric: let it cool. "Take periodic breaks to avoid overheating the winch motor, especially with electric systems."[1]
Source: [1] BFGoodrich, 4x4 Driving Guide: Recovery Techniques
8. The bottom line
A truck without a working PTO can't run a hydraulic winch. Full stop. Rick found that out before they'd even driven his truck, and his first try at a fix hit the wrong pump. The PTO didn't go on until a parts-store parking lot hundreds of miles later. That's not a slow winch. That's half a system missing.
The honest version: hydraulic is fast or slow depending on the pump, and it out-works an electric winch on a long job because it has no motor to overheat. The catch is that it needs a truck built to feed it — pump, hoses, a PTO that's actually there — and that part never makes the price tag. Electric gives up the endurance and asks nothing but heavy cable and a good battery.
One pulls harder for longer. The other you can fit this weekend. Pick based on the truck you've got, not the winch you want.
Sources
- BFGoodrich, "4x4 Driving Guide: Recovery Techniques." "Do not winch without gloves." "Do not stand next to or straddle the winch cable." "Do not jerk the winch line or use it like a snatch strap." "Do not winch without a line dampener in place." "Do not apply side loads to your recovery points." "Do not winch at an angle, it creates unsafe load tension." "Take periodic breaks to avoid overheating the winch motor, especially with electric systems." "Also allow at least 4 to 5 wraps of winch line to remain on the drum." Fetched 2026-09-19. bfgoodrichtires.com/auto/learn/4x4-driving-guide/recovery-techniques
- Warrior Winches, published hydraulic winch specification sheet (JD10 10,000 lb industrial hydraulic winch). Flow-to-line-speed table: 2.6 G/min → 5.9 ft/min; 15.6 G/min → 36.1 ft/min. Fetched 2026-09-19. warriorwinches.com/products/jd10-10000lb-industrial-hydraulic-winch
- Warrior Winches, published specification sheet, Trojan 4,000 lb 12v portable utility winch. Amp draw at 12v: 28 A at 0 lb, 80 A at 1,000 lb, 150 A at 2,500 lb, 190 A at 4,000 lb. Fetched 2026-09-19. warriorwinches.com/products/warrior-portable-4000-trojan-winch
Prices and stock confirmed against the live Murphy's Diesel storefront on September 19, 2026.