- A 12V battery for winch work has a harder job than a starting battery. One dumps a big burst for three seconds. The other feeds 150 amps for four minutes, then does it again.
- 190 amps at full pull. That's Warrior's own published figure for the 4,000 lb Trojan, against 28 amps spinning free.[1]
- Your starting battery will do a short pull with the engine running. It is not the battery for a two-hour recovery.
- Portable winches solve the wiring question by shipping their own cord and alligator clips.
- Rig a 2:1 and the motor sits lower on its amp curve for the same total pull.
- Murphy's does not sell batteries. XS Batteries is the sponsor on the trucks. That is a different thing from a product on the shelf.
1. Rigged up, and still not ready
Everything is hooked up and the pull still can't start. Rick is in Nebraska on a skid steer that's frozen into the ground, 1,500 miles from home, working for a small business nobody else would come out for. The rigging is done. The anchors are set. And there's one job left.
"We're rigged up. We just need to hook some batteries to these winches. Frozen or not, this bad Larry's going to get pulled on."Wrecker Rick, 37:08, "Nobody Would Save This Small Business… So My Family Flew 1500 Miles"
That's the part of a winch nobody puts on the box. The winch is the easy half. The 12 volts behind it is the half that decides whether the pull happens.
2. Can a winch run off your starting battery?
For one pull, with the engine running, usually yes. For an afternoon of them, no, and it's worth knowing why.
A starting battery is built for one trick: a huge slug of current for two or three seconds, then the alternator puts it all straight back. That's it. It spends its whole life nearly full.
Winching is the opposite shape of job. Big current, held for minutes, repeated. That's deep-cycle duty, and a starting battery asked to do it will sag, get hot, and age fast. So the answer isn't "buy a winch battery," it's simpler than that: keep the engine running the entire time you winch. The alternator is doing more of the work than the battery is.
3. How many amps does a 12v winch draw?
Not one number. A curve. And the curve is steeper than most people expect.
Warrior publishes the whole table for the 4,000 lb Trojan, which is the winch in the box Rick carries, so this is a real spec sheet rather than a guess.[1]
| Line pull | Line speed | Amp draw at 12v |
|---|---|---|
| 0 lb (free spool) | 14.4 ft/min | 28 A |
| 1,000 lb | 9.8 ft/min | 80 A |
| 2,500 lb | 7.2 ft/min | 150 A |
| 4,000 lb (rated) | 4.9 ft/min | 190 A |
Look at what that table is telling you. The load goes up four times. The current goes up nearly seven. And the winch slows to a third of its free speed while it's doing it.
Sanity-check the top row: 190 amps at 12 volts is about 2.3 kilowatts, which lines up with the 2.4 kW input Warrior lists for that motor.[1] The numbers agree with each other, which is more than you can say for most spec sheets.
And that's a 4,000 lb winch. A 10,000 lb one like the Gladiator asks for considerably more. Which is exactly why an electric winch gets cabled straight to the battery posts and never into a fuse panel.
4. What repeated pulls do to a battery
Voltage sags while the winch works. That's not a fault, it's just what happens when you pull 150 amps out of a 12-volt system. But sag has a nasty second act: as voltage drops, the winch turns slower and draws more current to do the same work, which makes more heat in the motor and the cable, which makes everything worse again.
BFGoodrich's recovery guide gives the field version of that rule: "Take periodic breaks to avoid overheating the winch motor, especially with electric systems."[2] Those breaks are doing two jobs. The motor cools, and the alternator catches up.
There's a smarter move than just waiting, though, and Rick uses it on this exact recovery. Cut the load the motor sees.
"Got two 4,000-lb Warrior winches. And I've got a snatch block on each one of those, doubling its line pull to 8,000 lb per winch."Wrecker Rick, 37:10, same episode
Run a 2:1 and each line carries roughly half the load. The motor is now working further down that amp curve, which means less current, less heat, and a battery that lasts the job. You pay for it in line speed, which roughly halves.[3] On a frozen skid steer, nobody's in a hurry.
5. How to hook up a winch to a battery
A portable winch settles most of this for you. The Trojan ships with a quick-connect cord and alligator clips in the box, along with gloves, a hand remote, a pulley block, three shackles and two straps.[1] The cable that came with it is sized for the winch that came with it. Use that one.
The order matters:
- Engine running first. Always.
- Winch placed and anchored before anything is connected. A winch that jumps when it takes load with a live cord on it is a bad afternoon.
- Clips last. Red to positive, black to negative, on clean metal.
- Squeeze-test both clips. A loose clip carrying 190 amps will arc, and an arc at that current welds or lets go.
- Route the cord away from the line, away from the drum, away from anywhere the rope can sweep if it lets go.
For a permanently mounted winch like the Gladiator, the same logic applies with heavier hardware: short, thick cable, straight to the battery posts, nothing clever in between.
The one whose amp table this whole article is built on. Ships with a quick-connect cord and alligator clips, a wired remote, gloves, a pulley block, three shackles and two straps. No mounting and no permanent wiring needed.
190 A at full pull, 28 A free-spooling. Comes with its own cord and clips, so the wiring question is answered in the box.
Two and a half times the rated pull, and a bigger appetite to match. Thermal overload protection built in for the long pulls that flatten batteries.
Rig a 2:1 and the motor works lower on its amp curve. Read the ring's own limits first: electric bumper-mounted winches rated 12,000 lb or less, synthetic HMPE line no larger than 7/16 in, never steel cable, never past a 5:1.
6. What Murphy's sells, and what it doesn't
Murphy's does not sell batteries. Not a winch battery, not a charger, not a set of jumper leads. The store sells winches and recovery rigging, and this is a battery article, so that needs saying out loud rather than buried.
XS Batteries is the battery sponsor across the Murphy's fleet, so that's what's in the trucks you see on the channel. That's a sponsorship, not a shelf. Nothing in this footage tells you which batteries went on those two winches that day, and the article isn't going to pretend otherwise.
What Murphy's can sell you is the winch that came with its own cord and clips, and the rigging that keeps the motor from having to work at the top of its amp curve.
7. Before you pull on anything
Battery and winch rules, stated flat. The winching lines are quoted from a non-competitor recovery source.
- Gloves on. "Do not winch without gloves."[2]
- Engine running, every pull. The alternator is carrying more of the load than the battery is.
- Let it cool. "Take periodic breaks to avoid overheating the winch motor, especially with electric systems."[2]
- Nothing bridges a battery post but the cable that's meant to. A tool laid across a post at these currents is a serious burn and a ruined battery.
- Stay off the line. "Do not stand next to or straddle the winch cable." Stand farther back than the full length of the line.[2]
- Dampener on the line before it loads. "Do not winch without a line dampener in place."[2]
- Don't shock-load it. "Do not jerk the winch line or use it like a snatch strap."[2]
Source: [2] BFGoodrich, 4x4 Driving Guide: Recovery Techniques
8. The bottom line
A 12v winch battery question usually turns out to be three questions wearing a coat. Is your battery healthy? Is the engine running? And how hard are you making that motor work?
Get those right and a normal truck battery does normal winch work without complaint. Get them wrong and the first pull is fine, the second is slow, and the third one leaves you with a stuck truck and a flat battery, which is a worse problem than the one you started with.
Rick had the whole recovery rigged before he thought about power, and then stopped to hook the batteries up properly. That's the right order.
Sources
- Warrior Winches, published specification sheet, Trojan 4,000 lb 12v portable utility winch. Amp draw and line speed at 12v: 0 lb → 14.4 ft/min, 28 A; 1,000 lb → 9.8 ft/min, 80 A; 2,500 lb → 7.2 ft/min, 150 A; 4,000 lb → 4.9 ft/min, 190 A. Motor type 12v, input 2.4 kW / 3.2 hp. In the box: quick-connect cord with alligator clips, leather-palmed gloves, 6,000 lb pulley block, 12.5 ft hand remote, three 14,000 lb D-shackles, two 8 ft straps rated 8,000 lb, user manual. Fetched 2026-09-19. warriorwinches.com/products/warrior-portable-4000-trojan-winch
- BFGoodrich, "4x4 Driving Guide: Recovery Techniques." "Take periodic breaks to avoid overheating the winch motor, especially with electric systems." "Do not winch without gloves." "Do not stand next to or straddle the winch cable." "Do not winch without a line dampener in place." "Do not jerk the winch line or use it like a snatch strap." "A good safety rule is to stand farther back than the full length of the winch line." Fetched 2026-09-19. bfgoodrichtires.com/auto/learn/4x4-driving-guide/recovery-techniques
- Grand Lifting, "How to Use a Snatch Block for Industrial Lifting and Rigging." "A snatch block doubles the pulling force of a winch by creating a two-part line system. This system halves the line speed but effectively doubles the winch's capacity." Fetched 2026-09-19. grandlifting.com/blog/how-to-use-a-snatch-block-for-industrial-lifting-and-rigging
Prices and stock confirmed against the live Murphy's Diesel storefront on September 19, 2026.