Wheel Chocks
Most people don’t give any thought at all to wheel chocks, at least until they had a car go rolling down a hill or a motorcycle roll back on them, at which point their thoughts usually eventually turn to wishing that they had wheel chocks. If you have a vehicle with more than one wheel, you need to make sure that you have some chocks for them in case an emergency comes up.
There probably aren’t too many things on Earth that are simpler than wheel chocks, when it comes right down to it. A chock is simply a wedge shaped piece of wood, metal or rubber that you jam behind or in front of a tire so that the tire doesn’t move. But despite that simplicity, not all are created equal.
The original wheel chocks were almost certainly just wood. You don’t want you cart or wagon wheel to move, so you grab the nearest piece of wood available and you ham it behind the wheel so it doesn’t move. Lots of people still just grab a chunk of wood when they want to make sure that wheels don’t move, but this isn’t necessarily the best idea.
The problem is that there’s no way of knowing if your chunk of wood is up to the job. These improvised wheel chocks might explode if the wheel starts to move, or they may not have enough traction and start slipping out of position when you need them most. This is a big deal, because wheel chocks are generally something that use when it’s very important that the wheels and the vehicle don’t move at all. For most people, this is going to be when they change a tire in the car. If you’re using a wooden chock and it breaks or slips you run the risk of breaking an ankle, breaking a bone or worse, both.
Instead, you’re going to want to buy wheel chocks that are made of metal, usually steel, or hard rubber. Both of these are going to be designed so that they wedge into the wheel at the right angle, and both of them are going to have traction ridges built into them. If you buy the right stuff, the chances of them slipping or breaking are almost non existent.
Wheel chocks are an essential part of your car’s emergency kit, and they should be right in there beside the jack and the jumper cables. The parking brake on most cars only locks the back wheels, so if you’re changing one of the rear tires and have them jacked up off the ground, there is a very real danger of your car rolling forward off the jack.
Wheel chocks are even more essential for the motorcycle owner, and theirs tend to be a little more elaborate because the weight is all one tire when you raise another, motorcycle wheel chocks tend to go around the wheel and are almost always made of metal. Regardless of whether you’re driving a car or a motor cycle, make sure that you don’t go without wheel chocks.