MAXTRAX MKII Blaze Yellow Recovery Boards

MAXTRAX MKII is the traction board most drivers should own. Wedge a pair under the drive tires and you recover yourself out of sand, mud or snow — no winch, no second vehicle. Made in Australia from reinforced engineering-grade nylon, sold as a pair with a lifetime warranty. Blaze Yellow is the loudest color in the range, and the easiest to spot.

Blaze Yellow is the anti-black board. Against dirt, rock, mud and dead grass it separates from the background faster than any other color MAXTRAX makes, and it holds that edge at dusk and in blowing dust, where red and orange go flat and muddy. That matters if you wheel alone, wheel late, or are the one who always ends up recovering everybody else. This is a functional advantage, not a styling pick — but it is also the opposite of subtle sitting on a rack.

Snow is not sand, and it punishes the same technique. Compacted snow packs under a spinning tire and refreezes glassy, so dig it out from in front of each drive tire before you seat a board — otherwise the tire climbs ice instead of biting nylon. Work the ramped end under the tread, take the lowest gear you have, and feed almost no throttle. Wheelspin glazes the lugs and does permanent damage. Clip the Telltale leashes on first: a board buried in snow is nearly invisible without them.

• The honest default. MKII is enough board for most people. Step up to the XTREME only if you use boards hard and often — recovery work, driver training, racing.
• Bright has a cost, and it is cosmetic. Blaze Yellow reads clearly even caked in mud, but it is the loudest thing on your rack and never disappears into a blacked-out build the way Black or Gunmetal Grey does.
• Lifetime warranty, and we rarely see one come back. The failure we do see is bridging in very cold weather with a hard impact. MAXTRAX has always taken care of it.
• Six handles and a shovel edge on each end. Easy to carry one-handed in gloves, and enough to clear a tire without a tool.

Working out the hardware? A single Universal Mounting Pin now covers the whole MAXTRAX range, so there are two things to pick. Thread length: 17 mm for bracket mounting, which covers every bracket we sell, or 40 mm through a camper panel. Capacity: a two-board pin for one set, or a four-board pin if you run two sets.

More recovery gear and traction board mounts.

Stuck between two colors, or unsure what will bolt to your rack? Tell us what you drive and how you carry it. We were MAXTRAX's original U.S. distributor and have stocked the brand since it first landed here, and the full range sits in our Prescott, Arizona warehouse rather than a drop-shipper's — so the answer comes from someone holding the parts.