MAXTRAX MKII Desert Tan Recovery Boards

MAXTRAX MKII are the recovery boards most people should buy, and Desert Tan is the quiet one in the range. Wedge a pair under your drive tires and the vehicle walks itself out of sand, mud or snow. Same original Australian-made design as every other MKII, same reinforced engineering-grade nylon, same lifetime warranty. Sold as a pair, in flat sand-brown.

Desert Tan is a styling decision, and it costs you something. The color has military origins, and it is the muted pick of the range — it settles into a tan, sand or olive-look build where Signature Orange would shout, and it carries dust between washes without looking filthy. Now the cost, plainly: tan is the hardest color to see in sand, which is precisely the ground you are most likely to be stuck in. Run the Telltale leashes every single time, and buy this color with your eyes open.

Sand has an order of operations. Air down first; that alone frees a lot of vehicles. Clear the sand ahead of each drive tire, seat the ramped end under the tread, then pull away in your lowest gear with almost no throttle and keep rolling to firm ground instead of stopping on the boards. Digging rarely works out here; the hole slumps back in as fast as you empty it, while a board spans the soft stuff. And sand has no cohesion, so wheelspin pumps it out from under the tire faster than any other surface.

• The honest default. MKII is enough for most drivers. Step up to the XTREME only if you use boards hard and often — recovery work, driver training, competition.
• Hardest to spot, easiest to live with. Tan vanishes against sand and at dusk, but hides dust the rest of the time. If night visibility beats looks, buy Signature Orange.
• 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.
• Built to be dug with. Six molded handles and a shovel end per board — in sand you move material first.

Mounting these? One Universal Mounting Pin now fits the whole MAXTRAX range, leaving two things to settle: thread length — 17 mm for bracket mounting, including every bracket we sell, or 40 mm through a camper panel — and capacity, a two-board pin for this pair or a four-board pin if you carry two sets.

More recovery gear and traction board mounts.

Stuck between colors, or between mounts? That is the call we get most. We were MAXTRAX’s original U.S. distributor and have stocked the brand since it reached the United States, and the full range sits in our warehouse in Prescott, Arizona rather than a drop-shipper's. So we can tell you what bolts to your rack, how many boards your rig will carry, and what changes between sand and snow.