MAXTRAX MKII FJ Red Recovery Boards

MAXTRAX MKII in FJ Red: a pair of recovery boards you wedge under your drive tires to get out of sand, mud or snow without a winch or a second vehicle. The original Australian-made design in reinforced engineering-grade nylon, with a lifetime warranty, in the Toyota FJ Cruiser red that reads bold without going fluorescent.

FJ Red is the bold choice that stops short of Signature Orange. It is another Toyota FJ Cruiser heritage color, and it is what people pick when they want the boards to read as part of the build rather than as safety equipment — a rack of red boards looks deliberate in a way orange does not. It is genuinely visible; it simply is not fluorescent. The honest trade-off: red loses contrast against red desert rock and against dried mud, which is worth knowing if you wheel the Southwest.

Boards alone are half a recovery. Carry a real shovel, not a folding tool that flexes in packed sand — boards cannot clear a high-centered diff, and trying to drive off them without digging first is how people break things. Gloves, because wet boards and packed-in lugs are hard on hands. Clip the Telltale leashes on before the board goes under the tire, not after. Something to kneel on makes the digging bearable. Most people who get properly stuck are missing the shovel, not the boards.

• The honest default. MKII is enough for most drivers. The XTREME earns its price only if you are on boards hard and often — commercial recovery, driver training, racing.
• Low light is where color costs you time. A dark board is hard to find after dark; FJ Red is not, and it reads clearly under headlights. It is not fluorescent either, so flat dusk light dulls it.
• Lifetime warranty, and we almost never 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 built-in handles and a shovel on each end. You can lift a board one-handed from any point along it, and the ends dig well enough to clear the last few inches in front of a tire.

Mounting these? One Universal Mounting Pin now fits the whole MAXTRAX range, leaving two choices: 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 or a four-board pin if you run two sets.

More recovery gear and traction board mounts.

Stuck on which mount fits your rack? It is the question we field most, and the hardest to answer from a photo. We were MAXTRAX’s original U.S. distributor and have stocked the brand since it first came to the United States, and the full range sits in our warehouse in Prescott, Arizona rather than a drop-shipper’s — so ask before you order.