MAXTRAX XTREME Red Recovery Boards

MAXTRAX XTREME is the hard-use recovery board — 88 replaceable alloy teeth in thicker reinforced engineering-grade nylon, for people who recover vehicles often and cannot afford a board that rounds off. Made in Australia, lifetime warranty, sold as a pair. In red: the bold XTREME that still reads as part of the build, not as rescue equipment.

Red is the bold XTREME that stops short of Signature Orange. It sits with red recovery points and red anodized hardware — visible, but reading as part of the build rather than as safety gear bolted on. Against sand, snow, scrub and gray mud it separates cleanly. The honest cost is desert: red loses contrast against red rock and dried mud, so if you wheel the Southwest, a dropped board takes longer to find than an orange one would.

MKII or XTREME, decided honestly. Same 45-inch footprint, same six handles and shovel ends, same lifetime warranty, same Australian nylon. The XTREME adds 88 replaceable alloy teeth and thicker construction — and costs roughly 60% more, weighs 5 lb more per pair, and stacks an inch taller. For most people the MKII is the right buy, and there is no shame in it. The XTREME earns its money on frequency and consequence: recover vehicles regularly, or where a failed recovery is serious rather than inconvenient, and replaceable teeth mean the board outlasts a molded one.

• The honest default. The MKII is enough for most drivers. Step up only if you use boards hard and often — recovery work, driver training, racing.
• Red is easy to find, except in red country. On sand, snow and dark mud it reads instantly; on red rock and dried clay it blends, so mark where the boards went in.
• Lifetime warranty, and one rarely comes back to us. The failure we do see is a board bridged between hard points in very cold weather, then hit hard. MAXTRAX has always taken care of it.
• The teeth bite harder than molded lugs. That is the point, and it carries an increased risk of tire damage if you do not know what you are doing — idle on, minimum throttle, no wheelspin. A damaged tooth swaps out in the field with a T-50 Torx bit.

Mounting these? One Universal Mounting Pin 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.

Still deciding between these and the MKII? Call us — it is a two-minute question. We were MAXTRAX's original U.S. distributor and have carried the brand since it first reached the United States, and the range sits in our Prescott, Arizona warehouse rather than a drop-shipper's, so we can compare boards in hand and say plainly when the cheaper one is right.