MAXTRAX Xtreme Desert Tan

The MAXTRAX Xtreme is a pair of recovery boards built to get a stuck 4x4 moving again. Each board is engineering-grade reinforced nylon studded with 88 hard-anodised alloy teeth. You wedge a board under a spinning tire, drive forward at a crawl, and the teeth bite into both the tread and the ground to pull the vehicle out of sand, mud, or snow. A single board weighs 10 lbs, so the pair is 20 lbs total and measures 45 inches long by 13 inches wide.

What sets the Xtreme apart from the lighter MAXTRAX MKII is the metal teeth. On the standard boards, hard wheel-spin can melt the nylon nubs and burn them off. The Xtreme's alloy teeth shrug off that heat, and if you ever do chew one up, you flip the board over and swap the single tooth with a T-50 Torx bit instead of buying a whole new board. The teeth are anodised to fight corrosion, so salt, mud, and grit won't eat them.

These boards stow flat against a roof rack, in a bed, or behind a seat, and they double as a shovel or a leveling ramp once they're out. They nest with the MKII and Mini if you already own MAXTRAX, though the Xtreme's thicker underside leaves a slightly bigger gap in the stack. Desert Tan is the color Special Forces desert units run, so it hides dust well and looks at home on an overland build.