Have you ever noticed how many snowmobile trailer deck protection products are on the market today? I counted forty in the stacks of catalogs that are laying around my Snowmobile Online office. Theirs everything from rubber mats sold by thickness, length and width to hard rubber bars similar to a hyfax that are just screwed down. The mats can be heavy like a conveyer belt or soft and cushy like the OSHA mats for people that stand on concrete all day. The conveyer belt types are as slick as black ice when wet or covered with snow and the softer mats wear like tissue paper. The single rubber bar types are basically projectiles if you 'goose' your snowmobile on them. The mats have another disadvantage in that they tend to trap moisture under them which rots out the wooden deck you're trying to protect.

All that being said I was not all that thrilled about looking at yet another product that was to protect my trailers deck. I had given up on most of the products available to me so I was just using scrap ¾" plywood cut to length to protect the trailers deck. It worked, but it had a few major drawbacks. The wood was getting chewed up by the studs which looked really bad, and the deck was rotting under my scrap pieces of plywood. It basically trapped water against the deck. I also had to replace the wood ever year or two which was a pain. I wanted a better solution, but I wasn't too thrilled with what was available.

We installed three sections of the Paddlegrabber to completely cover both sides of the trailer. The ski guides are also from Snow Designs and haave proved to one of the best tested also. Click picture for larger image

When my Paddlegrabber sets arrived, they grabbed my attention and they were very different than anything I've used in the past. Made of a high density plastic resin, I knew they'd be strong, but I wasn't sure of the design. The Paddlegrabbers are modular in that the bars and cross pieces are not one single unit. That may change down the road based on conversations with the owner of Snow Designs, Dan Selle, who manufactures the product. I personally like the modular design since it offers more flexibility in installation and replacement if you damage one of the bars or cross pieces. It also wouldn't significantly reduce the number of screws required, which is only slightly more than the mat style protectors.

Installation is extremely easy and the only tools needed are a power screwdriver and a tape measure. Our 10' drive-on drive-off trailer needed four sets of Paddlegrabbers to completely cover the deck since we wanted to go all the way from one end to the other. On a tilt trailer, only two sets would have been needed. Once we measured and centered where we wanted the grids, we laid out our grids to make sure we had the deck covered properly. I would recommend laying out the grids before you screw them down. We spaced our grids 5" from the end of the trailer and 10" between the individual grids. We also centered them on each half of the trailer deck.

With my trusty cordless Dewalt™ drill in hand, we installed the screws for the grids. We really took our time during the installation and we finished in about 45 minutes. Once installed we could see why the Paddlegrabbers is truly a unique product. The only part that lays directly on the deck is three rails that support the cross sections. This eliminates the rot caused by larger mats. The cross pieces that connect the supports are also above the deck so water and dirt can be washed out easily from underneath. Melting snow can also run underneath the Paddegrabbers so the deck dries quicker.

The grids also didn't interfere with the tie downs or the cleats that were in the trailer. With the rubber mats, we had to cut out everything which was not a pleasant task. What the grids do however is lift the track off the deck keeping the studs in the air while giving the track something to grip onto. On a tilt trailer, they act like a ladder for the snowmobile to climb up. Loading onto a snow covered or wet trailer would be a breeze. On our drive-on drive-off trailer, they kept the track from freezing to the deck and helped to secure the snowmobile while traveling too.

You would think that the grids would be easily ripped off the deck like the single bar style protectors, but that's not the case. The grids help distribute the loads placed on any one bar to the entire grid. That significantly reduces the stresses put on any one screw and the grids themselves. The grid provides more strength and durability than if the bars were individual.

We've had the grids installed in one of our trailers for a few months now and we've been very impressed. Wear and tear from the studs is minimal and has to be looked for. The grids have held up perfectly and we've had zero failures to date. We're careful not to grab a thumb full of throttle loading, since we don't want to damage them and they would also launch the sled onto the roof of our tow rig. That's how much traction the Paddlegrabber's provide.

Overall, I'd have to say the system is a winner and I'd recommend them to any snowmobiler. Whether your sled is studded or not, the system makes sense for everyone and provides benefits that none of the other trailer deck protection systems can. They say it's hard to build a better mouse trap, but Snow Designs has done just that with the Paddlegrabber.