How to Tie a Trucker's Hitch Knot

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is Dan, and I’m here with Expert Village today to teach you how to tie a trucker’s hitch. A trucker’s hitch is a good knot to use when tension in a line is important, for example setting up a tarp or a clothes line. It’s basically a series of slippery hitches. I’ll tie one wrap around the tree, or in this case a piano leg, feed the tail end of your rope through. It functions like a two-to-one pulley, so when I pull towards the piano leg, it’s tightening the whole length to the line. To make fast, I’m going to pinch it and tie another slippery hitch. The nice thing about this knot is if you need to drop the tension on it very quickly, you just pull out and it’s good. I can tie it for you one more time…make a slippery hitch, go around your piano leg, feed the tail end through, tighten, pinch, slippery hitch. If you want to make it fast, in the case of a tarp, in case someone were to pull on this end, you just feed the tail through the loop in your slippery hitch, and if someone accidentally pulls on it, the knot tightens as opposed to coming untied. So we’ll tie it one more time, and we’ll make it secure by doing that passing tail end through one more time. Slippery hitch, tighten, pinch and feed the tail end through to make it fast… the trucker’s hitch."