I drove for a towing company out in Phoenix for awhile that used them in the trucks, the truck i drove was a lighter duty flatbed, the mid 90's HD style cab with a 6.5 Diesel i think, flatbed, winch running alot, overhead lights throughout the day. One day the alternator died, i saw it through the gauge, called up the boss on the radio, he told me to keep an eye on the voltage, did two more calls before i took it in, he replaced the alternator and put the batteries on a slow charge the rest of the day...
so i dunno, they seemed to work just fine in that pretty heavily used situation.
I don't doubt it. Remember though, I go a lot farther back then a lot of you.
I can easily remember when there was no such thing as a deep cycle battery.
And really no need for one.
There was no such thing as a trolling motor. Everybody sculled their boats.
Every boat you saw had a sculling lock or notch on the stern. I would hate to think how many miles I have sculled a boat while fly fishing or casting.
The first trolling motor I ever saw was an aluminum gadget that fit on the transom.
It had a handle like an outboard that you steered with, but you powered it by moving the handle up and down.
That drove a propeller on both strokes.
When electric trolling motors first came out, everybody that bought one, bought the strongest car or truck battery they could buy to power it.
Generally speaking, if they used the motors hard during the summer, the batteries would be ruined by the end of the season.
Then you started seeing ads for Trolling Motor Batteries. Also called Deep Cycle batteries.
They would have ratings of 1000 amp-hours or more.
In trolling motor use, they would last 4 or 5 years. But, lots of people figured that if they were so good for that, they would be great for cars and trucks.
Like I mentioned before somewhere here, I had a friend who burned up 3 on his diesel tractor in a week.
I had a pro grade set of jumper cables in my truck, and I stayed busy jumping off folks I knew for almost a year or so.
And most of them were deep cycle batteries.
I went to my battery place to get some connectors, and saw a pile of deep cycles laying in the main door.
I mentioned I was thinking about getting one for my truck when my present battery wore out.
They informed me that they would not sell me one. That they were not designed to supply high current, and those were some that folks had bought elsewhere and traded in.
They showed me a couple that had melted connectors inside due to high current draw.
The next thing I started seeing was deep cycle/cranking batteries that were dual purpose.
In my old truck, I had the dual battery system I put in. My cranking battery was a high current high capacity battery, and my accessory battery was actually a deep cycle that was rated for light cranking.
I had a built in self jump-off system that tied the two batteries together if the accessory battery got so low that it would not fire the starter solenoid.
Everything changes, so I suspect that today's deep cycles will stand up to starters just fine.
But, being the suspicious type, I would want to see some current rating specs before I bought one to run a winch.
