You're thinking specifically of winches mounted on trucks, which is a very narrow application of the device. A winch is just a mechanical setup that uses a gea

You're thinking specifically of winches mounted on trucks, which is a very narrow application of the device. A winch is just a mechanical setup that uses a gearing system to put a large amount of force on a cable or rope in exchange for turning the gears a relatively large number of rotations. They are used all over the place and don't have to be big at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winch