These 10 DeWalt Products Will Save Your Back

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Anyone who is familiar with working in a garage or on a construction site, performing home maintenance, or doing DIY projects knows that sometimes you have to put your back into it. It's not uncommon to stumble inside after a hard day's work while holding your aching back and reaching for the ice packs.

Part of doing any job is making sure you have the right tools. These DeWalt tools, accessories, and other products are designed to decrease the amount of effort needed to complete a job, distribute weight more evenly across load-bearing parts of your body, and help prevent fatigue and the resulting body aches.

It should be noted that this article is not intended as medical advice, and that it's important to know your limits. With that in mind, we hope these ten DeWalt products can make your next project run a little more smoothly.

Shoveling snow is one of the worst parts of winter. It's back-breaking work, especially if there has been heavy snowfall overnight. Injuries from snow removal are common enough that the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons has a guide for how to remove snow safely to avoid strains and sprains of the back and shoulders.

Conventional snow shovels are manual and can be exhausting. DeWalt's 20V MAX 10 in. Cordless Snow Shovel is part of the company's 20V MAX Tool Platform, compatible with 20V MAX batteries. It weighs just 13.23 pounds and has an ergonomic pole capable of adjusting its length to fit the user, all features which have your comfort in mind.

The cordless snow shovel picks up snow with a rotor and the bottom and spits it out like a snowblower on a stick. It can clear a path 10 inches wide and six inches deep, and you can adjust the snow guide plate up to 60 degrees to control where the snow ends up. It throws snow up to 20 feet away and can run for 20 minutes on a fully charged 4Ah 20V MAX battery.

Oscillating multi-tools are some of the most versatile tools you can add to your collection. They were originally designed for the medical field, as a way to remove plaster casts without harming the skin underneath. Oscillating cast saws eventually expanded out of the doctor's office and into the workshop.

They can be used for a wide range of jobs, from cutting to sanding or grinding, depending on the sort of blade you've attached. One common way to use them is to pry tiles from the wall or floor. Without a multi-tool, you might have to manually remove grout and pry the tiles up. A multi-tool makes the job much faster and easier.

DeWalt's Atomic 20V Brushless Cordless Oscillating Multi-Tool features a built-in LED light for illuminating dark workspaces and a lock on/off switch, so you don't have to hold it on with your thumb during long jobs. It comes in a kit with a 4.0Ah battery, a battery charger, general purpose bi-metal blade, fast wood cutting HCS blade, universal accessory adapter (so you can use non-DeWalt blades), and a tool bag.

Framing sets the foundation for all kinds of construction projects. Before you can put up drywall, putty, or paint, before you can lay down tile or carpet, you have to provide a frame and subfloor. That frame serves as a skeleton, giving a building its structural integrity while also housing electrical wiring and plumbing.

It takes a lot of nails to hold a frame together and keep it secure, and hammering them by hand takes a lot of energy. A nail gun takes most of the effort out of the job, allowing you to drive nails faster and more efficiently than you could with a hammer. A battery-powered drill ups the convenience factor by reducing the need for electrical cables or air lines.

DeWalt's 20V MAX XR Brushless Cordless 21-Degree Plastic Collated Framing Nailer can install up to an estimated 530 square feet of subflooring or up to 100 feet of wall framing with a single charged 5Ah battery (DCB205). It's lightweight, at just 8.65 pounds, before accounting for the weight of the battery and nails. It also has a slot for a Tool Connect chip, which lets you track it using DeWalt's Tool Connect platform.

Sanding is an important part of finishing any construction or DIY project, especially if you're working with wood materials. Sanding has a wide range of purposes. It can change the size of an object slightly if the initial measurements weren't quite right. It can smooth a surface and reduce the risk of splinters. It can prepare a surface for the application of paint, stain, and other coatings. Even if you're working with metal, you can use sandpaper to give it a brushed surface, to remove rust, or to prepare it for the application of paint and other coatings.

When it's time to sand your project, you have a few choices. You could take pieces of sandpaper of various grit levels and a sanding block to smooth your constructions by hand; It's a tried and true method dating back to before the advent of power tools, but it's not necessarily the most efficient.

Instead, a powered sander can significantly reduce the amount of effort and time you'll need to complete this important task. DeWalt's battery-powered Brushless Orbital Sander uses electricity to rapidly move sheets of sandpaper and smooth your rough surfaces in no time. DeWalt also sells a corded version of this tool.

Every autumn, the trees drop all of their leaves in preparation for winter. It's a beautiful natural display, but it ends in a yard covered with dry leaf litter. If possible, the best thing you can do (and the least labor intensive) is to let the leaves lie where they land. Leaf litter provides a place for thousands of species to wait out the winter and the broken down leaves enrich your yard with a natural mulch.

Under ideal circumstances, none of us would ever have to clear the yard of leaves again. However, we don't live in ideal circumstances, and many HOAs and other housing authorities require that fallen leaves be cleaned up. Using a conventional rake will get the job done, but a leaf blower makes it faster and easier, reducing the likelihood of backaches and blistered fingers.

DeWalt's 20V MAX XR Brushless Cordless Blower moves up to 450 cubic feet of air per minute and can achieve wind speeds of 125 mph, using the included concentrator nozzle. It has a lightweight and ergonomic design which DeWalt says "tackles user fatigue." It also comes in a kit with everything you need: the leaf blower, a 20V MAX 5Ah battery, a 12V/20V MAX battery charger, and the aforementioned concentrator nozzle.

Unless you're rewilding your yard, prefer xeriscaping, or live someplace that's unsuitable for grass, mowing the yard is a regular part of summertime maintenance. It can be a relatively quick and easy job if your lawn is small and level, but it can be a headache and a backache if your yard is large or features uneven terrain.

A self-propelled lawn mower has powered wheels which create forward motion. All you have to do is follow along and steer. DeWalt's 21 in. 196cc RWD Self-Propelled 3-in-1 Mower has variable speed controls, so you can match the mower's speed to your preferred walking gait. You can also adjust the height from 1.25 inches to 3.75 inches, using a couple of levers.

If you need a little extra help, it also has a rear wheel drive mode which pushes the 11-inch rear wheels. The 3-in-1 in the name refers to your options in disposing of your grass clippings. The mower facilitates bagging, mulching, or side discharge, and comes with a 2.3 bushel grass bag, mulch plug, and side discharge chute. A self-propelled mower is a happy middle ground between a conventional lawn mower and a full-fledged riding mower. It's intuitive for anyone who has ever used an ordinary lawn mower and significantly lowers strain.

Carrying tools and accessories from place to place across the jobsite, garage, or yard can cause fatigue and strain. Using a harness can free your hands, distribute weight, and decrease discomfort. DeWalt's Premium Landscaping Harness has adjustable straps and belt so you can fit them to the user's frame. It also has built-in back support and a padded hip belt.

You can use the harness to help carry some of your DeWalt landscaping tools. It's compatible with several of DeWalt's string trimmers, brush saw, and brush cutters. It also has a couple of battery clips so you can carry spare batteries and keep your hands free.

DeWalt also offers a simpler battery harness that's intended only to help you carry spare batteries with you. It's similar in construction but lacks some of the straps and support of the more robust landscaping harness. If you find yourself carrying your yard tools or batteries around a lot, the proper harness takes some of the load off and redistributes it to make you more comfortable and reduce the likelihood that you'll overtax your back.

A big metal toolbox or tool chest can store and organize your tools and accessories at home or in the workshop, but it's not the best solution if you need to move your tools from one place to the next. For that, you need a more portable storage solution. A backpack tool bag can carry all of your favorite tools and gadgets while distributing the weight across your shoulders, reducing the risk of injury and leaving your hands free.

As the name suggests, DeWalt's Pro Backpack on Wheels has wheels, so you can roll it to your destination if you prefer not to wear it. The straps tuck away, and you can extend a collapsable handle to pull the bag behind you. It has an IP54 water-resistant rating to help the bag stand up to the elements and protect your tools and other belongings.

It has 46 separate pockets, a laptop compartment, and a dedicated compartment for your drill and batteries. On the exterior, you'll find a dedicated tape clip, a metal carabiner for additional storage, and a U-shaped zipper pull designed to be easily accessible even when wearing work gloves. The Pro Backpack on Wheels splits the difference between robust tool storage and convenient portability for an efficient and comfortable everyday tool storage and transportation solution.

Bending over to work is one of the most reliable ways to hurt your back. A work stand allows you to lift your work materials up to waist height, putting them in a more comfortable position and saving you a backache. DeWalt's Heavy Duty Work Stand can help take the strain off your back in more ways than one.

The stand is made up of two triangular metal DeWalt saw horses across which you can lay materials. Each saw horse has a load capacity of 1,000 pounds, so you know it will stand up to anything you can lift onto it. When not in use, the saw horses collapse down into a compact rectangle of bars and hinges with a transport latch for carrying it to and from the work site. Made of lightweight aluminum, both sawhorses have a combined weight of 15.4 pounds.

Bringing your tools and materials up to your level reduces the amount of time you spend hunched over. The work stand's lightweight, compact design and integrated transport latch makes it a lot easier to transport than other work stands.

If you need to drive a few fasteners around the house every now and then, most of the time an ordinary power drill or driver will do the job. Your basic power drills are usually suitable for drilling into drywall or wooden studs, but they have their limits.

If you need to drill into brick walls, concrete floors, or other dense materials, an ordinary drill is going to struggle, and you'll have to really put your back into it. Alternatively, you could use a drill that's designed for drilling through dense materials, like an impact driver. In addition to providing rotation force to drive a fastener, an impact driver also provides forward force from a hammering or impact mechanism. It's like there's someone standing behind you hammering the drill into the target material. The upshot is that you can drill into hard materials like concrete a whole lot easier.

Impact drivers, like DeWalt's 20V MAX XR Brushless Cordless 3-Speed Impact Driver and related products, deliver over a thousand inch-pounds of torque and have an rpm and impacts per minute rate in the thousands, to make drilling into rock a piece of cake. The 20V MAX XR Impact Driver also has a variable speed trigger and three preset speed modes optimized to match the needs of commonly used fasteners, so you can use the right amount of force for your situation.

Each item on this list was chosen for its potential to reduce the likelihood or risk of creating a back injury or exacerbating an existing one. To get onto the list, a product had to meet at least one of the following criteria. Either they significantly reduced the amount of manual work required to complete a task, redistributed weight in a safer and more comfortable way, or prevented you from putting your body in precarious, potentially injury-inducing positions. In some cases, products are described by the manufacturer as being designed to reduce strain.

That being said, we can't make any medical claims or guarantees. Using any tool or power tool comes with a certain amount of risk no matter what you do. No product can make your garage or workshop totally safe. Workshop safety is the result of several factors, including using the right safety equipment and respecting tools safely. It requires understanding the risks and how to avoid them. No product on this list will absolve you of those responsibilities, but they could take a little bit of the load off.