I watched a video on YT a while back while I was researching recovery gear. It was put on by a Canadian company that made straps and hitches.

They had an older Ram 2500, with a class 5 receiver hitch. They had one end of the truck anchored to a massive tractor, the other was attached to a Cat bulldozer. The had the dozer pull on the Ram to test the recovery gear. They had a force meter on it, and IIRC they got up to 28k lbs before there was a failure. The failure was not any of the gear, interestingly enough it was the hitch that failed. The failure point was not the bolts holding it to the frame, the hitch literally ripped apart at the welds.

Now granted, I'm not an engineer, but that lends credence to what I've heard anecdotally about bolts often being stronger than welds.

Now I bought a pair of D Rings and a tree saver strap to use as bridle on mine, so I'll roll the dice on them if I had to. I'd feel more confident on a burlier set of bolted on hooks, though.

I find it sad that a Jeep Compass has more legit front recovery points than our Runners.