For those of you talking about hitch-mounted winches (front and back), any issues with strength? Hitch receivers are not really designed for loads other than pulling straight out, and toungue weight down. Are they strong enough to safely take the angled load of a powerful winch pulling a 7,500 pound truck? This is definitely the route I'd like to go [weight off, keep winch protected, cleaner look] but not if it sacrifices much strength...
Winch Bumpers block most of the road goo if you cover up the fair lead. I've seen people have good luck forming a sheet of kydex to cover that up. Some use broom mounts to snap a front license plate on as a neat cover.
You still have to remove the winch every 2 years for maintenace and regreaseing. You can seal it up pretty well with grease and Permatex. But it's not too bad serviceing winches. Not much different than a big geared starter motor.
Yes, a winch on your rear reciever can be a bad thing. It deosn't take 10,000lbs of force to move a 10,000lb trailer. And that reciever is long so it has a ton of leverage. I thought about a multimount winch for a while, then I lifted a Warn 15,000 lb winch. HEAVY!!!!
I haven't seen anyone bend thier hitch. I've heard about it. But the htches on 1 ton vehicles are pretty stout. I got lost at night in a steel mill and backed my truck into a concrete block that was covered in black slag stuff and hard to see. I hit it at about 10mph, and that block didn't move. Whiplash, felt like I totaled my ride, but I was lucky, I left my 2 5/16" ball in and that was the only thing that hit the block. I didn't check for frame damage cause I was younger and dumber at the time. But i think the truck was fine.
So with some common sense shoveling to lessen the load on the winch and reciever it would probally hold up ok. 15,000 pounds of force is pushing your luck any way you cut it.
It's easier to just get a nice engine hoist to pop your bumper off so you can service your winch as needed. Some bumpers let you reach the more important stuff on the winch without removing the bumper.