Agreed, if everything is connected well, ground is ground. But with my batteries near the back fo the truck, the thought of 400 amps moving through the frame, past the ECU and engine electronics to reach the winch up front was not terribly appealing. Maybe it would be alright, but I didn't want to find out it wasn't when the truck was hanging by the cable winching up a dry waterfall and finding the engine died everytime I hit the winch button or something.

My power and ground cables run together via 2-conductor disconnects, and are up inside the frame rails, so fairly well protected. And a common ground has the advantage of only having one place to fail. If I have a grounding problem, I know exactly which point it is, since there is only one. Granted, if it fails, I'll have everything die, but that is far easier to troubleshoot than figuring out which of several points might be at fault. My ground point is a 7/16" bolt through the frame, all the heavy ground lugs are stacked on it and then clamped to the frame. Never had any problems with that attachment point in 6 years, so I'm pretty happy with it.