Studying the mechanics of thin, axially moving strings, beams or plates (e.g.: belt drives, cable cars, . . . ) at mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian description, which features the transformation of material coordinates to spatial ones, is more appropriate than the classical material (Lagrangian) one, see [1,2]. Aiming at testing a newly proposed non-material finite element formulation we study the statics of a looped belt as a rod hanging in contact with two pulleys. Numerical experiments demonstrate rapid mesh convergence as well as correspondence to semi-analytical results and conventional Lagrangian finite element solutions.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs Licence 4.0, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.