Plant vehicle maintenance guide

Plant vehicle maintenance is often discussed in terms of health and safety, and while that’s important, there are far more benefits including prolonged usable life, reduced cost of repairs, and less time wasted on cleaning equipment.

In this plant vehicle maintenance guide we’ll look at a few reasons why you should take a proactive approach to maintaining your vehicles, and timber bog mats can help you achieve this without adding to your operating costs.

Cleaning

Cleaning is one way to maintain your vehicles and should be a regular part of your routine. Compared with making mechanical repairs later, proactive cleaning is fast, cheap and easy.

For example, don’t allow caked mud to dry on your vehicles’ tyres and tracks. You can rinse it off with a hose while still wet, or lay temporary roadways using timber mats to avoid mud in the first place.

Corrosion

Corrosion is a long-term threat to all vehicles, and heavy plant is no exception. Be extra careful when working in the presence of seawater, as salt can accelerate rusting and corrosion of metals.

Again, temporary roadways and working platforms are a sensible precaution. Bog mats lift your vehicles above the water level to reduce the risk of a rusty undercarriage when working in tidal zones, wetlands and marshes.

Stability

It should go without saying that vehicle stability should be an important safety factor, especially when using lifting vehicles and crane lorries, where the centre of gravity will shift significantly during use.

A stable working platform and outrigger pads can improve vehicle stability, preventing a major one-off incident such as a vehicle rolling over, which can be extremely costly to recover and repair.

Why use timber mats?

Timber mats are a versatile solution to many different problems. They’re cost-effective and, because wood has low intrinsic value, they shouldn’t affect your site insurance premiums.

We have bog mats for sale so you can hold a stock of hardwood mats for ground protection, temporary access roads, pedestrian walkways and to use as outrigger pads.

Alternatively for one-time projects, we have bog mats for hire, so you don’t even face storing them – you can just return them to Timbermat once the work is done.