Smart Systems: Safety is Free: Check Your Vehicle Load
1 Aug, 2008 By: Andrew Greess Pest Management ProfessionalSafety is not just a good idea, it's a great investment. Inattention to safety has huge financial implications: increased expenses (worker's compensation, clean-ups, medical bills, lawsuits, repairs, etc.), lost productivity, employee turnover, customer effects and bad publicity, just to name a few.
 Andrew Greess |
This month we will discuss vehicle load safety. I raise this issue because our repair facility has seen an increase in the number of totaled pest management trucks. I'm not sure of the reason for this, but some possibilities include:
- Smaller trucks (easy to total);
- More equipment in truck;
- More traffic;
- More time on the road; and
- More bad drivers (at least in Phoenix)
These accidents have caused us to think about what our customers can do to protect themselves, their employees and their companies. Here are some ideas:
 Safe and Sound |
1. Ensure visibility. Make sure equipment doesn't create blind spots for the driver.
2. Make sure it's secured. You don't want equipment sliding around in the back of your truck. It's dangerous and distracting to the driver, and can damage your expensive equipment.
3. Don't assume it's attached. You don't want equipment flying off your truck, crashing into people and property. Even if the accident wasn't your fault (or your employee's fault), if your equipment hits someone, a lawyer will sue you. Periodically, check your equipment to ensure it's secured to your truck.
4. Ensure load stability. This is particularly important as professionals shift to smaller trucks to improve gas mileage. Some ideas:
- Don't overload the vehicle.
- Balance the load.
- Pay particular attention to your water tank. At 8.4 pounds per gallon, the water in your tank is likely the heaviest component on your truck.
There are two issues with the tank — the weight of the water and the surge of the water in the tank.
Anyone who has hit the brakes at an intersection with a partially full water tank knows that these are serious issues. To combat this, make sure the tank is not too large to safely control the vehicle.
The challenge of tank surge is that most tanks are not properly baffled to reduce the surge. Most plastic (poly) tanks are not baffled at all, and most fiberglass and steel tanks are baffled only in one dimension. There is a new class of instant tank baffles that can be added to the tank at any time. These baffles suppress surge on all three axes (left-right, front-back, up-down) to virtually eliminate surge. This makes the vehicle much easier to control and stop.
Conduct these inspections periodically to ensure you and your employees are being as safe as you can be.
You can reach Greess, president of Quality Equipment & Spray, by e-mail at
andrew@qspray.com.
Please send any technical comments or questions to our webmaster.