By Dean B. Wisecarver
Soft soil conditions are often a problem for electric cooperatives while operating heavy digger-derricks or large bucket trucks on private property. I’m sure most of you that read this article have first-hand knowledge of member-consumers’ that have made claims against your company for leaving ruts in their yards or damaging something underground, like a septic tank or a well-to-house water line.
In a previous article in the Jan-Feb-Mar issue of RE-marks we mentioned a special release a cooperative could use to reduce the problem of the property owners not being specific about the location of some underground installations. However, even if your cooperative uses such an approach, that only works when you have knowledge far enough in advance that you will have large trucks on someone’s property. Often, your large trucks end up on private property in outage situations where your crews are trying to get power restored quickly. In such situations, there is no opportunity to ask the property owner for clear marking of underground installations. Furthermore, leaving ruts in the yard is something that can happen regardless of the advance notice.
An effective solution to reducing or eliminating both ruts in the yard and damage to underground installations is to spread the weight of the truck tires over a larger area. This can be done using mats designed for this purpose. While I’m sure most of you know about these mats, there may be some belief they are only for wet ground situations and only for preventing ruts in lawns. The truth is, they can be (and probably should be) used in any situation where soil is soft and where there is no way to be certain of the location of underground installations on private property.
The mats are a bit cumbersome to haul to the site and to place out as the vehicle is positioned. The trick is to carefully look over the site and plan how to efficiently move the truck into position, rather than just pulling into some lot or yard, perhaps even turning around, and then trying to determine the best position to place the truck. By this time, the damage may have been done. The planning should take place right at the threshold of entering the property, before driving the heavy truck into the lot or yard. Planning the most efficient way to position the truck first will make using the mats both simpler and more effective.
Transporting the mats varies according to the size and thickness of the mats, and according to which type of truck is being sent to the site. Some cooperatives in our program have small utility trailers with 8 to 10 mats already on them and parked in the main yard. When a large truck must make an outage run, they crew just hooks up one of the trailers and takes off. Other cooperatives have the mats available and, if the truck is a digger, the crew loads the mats into the back of the truck. Obviously, this is not such a handy approach with a large bucket truck, so I like the utility trailer approach.
However a cooperative decides to handle the transporting of the mats, using the mats is the key. It must seem like too much trouble to cart those mats around, never mind the time it takes the crews to actually use them on site. Still, if you have enough claims from member-consumers for damage to their property from driving your large trucks on the private property, the hassles of transporting and deploying the mats quickly becomes less of an issue. The cooperatives that use them regularly, especially those cooperatives that operate in areas with sandy, regularly soft soil, report fewer consumer complaints and fewer damage claims, which is the whole idea.