How To Extend The Life Of Your Access Mats
Tired of spending a small fortune on renewing your access mat resources every job or two? Looking for a solution that you can depend on to stand the test of time without sudden breakages, bolt failures, and other complications? GFI Solutions is proud to be Canada’s exclusive provider of TerraLam®’s CLT line of matting solutions. Designed to be lighter in weight while offering superior performance to traditional bolted mats, CLT mats help address many of the concerns site managers have with regards to premature damage and mat replacement.
As a full turn-key service provider, we partner with clients across Canada for their many site access needs, including helping them care for their matting to ensure a reliable lifecycle that nets you optimal ROI. Below, we’ll explore four easy ways you can extend the lifetime of access mats, as well as share more of the benefits of choosing CLT mats. Read on to learn more!
The Right Fit Matters
As any experienced site manager and project engineer will know, choosing the right kind of access mat for your specific application can quite literally make or break where your makeshift roadways are concerned. While many of the options on the market today are quite versatile in their weight ranges (especially where CLT mats are concerned), ensuring you have durable matting becomes a particular concern where heavy-duty applications like rigging, construction, or any other applications where heavy equipment is concerned. Choosing the right mat will help to eliminate the risk of unnecessary strain being placed on the mats, which helps to reduce wear and tear, even with higher traffic levels going in and out of site.
Installation and Orientation Of Mats
Access mats may be fairly straight forward to install, but knowing that you have everything laid exactly as it needs to be saves you peace of mind both where safety and product durability is concerned. Partnering with a full-scale provider like GFI gives you access to our installation team, who will happily deliver right to your site and offer same day setup Canada Wide. This means there’s no need to worry about any “whoops” moments down the line, and that your mats will be set up for success right from day one.
Travel Speeds And Tracking
Even though your mats are built to withstand the demands of heavy traffic travelling through your site, implementing a lower speed limit for haulers going in and out will help to reduce strain, especially where heavy loads are concerned. Set a pace that’s conducive to workplace safety, as well as factors in protecting your assets in the process.
Secondarily, while corked tracks on equipment are great off-road, day in and day out exposure can be rough on access mats. Try to reduce the travel of corked tracks where possible.
Clean Between Jobs
Mat washing isn’t just an important practice for safety standards (though it certainly plays a huge role), but can also greatly extend the lifecycle of your mats. GFI Solutions offers site washing remotely as well as at our yards across Canada for your convenience.
CLT Mats: Your Lifecycle Champion
Designed to improve upon the many challenges presented by traditional bolted mats, CLT matting is lighter (up to 40%), stronger, and lasts longer (3 to 5 times longer) than its bolted counterparts. CLT mats are created using a distinct process that involves bonding alternating perpendicular layers of Southern Yellow Pine wood together with a special adhesive, which allows for increased flexibility and even weight distribution. Additional advantages of CLT mats include:
- High impact resistance
- Suitable for use in extreme conditions, include heat and cold
- Solid matting top reduces tripping hazards, as well as the tired damage to vehicles
- Reduced shipping costs due to the lightweight nature of the mats (more CLT mats can be shipped compared to bolted products), and more.
TerraLam® CLT Mats at GFI Solutions
As Western Canada’s leading source for access mat solutions, GFI is proud to carry the best products available on the market. We are a distributor for Sterling Solutions’ range of TerraLam® products, including their 300 and 500 model access mats, access bridges, and more. To better suit all your site access needs, GFI offers full-scale turnkey support including sales, rentals, delivery and installation, mat washing and more. Find out more about CLT mats by contacting our team today!