Good evening, I run a construction company and I’m after some advice please from skip lorry drivers or anyone else with suitable experience.
I’m having a problem with the company that supplies my skips. The project I’m running at the moment has a large drive but only a limited space suitable for skips. There is a series of manholes in the middle of the drive, with a septic system near one edge. We’ve had 20+ skips in and out of this drive without any problems since the first of May. One every occasion I’m there on hand to help the driver and always ensure that the stabilising legs were deployed and they are used in conjunction with sleepers to spread the load. We’re talking about 8yd skips with lots of clean waste (concrete rubble mostly). Got to be 8-9 tonnes in each of these.
Last week the driver turned up and we were stacked out and I left him on his own and he managed to put one of the stablisers through the tarmac and has slumped and broken the top of the cap on the septic tank. No-one was there to witness this, and he didn’t tell us until he had managed to complete the exchange of skips. He swears blind that he had the sleepers under the wheels of the legs. The hole in the middle of the slump is the same width and radius as the wheel on the stabilisers. He claims that he started with the sleeper under the stabilisers, but somehow the leg slipped off the end of the timber…
I think that what happened was he started the exchange without the timber, did the damage and then retracted the legs, placed the timber under the legs and completed the swap.
What I want you guys to tell me is whether it’s possible for a skip lorry to move enough for a stabilising leg to slip off a sleeper?
The skip wasn’t the heaviest we’ve had out off site and the lorries have never struggled trying to lift them before.
I hope somebody out there can help me with some advice.
Cheers