Things To Look Out For With Truck Tarps

Transport The last thing Bulk Cartage Contractors need to have problems with when carting grain, lime, sand etc, is the truck tarps. You’ve got the contract, trucks good, trailers seem good but the tarp covers let you down! 

Its seen quite often; nice truck, nice trailer, a few driver comforts thrown in here and there, until they get to the destination and get out to roll the tarp back and…. Whoa!! There’s cursing, backache and sweat and tears! But one of the most amazing things which exacerbates the problems, is the length of time people will tend go with dodgy truck tarps before they take them to the professionals. Some of the potential issues to name a few can start with a bin design that doesn’t cater for a good tarping system.

Here a few points of note: 

• Front and Back Running Boards being too shallow- this causes the trailer tarps to always want to sag into the bin when the tension is taken off the roll tarp during opening. In turn, this will fold or crease up the tarp ends causing the tarp to not only roll unevenly but eventually wear out the ends.
• The peak in the centre of the bin is too steep – these truck tarps will always require a spring kit to be incorporated into them to keep the roll tarp taut and rolling evenly across the bin. If not the roll tarp will try to spin inside itself while trying to unroll up the slope to the centre of the bin, and generally the front of the Rolltarp will be the first to spin causing it to fall behind the back of the tarp, then when the handle end of the roller pipe is ready to drop over the bin edge to lock off, the front of the tarp still has half a metre to go! …then what? Muscles pulls on the roll tarp handle like a stressed-out cowboy and levers or whips the roll pipe over the locking rail side of the bin to bring the front over the edge, likely bending the pipe and damaging the tarp. ….By now we’ve started the slippery slope towards a migraine!
• Sharp Locking Rail Edge – resulting in the tarp always wearing through on the bin edge. Some bins have nice rounded locking rails which never cause any problems; they even allow the trailer tarps to not require a extra bin edge reinforcement. Others have locking rails that are more like a razor blade 
• Cross bars being too far apart 
• Bin design has no centre ridge pole meaning the centre ridge bar needs to be incorporated into the tarp covers – this will kill you when trying to roll over. 

With most of these issues, they can be eliminated with a bit of careful planning, a little bit of maintenance on the cross bars and running boards also goes a long way and first and foremost top it off by getting a proper truck tarp from WA’s most trusted tarpaulin Supplier Westarp.