I was wondering what pros do about load securing chains disappearing. Its a total pita when you get to site to load a machine and the chains are missing. Not sure if they are being lost or stolen. I feel like i am constantly buying chain for my operator. What do you do? Ken
Dip them in a bucket of clean reducer when new, hang them to dry, then spray them with pink paint. No more theiving issues.
Yes it is a real pain, we have lock boxes on all trucks and trailers, and even paint the chains and binders for each one. This makes it quick to tell if the chains are ending up on pickups or equipment. All trailers have six chains and binders and the dumps carry two extra binders and chains, we do not leave chains and binder on the decks unless we are with/ close to them while working. It's bad to go to lunch and find two or three missing when you get back. The painting seems to help the it's my chain issue a lot. This goes for shovels/rakes/ picks/pumps /tamps/hand tools.
Keep 'em locked up. The crackheads love to steal them. If you have a friend that works for a railroad, see if he can get the ones they throw away after a derailment. They're about 6 foot long with hooks on both ends and grade 70? I think. They aren't allowed to reuse any whether they're brand new or not that have been in a derail. Or at least that's what he tells me. Maybe that's his side job.
One way to prevent theft is to park your trailer or machine on your chains/binders. You have to be creative but it works.
Knock on wood but we have never had any disappear from our lowboy!
We had a pesky problem of chains coming up missing, but only after having fuel come up missing during the night. The solution to our fuel problem was solved with taping razor blades to the fuel caps. About 2 nights after the razor blades were taped onto the caps, next morning we found one cap laying on the ground about 5' away from the truck with a dark brown substance on it, it was all over the ground and the side of the tank too. We also got a bonus, someone left a 12 volt fuel tank pump in our tank. We then went to work on the chain problem. We got a bike lock and would lock all the chains together on the headache rack. All except the one chain that was left in the box mounted to the headache rack. No chains turned up missing for quite some time and then......they didn't turn up missing again. Turns out, the missing chains all turned up in a supervisors truck, but the bike lock still remains on the chains. All was well and for some reason we stopped turning up missing fuel. :roll:roll:roll