Nuccaleena

Shovels

Why shovels? Well a shovel is the most underused piece of recovery equipment around, apart from common sense. The latter is not that common anymore according to one of our friends and I tend to agree. So what in the world has possessed me to write about shovels?

Well for some time now I have been observing that many shovels clamped to the roof of 4WD’s have the blade facing forward and this has struck me as quite dangerous. You see I am a sort of belts and braces trainer and our OHS&W risk management tells me that we should do our best to remove any known risk. So when you consider that shovels only being held in by a couple of clamps/bolts/screws the risk manager in me started thinking what would happen it they were became loose or even worse undone. Well that question was answered for me during a recent training session. Before we had even started a 4WD pulled up and the shovel slid out of its retainers, bounced off the bonnet whilst scraping off a decent amount of paint, ricocheted off the bull bar and nearly cleaned up a bystander. All this at around 40 KPH. If this had happened in traffic at 60 KPH or at even higher speeds then some one could have been more than seriously hurt. Now plenty of folk will point to a lack of checking the clamps etc but we regularly see roof racks rattle loose on pretty routine dirt tracks so anything is possible. Even worse there are members of the community who enjoy nothing less than creating mischief by twisting driving lights around and possibly even loosening off retaining bolts on shovel holders. So anything is possible in our world. I have seen plenty of occasions when a shovel has been put on, the correct way, after a comfort stop or a recovery for example and the vehicle has driven off and the shovel has fallen out. Someone is usually to blame but someone never seems to be around to accept responsibility.

So what to do then? Well the answer is straightforward as usual. If you are carrying a shovel in roof clamps then face the handle forward and have the blade at the rear so if the retainers to become loose then the shovel should not pose any risk to people forward of the vehicle. As usual when travelling always check your load at each rest break.