Pressure Washer Torn From The Back Of The Truck

One of our pressure washers got yanked out of the truck recently.

Pressure Washer And Truck Pieces

Our crew was using the pressure washer to wash cars at one of our auto dealer clients and they had the hose stretched along a line of cars. The crew member doing the spraying pulled on the hose to straighten it out just as a car drove over it.

The hose wrapped around the wheel of the car and yanked the pressure washer out of the back of the truck. It broke one of the pieces of wood that the machine was bolted to on the side of the truck and pulled the bolts through the floor.

Pressure Washer On The Ground

The machine was still running while sitting on the ground when our crew came to inspect the damage! Fortunately, no one was hurt and there was no damage to anything except our truck – and that was minimal.

Since we have two machines in each truck, they finished the job before coming back to the shop. We just had to bolt the machine back into the truck.

We’ve written a few posts recently about safety in the workplace and this is a great example. While we’ve never had this happen before, it showed a potential problem that was easily remedied.

Where Pressure Washer Was Installed

We don’t normally stretch our hose across a drive lane but this location has cars on both sides of the main drive lane. And since is the best location for washing this lot –  both sides can be reached without moving the truck – there’s a chance this could happen again.

So we changed the procedure for this lot to make sure all our crews move the truck to the other side of the lane before washing that side. It’s a simple thing to prevent any potential accidents – just one we hadn’t considered before. And it hasn’t been a problem since 1985!

Workplace safety requires constant awareness of potential problems – and being willing to make the changes needed to prevent accidents. And its easy to become complacent and cut a few corners.

Fortunately this lesson was pretty inexpensive – it could have been much worse. And it reminded us all to be more aware of how doing things the fastest way isn’t always the best way.

Safety procedures sometimes seem like more hassle than they’re worth – until the accident happens.