Looking out for loose nuts
Mar 9, 2010
In November last year the National Caravan Council (NCC) issued an important safety alert regarding loose wheel nuts. The alert resulted from a supplier becoming aware of loose or missing wheel nuts on holiday home chassis which they manufactured. The NCC advised in its alert that no-one should move, or go under, a suspect, unsited holiday home until the wheel nuts had been checked.
A client of Wilby Risk Management that operates a number of holiday parks took the safety alert very seriously and decided to check all the holiday homes on its showgrounds. One unit was found to have loose wheel nuts, another unit was found to have had the wheel nuts completely off the wheel and sitting in the hubcap. It is now standard policy in the company’s health & safety management system for wheel nuts to be checked before any holiday home is moved or sited.
Building wheel nut checks into the routine of checking a holiday home unit prior to movement is good practice. Consideration should also be given to requesting delivery contractors to confirm these checks have been carried out before a unit is off loaded at the park. A wheel coming off a chassis during the off loading process could be expensive and could potentially have fatal consequences.
