Three Potential Risks of Towing Your Own Heavy Equipment

If you need to move a heavy piece of equipment, you may be able to tow it to its new location. However, there are some risks of towing, and to avoid those risks, you may want to turn to a heavy machinery transport company and let them move your equipment. Here are a few of the top reasons you don't want to tow your heavy machinery yourself.

1. Potential damage to your towing vehicle

Unless you have a vehicle designed with the strength to tow a piece of heavy machinery, you risk damaging the vehicle you are using to do the towing. Overloading a vehicle by attaching a heavy load to the back of it can cause a lot of issues ranging from breaking your suspension to overheating your transmission and blowing out your tyres. In most cases, the risk outweighs the potential reward, and you should protect your vehicles by never towing anything they aren't designed to handle.

2.  Risk of damage to the vehicle being towed

Unfortunately, even if you do have the right type of vehicle for towing, you still risk damaging the heavy equipment you are towing. This is especially true if you don't have a lot of experience with towing. In particular, if you are towing a piece of heavy equipment and its brakes are not connected correctly, it may not stop when you stop the lead vehicle. As a result, it may hit the lead vehicle, damaging both vehicles.

Additionally, the equipment being towed could be damaged if you took a corner too tightly or misjudged the length of the towing vehicle and the heavy equipment and hit something. Finally, attaching the tow hook to the heavy equipment could damage its body or the undercarriage if connected incorrectly.

3. Unnecessary tyre wear and tear

When you tow heavy equipment rather than having a heavy equipment transporter put it on a trailer, you expose the tyres to unnecessary wear and tear. The treads on the tracks or tyres of most heavy equipment are integral to their safety—they help to give these vehicles a lot of traction in rugged environments such as construction and mining sites. If you want to preserve the tyres or tracks on your equipment, you may want to transport it on a trailer rather than by towing.

To learn more about the potential risks of towing your heavy equipment or to talk about the advantages of transporting heavy equipment on a trailer, contact a heavy equipment transporter.

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