A desire to find a more efficient, safer and reliable way to control road access to forestry sites prompted contractor, Vincent Yeoman, to create an automatic barrier arm that can be controlled by machine operators sitting in their cabs via a phone app.
Mr Yeoman, owner of Volcanic Plateau Harvesting, is now testing prototypes of the automatic barriers on his own site near Taupo and at another contractor’s site.
So far, the barriers have received a big thumbs up from those most affected by them – truck drivers and machine operators.
Currently, most forestry sites use banners to restrict vehicle access when hazardous work like harvesting is taking place on or near the road. Trucks or other vehicles pull up to the banner and radio the hazard controller for permission to come through. The driver then has to get out of their truck and unhook the banner, drive through, stop, walk back to the banner and re-attach it, then walk back to their truck and drive on.
“We’ve timed how long that process takes and sometimes it can take up to 10 minutes per banner,” Mr Yeoman says.
“Sometimes trucks have to go through a couple of banners to get to the loading site, then back through those same banners on the way out, which can add up to 40 minutes of downtime for drivers.
“It’s also inefficient for the machine operators who have to stop work while the driver walks to and from the banner to open and close it.”
That inefficiency, along with incidents where banners have been blown down or left open by mistake, spurred him to look for a better, safer way to control access to hazardous areas.
Safer and smoother
The automatic barrier arms he came up with are controlled by a radio that connects via Bluetooth to an app on the machine operator’s phone. When a truck arrives, the driver calls up on the radio and once it’s safe to do so, the machine operator will use their phone app to open the barrier and let the truck through, then close the barrier again.
“Truck drivers love it because they’re trying to do as many loads a day as they can. They don’t want to be spending their time taking banners up and down,” Mr Yeoman says.
Dan Coughey, a truck driver with Northern Linehaul, says the automatic barriers save him a lot of time, particularly when he’s visiting crews three or four times a day.
“You just call up the crew and when it’s safe they flick the switch and let you in,” he says.
“You don’t feel like you’re holding up the felling machines so much because they’re not waiting around wondering when you’re coming through. So, it makes the whole operation run a lot smoother.
“And of course, I especially appreciate not having to get out of the cab to open and close the banners when it’s hammering down with rain!”
A Safetree certified contractor, Mr Yeoman says as well as saving time, the system is safer because it monitors the barrier arms to...
