Wheel & tyre wash
Portable deck, or concrete pit?
Both stop tracked mud at your gate instead of on the public road outside it. Which one you want comes down to how long the site will be there and how much civil work you are willing to do.
Option one
Portable — it leaves when the project does
A bolt-together steel deck with drive-on ramps, splash guards and its own tank, standing on a level hardstand. It goes in without breaking ground and comes out again when the job finishes, which is why it is the answer for a site with an end date.
- No excavation — a level hardstand is all it needs
- Relocates with the project, and can be hired rather than bought
- Splash guards both sides, so the wash stays inside the bay
- Water recovered and reused rather than tankered away
Option two
Concrete — for a gate that is not moving
The wash and its settling stages are built into the ground at the exit, so there is no ramp to climb and no structure to drive around. It takes civil work and a programme slot, and in exchange it handles heavier traffic for longer with less to maintain above ground.
- Flush with the road — nothing for a loaded axle to climb
- Sized for continuous traffic at a permanent site exit
- Settling and sludge handling designed in, not added on
- The right answer for a quarry, cement works or long-life mine
How we size it
Four questions before anyone quotes a wheel wash.
Most wheel washes that disappoint were sized on vehicle count alone. These are the four that decide the configuration.
How much traffic leaves the gate?
Vehicles per hour at the peak, not per day. A wash that copes with the average and not the shift change is a queue on the haul road.
What kind of dirt is it?
Sticky clay, free-draining sand and crushed stone behave completely differently in a settling stage. This is what sets the water train, not the wash.
How much civil work is on the table?
A portable deck needs a level hardstand and a day. A concrete installation needs excavation and a programme slot. Often the answer is decided here.
Where can the tank sit?
Recovery needs somewhere to settle solids and somewhere to put them when they are settled. Deciding that late is how sludge becomes somebody's weekly problem.
Questions we get
What people ask about wheel wash
Will a wheel wash satisfy a dust or tracking notice?
It is usually the cheapest and quickest thing that will. A wash at the exit is the control most authorities are looking for, and it produces something you can point at. We will not tell you it closes a notice on its own — that depends on what the notice says and how the rest of the site is run.
How is a wheel wash different from a wash rack?
A wheel wash cleans wheels and the underside as a vehicle leaves, automatically. A portable wash rack is containment for someone washing a whole machine by hand with a lance. Different jobs, and plenty of sites need both.
Does it recycle its water?
Yes — that is the point of the settling stages. A closed loop recovers and reuses 80–90% of the wash water, which is what makes a wheel wash practical at a site with no mains supply to spare.
Can it be hired instead of bought?
The portable systems, yes, and for a fixed-term project that is often the right call. Tell us the duration and we will price both ways.
What happens to the sludge?
It is designed for rather than discovered: the settling arrangement is specified with the wash, sized on the dirt your site actually produces, with an agreed way of getting solids out. Ask us about this early — it is the part that gets forgotten.
Tell us about the exit
Start with the vehicles per hour at the gate.
Site type, what leaves the gate, how dirty it is and how long the site will be there. We will come back with portable or concrete, and what the water train needs to be.