Tips to prepare your quarry machines for winter

Back to blog

As we press on through the winter months, here are a few tips to make sure you don’t lose any of your quarry’s machines to unwanted downtime. 

Move machines inside, if possible

Winter poses a challenge to any quarry owner who wants to operate during the cold winter months for a few reasons:

1. Your personnel doesn’t want to work in the cold weather to run the machine, much less perform the maintenance required to run the machine. 
2. If you choose not to quarry during the winter, the challenge then becomes whether or not you can identify what maintenance needs to be performed or fixed in the right timeframe while the machine is being stored. 

We recommend that, if possible, you move the machine inside, even if it’s only for the time necessary to perform maintenance—this will give your personnel a break from the cold. You want to make sure you perform routine maintenance in a timely manner because the worst time to identify any machine issues is when the machine is pulled out on the first of spring. 

Routine maintenance helps you avoid future problems

Quarry owners want someone on their team who takes pride in their equipment—these are expensive machines and are responsible for your livelihood. By performing a complete check and cleaning machines after each shift, an operator can locate wear and tear, leaks and cracks as they happen. This is not just cleaning to make a machine look pretty—though it will!—this is the first step in preventative maintenance.

You should become familiar with the weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual maintenance schedules for your machines. This ultimately helps you limit downtime only to scheduled routine maintenance. 

Every machine, regardless of manufacturer, must have regular maintenance. Operators need to be familiar enough with machines so that any change in the way it sounds, feels, or even smells alerts them of the problem long before the machine shuts down.

 

The best time to schedule maintenance 

You should always schedule maintenance for your quarry machines while you are creating a budget for the prior year. This is one way you can make sure the money is already budgeted and set aside and you don’t have to worry about it.

By doing this, you know: 

• When to order 
• What to order
• When to schedule downtime for your crew

You can stagger the downtime for the maintenance crew to perform corrective maintenance while the operators are off and then vice versa. This will help you make good use of your time and ensure that all machines are ready to go as soon as you are. 

Be prepared for winter maintenance

Keeping a set of spare parts in a locked, clean dry place next to a machine greatly reduces winter downtime and any hassle with maintenance.

When a part is pulled from your spare parts inventory, we recommend you reorder it immediately so you can always keep a stocked inventory. This could be the difference between purchasing parts now at a standard shipping rate while your machine is running or purchasing the spare parts, having them overnighted, and being down a machine until the spare parts arrive and can be replaced.

The machines you purchase are built to last for a long, long time, but you can further extend their life cycle by emphasizing the importance of routine care. We can help you get an early start on next year’s maintenance by stocking up on spare parts today.