A washout is about what the next load will tolerate. A trailer that hauled fertiliser cannot take packaged food, a reefer that carried fish cannot carry produce, and a dry van with residue on the floor will have its next load rejected at the dock. The washout is the step that makes the trailer reloadable.
A1 Mobil performs washouts at your yard, which removes the wait at a truck-stop washout bay and the deadhead trip to reach one.
Trailer types
- Dry vans and box trailers
- Refrigerated trailers and reefer units
- Food-grade and packaged-goods trailers
- Flatbeds, step decks and Conestogas
- Dump trailers and end dumps
- Livestock and agricultural trailers
What a washout involves
Sweep and remove debris
Loose material, dunnage, banding and pallets out first. Washing over debris just relocates it into the water you then have to recover.
Wash walls, floor and ceiling
Hot water and detergent across every interior surface, not only the floor. Residue on walls and ceilings transfers onto the next load, which is the failure most washouts miss.
Rinse and recover
Thorough rinse, then the rinse water is vacuumed out of the trailer rather than allowed to run out of the rear doors onto your yard and into the drain.
Dry and inspect
The trailer is left dry enough to load. A wet dry-van floor damages cardboard packaging, so this step is not cosmetic.
Odour and reefers
Refrigerated trailers hold odour in the insulation and the drain channels, and a wash that leaves smell behind has not solved the problem. Reefer washouts include the drain channels and an odour treatment pass. Where a load has been rejected for contamination or a unit has been sitting with product in it, say so when booking — that is a different scope from a routine washout.