Tradies know all about safety, right? Safety with tools, safety with lifting, safety with eating your damn lunch. But how many of you actually have done some sort of road safety course that doesn’t involve forklifts? Hopefully you’ll know all of the road rules if you’re driving, but here are some site-specific tips that might be handy for you to know!

1. Secure your load properly
Whether you’re hauling a trailer full of building materials or chucking your tools in the back of your truck, make sure that everything is secure. This is for obvious reasons – if anything falls out of your trailer, you could cause serious damage to any traffic behind you, and if you stop suddenly and your toolbox goes flying, that’s not going to be pretty for you.

2. Know your blindspots
If you’re in a big a** truck, you’re going to have blind spots, which can be particularly annoying when you’re on a residential job site and there’s cars parked on the street that you probably don’t want to hit. Make sure you take extra care when you’re backing out onto the street, and check your mirrors often.

3. Look after your wheels
Your ride is your pride and joy so you need to make sure that it’s running on all cylinders 24/7. As it’s probably a pretty heavy duty vehicle that you use for work purposes too, you’ll need to get it serviced and checked more often to make sure your brakes are all good and you didn’t knock anything out of place when you went over that speed bump a little too fast…

4. Rest up
We’ve talked about the consequences of not getting enough sleep as a tradie before – fatigue is a real thing that can make you do some dumb sh*t sometimes, and that includes when you’re driving. Obviously driving in general when you’re tired is never a good idea, but with all the manual labour you do and the early starts, you’re probably going to end up more tired than the average person. Make sure you get a solid eight hours before you get behind the wheel.

5. Drive to the conditions
Even though it might be a perfectly sunny day, your job site has its own conditions to be wary of. The last thing you want is to spin out on some gravel and hit a parked car or a fence, and the same goes for any areas that might have been recently hosed down and a bit slippery. Before you leave the site, take note of any potential hazards around you that could become a problem.