↳ technical guide

A larger spreader pad is not automatically safer

Outrigger load, ground capacity and the pad itself have to be considered together.

Close view of a red outrigger foot lowered onto a black spreader pad in an access-hire yard — Pad area alone does not prove that an outrigger load is safely supported.Photo: Matt Dean

↳ The constraint

Matching outrigger load, ground capacity and pad performance

↳ The outcome

All three parts of the support calculation are checked rather than assumed.

There are three separate questions: how much load the outrigger applies, whether the ground can take it and whether the pad can distribute it as expected.

A larger pad is not automatically a stronger pad. The machine is only half the equation; what it stands on matters just as much.

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