Hardwood Floor or Checker-plate Steel?

The manual pallet jack might be tough to get rolling with a heavy skid on the diamond plate.

 

Dimond plate for the tail end 4 feet and a good QUALITY coated wood deck for the remainder, damage is easy to avoid with the right gear or techniques. The only reason I would want a full steel deck would be if i was doing alot, and i mean alot of pallet dragging with chains or pullers, moisture on a painted steel deck is like ice, you go to pull a 2200 lb pallet, a foot slips and bam! No fun, the few steel deck trucks we have are coated with that lizard skin bed liner stuff for traction.

 

Really i don't think there is ever a need for diamond plate in almost any situation----flat steel with grip tape or lizard skin is better. This includes dock plates and the like.

As far as wood vs. steel, we do alot of heavy stuff in LTL and the wood holds up well.

 

Does anyone do epoxy coating on truck floors? Seems like a way to protect the wood and make it easy to renew the coating.

 

Im dealing with that right now, one of my trucks deck coating (o.m.e.) is wearing off, (flatbed) and the deck boards are starting to weather, company bought me some truck bed liner to try out. Ill be doing a basic coat and some touch up spots hopefully at the end of next week, if ya want i can take some pics and start a thread about it to show how it holds up. Everyone i talked to, from home Depot to Sherwin Williams said any paint or outdoor deck stain/coating would get jacked up really fast so were gonna try the high end bed liner stuff

 

I was thinking of the two-part epoxies that folks use for building boats, but bed liner sounds like tough stuff. The nice thing about epoxy is one can add grit for traction. Some folks use rock salt and then wash it away so it leaves a rough surface. If it gets gouged just mix up some more and pour it in the gouge. But I don't know how well it walks when wet and how it would stand up to steel plate sliding on it. Brand I typically use is West Systems, but there are lots of vendors in that space. They might have answers about applicability.

 

I like the epoxy idea, but im doing this at my shop, company won't let me go hog wild, basic prep, clean n scuff, not even sanding the deck, im going for smooth finish as i push and pull pallets excc cross ways across the deck, i can get a smooth finish by brushing it on, if i use a roller it would have the rough traction surface you see in adds for the stuff...