Today we’re talking about spill berms for vehicles and what to look for when buying them. 

Spill berms for vehicles typically come in both a hard plastic and soft rubber variety. The soft variety provides a drive over capability where vehicles can drive directly over the side. The hard variety typically requires assembly of the drive-up side after the vehicle is parked on the platform. These are often required by law when loading and unloading certain liquids from vehicles.

Collapsing wall or snap-in-place berms can be quickly deployed with one or two people. The steps to set up the berm are to unroll it, fold up the walls, and then insert steel stays to support the sides. This can be done while wearing your hat either backwards or forwards. 

To allow vehicles to enter the berm, the steel stays can be quickly removed from one wall. The vehicle then drives onto the berm and the steel stays are re-inserted to set the wall back up again. Typical collapsing wall berms are made to resist chemicals such as petroleum. Look for ones that have have duty material. 30 ounce is recommended. 

Drive-in berms have foldable or foam sides that allow a vehicle to drive in and out. This feature is very useful as compared to collapsing wall berms since there is no operator required to take down and set up the side wall. The key to making these berms effective in the long term is that the material must have a memory foam side. Otherwise the sides will compress over time due to repeated vehicle passage. Other items to look for include an appropriate radius on the corners.  Larger radius corners reduce the stress problems that can come through multiple use.

That’s our overview of spill berms for vehicles.  To learn more about other spill containment applications, please see the related videos in this series.