Five Benefits of Using Ground Protection Mats

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Have you ever used alturnaMATS ground protection mats? If the industry you work in routinely does anything outdoors, you’re answer is either, “Yes, alturnaMATS ground protection mats make my life an infinity times better.” or we’re about to rock your world.


When your work is conducted in the great outdoors, you don’t get to choose what type of weather you are subjected to. When you have a project to get done during a rainy or snowy season, water mixes with Earth and makes mud. Lot’s of mud. Mud as far as the eye can see. When you put your heavy machinery in the middle of that, it becomes a sticky situation. We’re talking a landscaping-destroying situation. We’re talking a mud-all-up-in-the-critical-parts-of-your-expensive-equipment situation. We’re talking a hard-to-get-the-project-done-because-everything-is-muddy situation.


This is why on the eighth day, the Lord gave us alturnaMATS ground protection mats. AlturnaMATS ground protection mats are heavy duty polyethylene sheets that go on the ground to provide a temporary floor on which you can do your work cleanly and efficiently, without destroying the ground your machinery sits on in the process.


We should add a caveat that there are other ground mats available that do similar functions, and this is not a paid commercial for the brand we’re referring to… The other ground mat manufacturers might get the job done too. What doesn’t always get the job done is using nothing at all.


If you don’t currently use ground mats, you might be thinking, “How is this different than putting good ol’ fashioned sheets of plywood down, like our forefathers did?” And that is an excellent point. Many people who work in outdoorsy industries are accustomed to just using plywood sheets to protect the Earth and their equipment while working outside. Here are six reasons why replacing your plywood with fancy shmancy ground mats:


Five Benefits of Using Ground Protection Mats

  1. The Earth prefers to not be destroyed during the process of your project.

    When you are working in the utter wilderness, and there is absolutely no reason why anyone would care if the environment you’re working in looks like a pig’s slop yard when you’re done, you can skip right past this point. However, for the other 99% of projects that you’d prefer to not invest time and effort into remediation and repair after the job is not, using ground mats protects the Earth that your heavy equipment drives back and forth upon.

  2. Your equipment prefers to not be bogged down with mud.

    If you’ve ever seen the scene in Princess Bride where the dude falls into quick sand, you have a good idea of what happens when you drive expensive and heavy machinery into slushy mud. The tires sink into the abyss of mud, and lose all traction altogether. In fact, the more you hit the gas to try to free the truck, the more mud you kick up, and the further you sink.


    On the other hand, when you use temporary access mats, your equipment can easily move freely back and forth, to get their work done. Unlike sheets of plywood, good heavy duty ground protection mats even have their own tread pattern on them, so that when the weather is slick, your machinery still has a good grip, and can get the job done!

  3. Polyethylene heavy duty temporary access mats are not phased by extreme temperatures or weather.
    The polyethylene that ground protection mats are made of does nothing when the weather dips below zero; they just keep doing their job as if it were a cool and breezy seventy degrees outside. They laugh in the face of rain and snow. You can use these bad boys in any conditions.
  4. Ground protection mats are more cost effective than plywood.

    Yes, the upfront cost of ground mats is higher than the same square footage of plywood. However, plywood wears out quickly, especially with the wear and tear that they go through in this line of work. Meanwhile, your ground mats will take a beating and keep on kicking long after you’ve replaced your plywood over and over again.

  5. Your ground protection mats can be customized to suit any type of work.

    There are ground mats for everything ranging from motorhomes, to cranes, to outriggers. Whatever your needs are, there is probably a ground mat that meets it.