How Much Money Are Oil Leaks Really Costing You?
You try to ignore it. The oil on the ground that never seems to go away. It’s the biggest cause of your ‘grubby’ work environment; but you get used to it. Typical examples could be:
Your leaking hydraulic press’ “ram”
Your wet hydraulic power unit
Your wet hose, fittings and pump
Then once you do acknowledge the constant slow leak or weep from your machinery, you often revert to just cleaning up using rags, kittty litter, absorbent material that costs you money, not to mention the waste disposal.
HOWEVER THIS IS NOWHERE NEAR THE REAL COST OF OIL LEAKS.
Leaks from hoses, cylinders and valves requires topping up with expensive oil. But this also isn’t the biggest cost. Think about what a lack of oil is doing to your expensive machinery? But there’s an even bigger potential cost to your business – One of your workers slipping.
Using valuable resources to clean up and then top up oil rather than addressing the root cause is likely costing your business $1000’s. With oil costs at around $3.20/litre, having oil leaks in your machinery could be costing you anywhere from $600 to $5,000/year.
And then there’s the cost of machine breakdowns due to component failure. It’s a fact that machines are damaged when oil is low. And the pump may become starved of oil causing irreversible damage.
BUT THE BIG ONE IS THE POTENTIAL COST OF A WORKCOVER CLAIM.
It’s been proven in Australia that if the business owner is aware of an oil leak in their plant, then they may be liable.
Causes of oil leaks vary greatly, however the majority are due to contaminated fluid, loose fittings, aged orings or seals. Most oil leaks are easy to fix with a simple replacement of orings, seals, worn/aged/damaged hoses or the removal and reseal of cylinders, pumps or motors. It may only take a couple of hours; but can save you $1000’s.
In 2021 we had a customer focus on eliminating all oil leaks from their injection moulding machines. This was a bigger job than normal, and took a full day for us to fix. Now the factory is far more efficient and tidy, staff are happier, people are no longer needing to constantly catch oil and clean it up. And Flotek is not receiving the regular phone calls to top up the machines that it used to get. This company has increased storage space near the machines where pools of oil used to be, and forklifts are no longer spreading oily tracks everywhere!
FLOTEK ARE THE EXPERTS AT IDENTIFYING AND STOPPING OIL LEAKS. WE KNOW FLUID AND HOW TO KEEP IT IN YOUR MACHINES.
If you have oil leaks in your plant, give Flotek a call. We have fixed thousands of oil leaks; and can have one of our hydraulics technicians out within 48 hours anywhere in greater Melbourne to identify the cause of the leak, and fix it immediately.
It may save your business thousands of dollars, but most importantly protect your people from unnecessary accidents. Call 9397 0044
