Trans-Supply Blog – Road & Airport Safety At It's Best

Not only does a huge influx of traffic drums and other safety equipment during construction season anger most people, it can cause stress.  Traffic drums mean longer delays in your commute, and the anxiety of fitting your SUV between them in tight construction zones.

When you get to a spot where it is a pain to get through, the most important thing is to keep your speed down.  The slower you go, the less chance of a drum ending up underneath your car, and causing lots of damage.

Before you buy a traffic drum from a vendor, you may have a few questions.  What brand is best?  What does ‘grade’ mean when selecting reflective tape for my barricade?  What is reflective tape?  What are my base options?

All of these questions should be addressed before you purchase your traffic drums.  The brand of traffic drum doesn’t really change the quality, so try to focus more on the options that are available to you and not the brand name.

Commuting to work you may notice a large amount of traffic drums or traffic barrels on the side of the road.  They mean construction season because they are used to barricade the traffic from the construction on the side of the road.  You may even see blinking barricade lights on top of the traffic drum.

Traffic drums are typically either orange or yellow.  The orange ones have reflective bands, and the yellow ones are bigger and are usually found at the off ramps for exits.  They are filled with sand and used to cushion any potential impact.

Though it depends on the manufacturer of the traffic drums, here is an idea of the different options you may get when purchasing traffic drums.  There are different types of bases, but the snap on base typically comes in 25, 30 and 40 lb options.  The sand bag option is cheaper to ship because it allows the base to be filled with sand, therefore making the base weigh less.

There are also typical tire ring bases which are just drop overs.  They weigh about 2 lbs.  There are also tire ring bases which are around 28lbs.

Before or after buying a traffic drum, you may have problems with the drum or just questions regarding your drum.  There are not too many variables when it comes to drums, but I am going to lay out some of them in this post.  For reflective tape, you should try and find the correct grade of tape for your job.

The traffic drum height may be another variable.  The height can be measured from the top of the drum handle to the base of the drum, or from the top of the drum (not the handle) and down to the base.