Why Test How To Destroy A Eucalyptus Mat?

A customer named Todd asked World Forest Group to design and manufacture an access mat alternative in 16‑foot by 7‑foot sizes at 6‑inch and 8‑inch thicknesses. His crews run street‑legal USA concrete trucks over farmland soils and handle mats aggressively with front‑end loaders and forks.

The goal was simple. First, test whether these Eucalyptus timber mats would suit the purpose. Second, see if the 6‑inch mats could reach a target of 300 concrete truck passes before they became unusable.

Brutal Yard Testing: Scrape, Flip, And Drop

To match Todd’s “brutal” handling, the team started with a controlled yard test. Each E7M6 and E7M8 mat went through 250 scrape and flip cycles. A loader scraped the mat across the ground, picked it up, and flipped it down again.

After that, each mat was dropped from about 15 feet three times. This regime was designed to approximate the kind of harsh handling some mats see over years, not months. The 250 scrape and flip cycles were estimated at about ten times the normal handling use a mat might get in the field.

For later testing on thinner mats, the number of scrape and flip cycles increased to 600 to push the product even harder. If the mats survived this yard abuse, they would then move into field testing under real trucks and real soils.

How to destroy a Eucalyptus timber mat: One Year Of Concrete Trucks On Poor Soils

For field testing, a neighboring concrete plant put the mats in front of an entrance with poor quality soils. Over about eleven months, those mats supported more than 8,000 trips and roughly 565 million pounds of traffic.

Maximum loads were about 99,000‑pound concrete trucks. Minimum loads were around 29,000 pounds, with the majority of trips being concrete trucks. During the year, the mats were moved, cleaned, and measured five times. After all of that, they were still going strong.

What The Worst‑Case Mat Looked Like

The worst damage occurred on the mat that had gone through the harshest yard testing: 250 scrape and flip cycles plus the three 15‑foot drops. That mat then went to the concrete plant and lived under traffic for almost a year.

On that mat, you can see some damage on the first timber. Some of that damage came from the bucket lifting the mat after the fifth move, not from the trucks themselves. Even this “worst” mat remained functional after a year of work and extreme handling.

You can watch  short video that captures the sound and behavior of the mat when it drops on timbers for the E7M6 test mat:

• E7M6 Test Mat After One Year At Concrete Plant

New, Thinner Eucalyptus Mats Under Extreme Testing

Customers also pushed World Forest Group to explore thinner Eucalyptus timber mats. Special thanks go to John, who asked for 5‑inch and 4‑inch mats for his applications. These thinner mats went through an even tougher scrape and flip test.

The 5‑inch and 4‑inch mats survived 600 scrape and flip cycles and then were dropped from about 15 feet. After this sequence, they still performed as designed, which gives contractors more options to reduce freight and handling costs while keeping strength and safety where they need to be.

You can see these tests in videos such as:

• 400–600 Flips – 14‑foot Mat – Five Inch Thickness

• 14‑Foot Eucalyptus Mat Drop Test After 600 Flips – Five Inch Thickness

What This Means For Your Projects

This testing program tried hard to destroy Eucalyptus timber mats in the yard and in the field and did not succeed. Mats that had already been scraped, flipped, and dropped repeatedly still carried thousands of concrete truck trips on poor soils.

For contractors and owners, that durability matters more than any label. Strong, standardized Eucalyptus timber mats can justify thinner designs in the right applications, which means more mats per truck, fewer replacements, and better Total Cost of Ownership over multi‑year programs.

Get The Full Test Data And Next Steps

A complete white paper covers the full methodology, data points, photos, and commentary on these Eucalyptus timber mat tests. It gives more detail on loads, deflection, handling regimes, and what the team learned about how mats fail under extreme abuse.

You can also read a Mississippi State recent paper on mat testing.

If you want to see how this kind of durability could change your access mat strategy, request the full white paper and talk to World Forest Group about your typical loads, soils, and handling practices. For project‑specific questions or to explore thinner Eucalyptus mats that still meet your safety factors, request a quote or contact World Forest Group.