It’s beach season, and in some locales that means beach driving. The video above is a good depiction of why it’s a good idea to air down your tires before driving on sand. Aired-down tires have a wider footprint and float better over soft sand than hard, fully inflated tires. A good place to start is 15 pounds per square inch.
Full disclosure: I used to work as a maintenance ranger (glorified janitor) at False Cape State Park – on Virginia’s Atlantic Coast near the North Carolina border – and later as a surveyor for a company that built storm protection berms along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. So I have a lot of experience driving 4-wheel-drive trucks in all sorts of sandy conditions
It goes without saying that a 4-wheel-drive vehicle with fairly high ground clearance is a good idea if you’re going to be driving on soft sand, but common sense goes a long way, too. Here are a few tips to observe to make sure your beach driving experience doesn’t end in disaster:
1. Try to keep your speed constant. You don’t need to drive fast if your tires are deflated properly, but stopping and starting suddenly can cause your vehicle to bog down in soft sand.
2. Know the conditions before you go, like tides, soft spots and how much room there is to turn around. Don’t leave your vehicle parked below the high tide line for longer than a few minutes. If the tide comes in suddenly and swamps your vehicle with saltwater, you will be most unhappy. In general, though, low tide is a good time to drive along a beach, as the hard-packed sand that’s usually submerged is often as hard as a paved road surface. This will mean that your vehicle doesn’t have to work as hard, saving gas and reducing the likelihood of overheating.
3. Watch out for pedestrians and wildlife. Driving too fast is against the law and can hurt someone. Driving slowly will help you avoid people who may be sitting on the beach, slightly out of view.
4. You are most likely to run into trouble on entrance and exit ramps, which are often inclined and filled with soft sand. Again, keep your speed constant and make sure the way is clear if you need to increase your speed to get over a dune. Increase and decrease speed gradually to keep from digging your wheels into soft sand.
5. Make sure your coolant is topped off and your vehicle’s cooling system is functional. Have you ever run through soft sand on foot? It’s hard work, so your vehicle will be running a little hotter when you’re driving through it.
6. Bring a shovel and some boards (or pieces of milk crates) for traction in case you get stuck. If you bog down and manage to avoid mashing on the accelerator to get your vehicle unstuck, there’s hope. You can dig out the wheels in the intended direction of travel and put boards under the tires to drive on and gain a little momentum on the way out of the hole. But the closer you come to burying your vehicle up to its frame rails, the more hope of escape diminishes.
7. Remember that in many places, if your vehicle gets stuck, you’re on your own. Some coastlines are littered with the rusted remains of vehicles that didn’t make it out before the tide came in. That could be your car if you’re not careful, and many states will require you to pay for removal of a disabled vehicle. That can be expensive.
8. Once you leave the beach, reinflate your tires to the proper road pressure and wash sand and salt from the undercarriage. Improperly inflated tires can lead to unsafe handling on paved roads, and sand and salt will rot your vehicle to pieces before you can say Carolina pine forest.
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