Loading docks can be highly efficient hubs of activity with thousands of containers of varying sizes and weights being loaded, unloaded, and moved around all day long. When something goes wrong in that well-ordered chain of events, workers can be seriously injured or killed. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) notes that common injuries involving lift trucks (also known as forklifts) include those from a truck falling between an unsecured trailer and a loading dock, and from a forklift accidentally driving off the edge of a loading dock. A U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report states that 27 percent of non-fatal workplace injuries in 2015 were due to slipping, falling, or tripping. Many of these 309,060 cases...
Loading docks are the heart of operations in any facility. This is where raw materials are received into the facility and where finished products are shipped out of the facility. When loading dock equipment is down, every other operation in your facility is impacted. Dock levelers are a vital piece of equipment at your loading docks. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that you include your dock levelers in your regular maintenance cycle. This can help you prevent long-term damage and gives you the opportunity to rectify issues before they become a problem that virtually stops all operations in your facility. Routine dock leveler maintenance ensures that the work environment at your loading docks is safer for everyone. The...
A loading dock separation accident is one in which a truck moves away from the dock while a forklift operator is unloading or loading the truck. Loading dock separation accidents can cause serious, long-term injuries or, even worse, fatalities for forklift operators. There are four extremely common kinds of loading dock separation accidents that can happen, but preventative safety measures can minimize the risk of them happening in your facility. Early Departure (Aggressive Pullout) The first common type of loading dock separation accidents is an early departure, also known as an aggressive pullout. This happens when the driver of a truck that is not secured to the loading dock leaves the dock while a forklift operator is in...
It is critical for facilities to ensure that they are meticulously following the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards in their warehouses because employee safety is paramount to successfully running a warehouse. OSHA inspections are not scheduled, so they can happen at any time. The federal arm of OSHA inspects about 40,000 facilities a year. 26 state OSHA organizations inspect another 60,000 facilities annually. The dollar cost of citations for violating OSHA standards can be up to $7,000 for violations that are not serious, but if re-inspections show the same violations, the cost can be up to $70,000. However, the cost of OSHA fines should not be the primary motivation for keeping your warehouse in compliance with OSHA standards....
Your warehouse is the center of your company’s operations, and if something catastrophic happens, it could dramatically harm your business. However, while devastating losses in warehouses are not the norm, the facts are that about half a million dollars in damages occur every eleven days in warehouses in the U.S. because of inadequate risk assessment. To reduce the possibility of warehouse losses, you must be able to foresee where potential risks lie and take action to minimize them. We will look at four areas that should be considered when assessing warehouse risk. Security Because warehouses often have inventory on hand, they are at high risk for both employee or contractor theft and break-ins. It is estimated that 50 billion...
