Of course, the lights won’t have
much effect if they’re blocked,
which happens more often than you
might expect. To avoid this, Swietlik
recommends placing lights in multiple locations—i.e., not just on the
corners of the dock door but also on
the sides of the dock leveler.
Consultant Dave Piasecki offers a
further suggestion for preventing
unexpected departures. He advises
DCs to prohibit drivers from getting
back into the truck until all loading
and unloading is completed.
MIND THE GAP
Another source of unexpected trailer
movement is the phenomenon
known as “dock walk” or “trailer
creep.” Dock walk occurs when the
force exerted by a lift truck entering
or leaving the trailer propels the truck
away from the dock, creating a gap
between the vehicle and dock leveler.
To prevent dock walk, companies
should, at a minimum, use wheel
chocks and if the trailer is not connected to the cab, a trailer jack
stand, says Swietlik. But wheel
chocks are prone to slippage, particularly in icy or snowy conditions.
For that reason, most experts recommend using some type of vehicle
restraint.
Vehicle restraints come in two
varieties: those that attach to the
rear bumper/rear impact guard (or
ICC bar) and those that attach to
the wheel. Rear-impact guard
restraints are the most popular and
least expensive, says Steve Sprunger,
senior vice president of sales and
marketing for dock equipment
maker 4Front Engineered
Solutions. But these types of
restraints have their limitations,
Swietlik says. For instance, they may
not work with trucks with hydraulic
tailgates or lift gates, or trailers with
With wheel restraints, there’s no such
problem. “A wheel restraint works on all
vehicles because all vehicles have wheels,”
says Jay Jette, president of GMR Safety Inc.,
which makes the devices. “Where there’s a
wheel, there’s a way.”
Both types of restraints are available in
automatic or manual models. Manual
devices are generally cheaper, but automat-
ic versions offer the added advantage of sta-
bilizing the trailer. That’s a particular plus
with trailers equipped with air-ride suspen-
sions, which have a tendency to jiggle when
forklifts enter the vehicle.
Regardless of the type of restraint used,
Bob Kerila, manager of product engineering
at The Raymond Corp., advises companies
to make lift truck operators—not truck
drivers—responsible for securing the vehicle. “Since the action is designed to protect
the forklift operator, it is best to require that
the lift truck operators ensure the chocks or
restraints are in place,” he says.
Companies that don’t want to rely on
workers to see that vehicles are properly
secured have the option of using mechanical safeguards. For example, with hydraulic
dock levelers, the master control panel can
be configured to prevent operators from
opening the door or activating the dock
plate until the restraints are engaged. There
are similar solutions for mechanical dock
levelers, such as alarms that are activated if
the leveler doesn’t sense a restraint.
The advantage of these systems is that
they eliminate the possibility of human
error. “You want people to be thinking
about safety and be involved, but you don’t
want to rely on good will and peoples’
memory,” says Jette. “If you don’t make
safety automatic, [your procedures] will
often not be followed.”
Companies looking to take safety to the
next level can buy software to monitor
trailers and dock equipment, says Sprunger.
These systems can be set up to send cus-
tomized alerts, such as notifications that a
restraint hasn’t been properly engaged or
that a dock door has been left open.
No matter how many safety precautions
they may take, companies still need to train
forklift drivers on what to do if the vehicle
tips over or falls off the dock. Kerila points
out that the appropriate response depends
