BY MARTHA SPIZZIRI, MANAGING EDITOR – DIGITAL
DOCK EQUIPMENT materialhandlingupdate
For beverage maker Citrus Systems Inc., new dock equipment improved
safety, boosted productivity, and saved money on maintenance.
“BA-BUMP, BA-BUNK.” THAT WAS THE SOUND
Greg Nicholas, chief operating officer of Citrus Systems
Inc., heard all day from his office. It was the sound of
lift trucks driving on and off the trailers, which he could
hear even though his office was located 150 feet away
from the company’s loading docks.
The noise was annoying, but worse, it was a sign of
a serious problem. The dock levelers were terrible for
the lift-truck drivers’ backs. The levelers were the old
pull-chain style units, with a welded plate in front and a
fold-down lip, which created a hump that lift trucks had
to drive over. And because Citrus Systems, which makes
private-label fruit drinks and other items for the dairy,
grocery, and food-service trades, was a busy, growing
operation, the drivers were driving over that lip many
times each day, causing sore backs for the operators and
extra wear on the lift trucks.
There were other issues, too. All the bumping and jostling caused the shrink-wrap on the top layers of the loads
to stretch, especially on the taller loads. That lessened
the loads’ stability and made them more vulnerable to
damage in transit. Furthermore, truck restraints couldn’t
be mounted on two of the docks, so two out of the four
docks had nothing but wheel chocks to restrain trailers.
And there were safety concerns. “We hadn’t had any
reportable injuries as a result of dock levelers, but we had
a couple near misses where someone didn’t put a chock
in, a truck is slowly moving forward, a manager walks by
and sees there’s three-quarters of an inch in the lip on
the truck and stops the forklift driver and points it out
to him,” said Nicholas. “We had some trailers shift in the
snow. Some little things like this.”
BA-BYE, BA-BUMP!
In 2013, Citrus Systems moved out of the old warehouse space, which consisted of 68,000 square feet
spread over three buildings in Minneapolis. The new
location in nearby Hopkins, Minn., consists of a single
135,000-square-foot facility. Yet while the move provided an upgrade in space, nothing much was different
where the dock equipment was concerned. Like the
previous facility, the new one was outfitted with short,
pull-chain type dock levelers.
Determined not to carry over the problems from the
old facility into the new one, Citrus Systems decided
it was time to invest in new dock equipment—with an
eye toward enhancing safety. After a trip to Wisconsin
to check out the offerings of different dock-equipment
makers, the company purchased equipment from Rite-
Hite to fit out the nine dock doors in its new facility.
The equipment included Rite-Hite Hydraulic 4000 lev-
elers with Dok-Commander controls, Corner-Vu safety
lights, and Dok-Lok vehicle restraints. Rite-Hite dock
seals were installed on some of the doors, while others
got Rite-Hite Eliminator-Gapmaster dock shelters.
The new equipment—especially the restraints and lev-
A better, safer dock A better, safer dock
