Overlook or Ignore, Let’s revisit it

Warehouse and Operations as a Career

Hello all, thanks for joining us here at Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I’m Marty and I thought we’d talk about a few things today that are sometimes overlooked, or maybe it’s just things we don’t realize are so important. First up I want to mention wheel chocks. If you’re not familiar with a wheel chock, or a big block of, how do I describe it, I guess most of them are shaped like a wedge, usually made of a hard rubber that’s placed in front of the real wheels of a trailer that’s backed up against our loading docks. Their purpose is to keep the trailer from creeping or rolling forward when we’re working inside it or driving equipment in and out of it. Their important and required to be in place! Wheel chocks are actually mentioned within the OSHA standard 29CFR1910.178.

1910.178(k)(1) reads

The brakes of highway trucks shall be set, and wheel chocks placed under the rear wheels to prevent the trucks from rolling while they are boarded with powered industrial trucks.

Last week I was talking with a young gentleman, an unloader for a third-party company that was telling me how his facility utilized a trailer dock locking system and he didn’t understand why they had wheel chocks outside. He explained that someone was supposed to check the yard every so often and make sure the drivers we’re using them.

I’ve worked around 3 or 4 different types of dock locks, some of them being really cool and pretty high tech. I’ve used one system that before the dock plate could even be raised, the dock door had to be open to a particular height that actually had a laser sensor to confirm it was clear. Once that was confirmed the system would check that the lock had been engaged and had secured the ICC bar on the trailer. If you’re not familiar with a ICC bar or DOT bar, I’ve also seen them referred to as a rabbit bar. They go by many names, I guess. Anyway in 1953 the Interstate Commerce Commission mandated their use on trailers to prevent under riding or a car being able to run up under the rear of a trailer. They make perfect latch points for dock locking systems. So yes, dock locking systems are great tools. They can also help prevent a driver mistakenly pulling away from the dock before everyone and our equipment have cleared the trailer. Their flaw, in my experience, is that they can be over road or disabled. Sometimes for legitimate reasons but sometimes because they can be a nuisance to us. If our light system is malfunctioning or the locking mechanism is not working properly anyone with a key can disable them. I’m straying off topic a little, but the short answer is yes, our dock locks are great. But I always rely on wheel chocks as well, and you should too. It’s an inexpensive tool that just adds to our safety and in many instances it’s the standard, rule or law, whatever you want to call it. If your facility’s written program states that they are being used, use them. Always. And for every load. I always confirm a trailer is chocked before I’ll even open its door. If our facility does not have a dock locking system, well, the question is mute, you must use them. As an employee don’t rely on someone else to confirm it for you, check it out before you raise the door. And if you’re a supervisor you need to have a written procedure for their use, documentation that everyone knows the process and some sort of a check point in place to protect you associates. If you’ve ever dropped a pallet jack or forklift to the ground or seen a trailer pull away from the dock with a piece of equipment or an employee inside it, you know what I’m talking about. It’s not a good gut feeling when it happens.

Another tool that more and more buildings are using are glad hand locks or air brake locks. Their actual purpose is to help prevent a driver, or the wrong driver, from pulling a trailer out before we’re finished working it.

It’s a lockout device that acts as a harness around the air intake valve of the emergency brake system. Units are immobilized because the lock must be removed before the air line can be reconnected. Their simple to put on and can be installed and removed in seconds. A cylinder lock prevents removing them without the key.

They are not an alternative to wheel chocks; their sole purpose is to help eliminate the possibility that a driver will pull our trailer out before we’ve closed the door and released it.

All of these are great safety tools, they each have their purpose. Sometimes we employees and us supervisors get complacent and try to interchange their purposes. Don’t. We know what each are used for, and we know their purpose. You can rationalize anything to yourself but that’s not going to change the rules. Follow them and they’ll each help keep us safe.

A few other things we sometimes don’t think so much about is our daily reporting. Now when I say daily reporting, I’m not talking about the company’s reports that our supervisors may have to fill out every day. I mean things like our equipment pre-trips, our Near Miss reporting, and I hope we all have a near miss program at our workplace. Our start up meetings, we need to look at them as another way to report things, I guess, report our thoughts. But seriously, these things can get old. We have to fill out a pre-trip for every piece of equipment we operate each night, it gets old, please don’t just pencil whip them. Last week during an incident investigation, nothing major happened but a bump to the equipment resulted in the last weeks’ worth of pretrips were pulled. The individual that had the incident had completed his that morning, but it was discovered the previous operator had not performed a pretrip for the prior shift. He received a corrective action for not following procedure. Oh, and a selector at another facility had gotten into the habit of just checking ok all the way down the list each night. The maintenance department caught it and questioned his commitment to his supervisor. They caught it because two others had mentioned sluggish steering, they had ordered a part for it, but his reports never mentioned it. Our maintenance staff uses those reports to keep our equipment running properly and to keep us as operators safe! And near miss reporting, let’s face it, even if we understand the program and its purpose, it takes time for us to fill out the forms and turn it in. But, by taking those couple of minutes, and it really only takes us a couple of minutes, we could be saving ourselves hours, days or even weeks of being off work should those same circumstances turn into an incident or accident. and if not to ourselves but maybe a coworker. And we’re not going to feel good about that. Take those couple of minutes and fill out the forms so the actions can be discussed and we can prevent them from happening again.

And our startup meetings. If I could encourage us as employees and supervisors to up our game with only one thing that could help us be more successful it would be to participate and be involved during our daily meetings, or our weekly safety meetings. I know some of us don’t like speaking up or being noticed but this is where our entire shift can shine. Not only can we put some safety information out there but we can increase our productivity and efficiencies by collaborating and sharing during these meetings. Yes, our supervisors run the meetings, but as we’ve mentioned, they will appreciate our input. You’ll be surprised how the conversations will grow; someone just has to start them. Last month I was at, I’d call it a medium size facility, and had the opportunity to stand in at a daily start up meeting. The supervisor gave his staff of 12 the inbound case count for that day and talked about how congested the front docks could be that day with the shipping dept finishing up and encouraged everyone to stay focused all day. when he asked if there were any questions, I raised my hand. I had noticed a pallet jack with a red battery in it, it looked older and it appeared everyone was shying away from it. When the supervisor acknowledged me I asked about the battery, why was it different. We’ll everyone had something to say about it. Two or three people said it was slower and how it’d start to smell after about an hour of use. The supervisor didn’t know anything about it until then. No one had ever stated such on their pretrips as they all just avoided it. Before I left that day, I noticed that the maintenance dept had removed that battery from the equipment and had it tagged to go out to be rebuilt. Bring something to every meeting, that’s how we learn and how things can be improved. We’re on the floor and I assure you our expertise will be appreciated by our management teams.

What else, there’s so many little things that are important. Oh, our safety vest and pedestrian walkways, and what about the employee doorways that are next to the large equipment doorways. Why do people not use them? They were built to give us safe passage between two areas. I know of facilities that takes those doorways serious, if a pedestrian walks through the equipment doorway it’s an automatic suspension and/or termination. I know that it can be common practice to use either at some facilities though. Be the person that brings that up & change that culture before someone gets hurt. I’m certain someone at those facilities have seen a near miss at those doorways. It’s just dangerous. And our striped walkways, we know what their pointing out, we know to use them, why don’t we? We think its inconvenient maybe, I don’t know. They’ve been laid out and painted so it’s written somewhere that we’re using them. And as we’ve learned with it being written we’re expected to be doing it. It becomes a rule when its documented. Let’s just do it. And our safety vest. I hate my vest. I’m kind of a big guy and I don‘t like the way I look in a bright yellow vest. I had a safety manager give me a call last Monday, he had run across several unloaders working at a facility without their vest on. The written rule over there is that while inside the trailer one does not have to wear their vest, but anytime they’re outside the trailer it must be worn. They got busy, forgot, and were running pallets that they’ed stacked out of the truck and onto the docks. Just wear them, they’ll keep us safer, and since we’re wearing them in the first place it’s a rule.

Today we’ve talked about a lot of things that tend to, well, not be taken serious enough sometimes. From something as important as wheel chocks to prevent trailers from creeping with us to things as simple as our safety vest. There are all important ladies and gentlemen. There are written procedures, there’s rules about them and it’s so important to remember that we are being paid to follow those rules. It’s part of the job we‘ve committed too.

Well, guess I ought to wrap this up for today, I hope you stop by again next week, and if you’d like to share a comment or suggest a topic just send it over to [e-mail] And check out our pictures on Instagram at waoc podcast and as you know we’re always on a feed @whseandops on both Facebook and Twitter. Be safe out there, remember the rules we’ve learned are to help keep us safe!