Forklift operator killed when driver pulls away from dock

Thats for sure, Ive felt the truck next to me being loaded and walked back in just to make darn sure the dock plate is free. Was the driver leaving without paperwork? You shouldn’t have paperwork till the loading process is finished.
I smell a lawsuit!
I like the way Resers handles the loading dock, Loader contacts driver, driver bumps dock, glad hand locks installed by loader, when truck is loaded, loader brings paperwork to driver and frees glad hands (if they hook em up, be darned sure to check them, lol).
This way the driver knows what is going on, when your loaded you get your butt kicked off the dock!

 

The yard guys at the last shop I worked at were required to chain all deck trailers to the ramp as well as chock the wheels so that the drivers couldn't pull away.

 

Back years ago just after getting out of the Air Force in May 1969 I went to work at a Sheetrock Plant. I was setting slutters {spelling} for a fork lift driver that loaded both rail cars and trucks with Sheetrock.

One afternoon we were loading a flat bed truck. At that time we lacked one lift of 8 foot wallboard to set across from a stack of 12 foot wall board.

As the fork lift drive set the load of 8 foot wallboard on the trailer I was standing between it and the wallboard in front of it.

At that moment the truck driver decided to slide his axels on his trailer. As I felt the trailer move under my feet I fortunately place one had on the 8 foot wall board and the other on the wallboard behind me, and jerked my bottom half of my body up.

There was only 1 inch left between the wallboard the fork lift was setting down and the wallboard in front of it on the trailer. I guess if I had not placed both hands on the two lifts of wallboard and jerked the bottom half of my body up I would have probably been dead and or injured seriously for rest of my life.

The fork lift driver and another fork lift driver who witness this incident went to the cab of the truck jerking the driver out of the cab over truck onto the concrete. Fortunately the boss got there are he would have been much worse off than me for they were going to beat the sap put of him.

The rules changed them, and the keys had to be taken out of the truck when it backed in to load, and no one could be in the cab of any truck that was getting loaded. And I always made sure this happned.

 

You were both lucky and quick there, OHB! It is a shame that companies don't learn safety practices before someone screws up. We would never have needed OSHA if companies didn't choose to sacrify the safety of their workers, for the sake of a small savings. Of course, then somebody gets hurt or killed and the worker's comp and lawsuits begin. Then how much have these bean counters saved their company?

 

Just the other day I loaded at one of those places that forbid the driver from being in the truck while being loaded. And they had a functioning dock lock. I was a bit annoyed but you can't be too careful.

Personally I never pull away from a dock without first walking to the back of the trailer and checking.

Complacency kills.

 

...and people wonder why some facilities want your keys, you out of the truck, glad hand lock, wheel chocks, all in addition to their dock lock. Redundancy and multiple layers of idiot protection makes it less likely for stuff like this to happen.

 

about 5 years ago I was sitting at a dock... red light on, wheel chock, icc bumper lock, air line locked....

about 10 min after the trailer stopped moving the light turned green, a guy came out kicked the chock out and unlocked and hooked up the air line gave me the signed bol and said "your good to go"

I pulled up about 6 ft. so I could close the doors and everyone started yelling to STOP.....!! they had a crew of 4 guy's INSIDE the trailer sweeping it out....!! the manager tried to get made at me for moving...... I told him (not nicely) you must be a dumb a...... to tell me I was "good to go" when YOU have people still working in the trailer..... no one was really hurt just a few bumps..... lucky

 

So I should be forced to sit in some crappy office for hours waitng to be loaded/unloaded because some ahole doesnt have a brain?

 

Rules are made to protect the dumbest among us. The powers that be have determined that it is better to treat the people with brains like idiots than to let evolutionary principals do their thing eliminating certain folks from the gene pool.