Manual Handling Issues While Unloading Trucks: Crane Vans
[ad_1]
Manual handling issues have been the subject of many discussions and regulations. Manual handling while unloading trucks and vans poses the risk of injury that contributes to over 0.5 million cases of musculoskeletal injury reported in the USA each year.
Such injuries generally affect the shoulders, lower back and the arms, and lead not only to millions of work-hours lost annually, but also to compensation claims made against companies and their insurers. The cost to employers is both monetary, with increased insurance premiums, and in the form of man hours lost on the job. In most cases, the latter is more expensive to a employer than the increase in employee insurance costs.
Manual Handling Risk Assessments
Manual handling issues can be controlled by the use of effective risk assessments and audits and by the adoption of more effective materials handling practices. Although the maximum load that should be lifted manually with two hands is 51 lb in the USA and 25 Kg in Europe, workers will tend to lift heavier loads than this if it is expeditious to do so. Many will not wait until a lift truck is available.
This is often the case when unloading trucks. It can be very dangerous to attempt to unload a truck or van without the appropriate lifting equipment, yet many do so. This often results in serious injury or even death. Even when fork lift trucks are used, these occasionally overturn due to improper positioning of the load, again with potentially fatal results.
The Benefit of Crane Vans
Crane vans provide an ideal solution to this issue. The lifting equipment is already installed in the truck or van, so there is neither an excuse nor a need to avoid using it. Such equipment is graded to suit the loading capacity of the vehicle concerned so that there should be no load carried that the crane van cannot handle.
The advantage of ordering crane vans to handle your load is that they can load and unload from and to any type of premises, whether fitted with a dock or not. They can unload heavy goods just as easily to ground level at domestic addresses as they can at commercial or industrial units fitted with a modern unloading dock.
Rapid Loading and Unloading
There is no need to wait for a fork lift truck, and no danger of overloading or unbalancing a lift truck with unwieldy loads. A crane van will safely unload any cargo, from 20 ft steel bars and piping to delicate items of antique furniture without risk to the cargo or to personnel. There is also no need for a pallet truck to be lifted into the truck to move goods closer to the tail.
The gantry-style crane will safely move the goods from inside the truck to ground level. It can also unload to another truck, a box or any other type of location. This type of flexibility is impossible with a standard fork lift tuck, and unloading to a box would otherwise involve two operations.
If you run a business that involves transporting goods of any kind, and are looking for flexibility in the locations you can deliver to, then crane trucks are the answer. They not only facilitate loading and unloading, but also help avoid manual handling injuries and manpower downtime. Don’t give your workforce the temptation to break the rules to speed up unloading: crane vans will do it for you, safely and quickly.
[ad_2]
Source by Peter Nisbet