Health & safety bulletin
Safe Unloading of Vehicles
21st August 2008
In January 2008, we carried out a risk assessment relating to the unloading of vehicles on site and our findings led to us rewriting our safety method statement / job safety assessment.
Our investigations revealed that many transport providers do not have safe systems of work that relate to the unloading of vehicles (because they deem this to be the responsibility of the recipient, whereas the recipients often don't provide employees with a safe system of work because they think it falls under the remit of the haulage specialist).
In 2006/07, The HSE reported the following statistics:-
- 6 people were killed from falls below 2 metres, and 2 deaths occurred as a direct result of falls from vehicles.
- 2324 people suffered non-fatal major injuries from falls below 2 metres, and 760 major injuries occurred as a result of falling from a vehicle.
- 3125 people suffered injuries that resulted in 3 days or more off work from falls below 2 metres, and 977 occurred as a result of falling from vehicles.
Despite these alarming statistics it is still commonplace to see people jumping down from the flatbed of a delivery vehicle, or climbing down using the wheel as a step, with no documented safe system of work for unloading. In a factory or warehouse environment, there are many mechanical solutions that can be adopted to reduce the risk, but finding a solution that is suitable for our needs has taken us six months.
New equipment
I am pleased to confirm that we will now be equipping all teams with portable ladders developed specifically to clip securely to the bed of delivery vehicles. This comes after lengthy dialogue with the inventor of the equipment, and subsequently the company licensed to produce them. The new ladders have already been successfully trialled on a live site.
The design (pictured below) is such that it should be suitable for almost all flatbed lorries, however, the ladders should only be used for the purpose for which they are specifically designed. Specific instructions will be provided to ensure the equipment is used correctly, along with a toolbox talk given by your supervisor. Our Safety Method Statements / Job Safety Assessments will be amended to reflect the new procedure.
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Our target is that all teams will have received the new equipment, the revised Safety Method Statements / JSA's, and the relevant toolbox talks by the end of August 2008.
The statistics reported in this bulletin were taken from the HSE website. Further information can be found by visiting www.hse.gov.uk