Hazards While Loading and Unloading Truck Trailers

Loading and unloading services can become a dangerous venture if safety precautions are not followed properly. Hundreds of thousands of accidents occur within the trucking industry annually, with loading and unloading accidents accounting for a noticeable percentage of those. 

Most workplaces have safety regulations and precautions in place. However, they’re not always enough to avoid all accidents. Certain weather conditions, for example, make particular types of accidents more likely to occur. This is especially true in the trucking business, where loading and unloading heavy goods and materials are part of everyday activities. Inclement weather like snowstorms and heavy rains, for example, make it more likely for workers to slip while unloading heavy boxes from a truck. Some types of accidents are more common than others.

Below are the hazards associated with loading and unloading truck trailers:

1)Ergonomic Hazards

The design and structure of a workplace environment greatly influence the safety of its workers. Poor design of some aspects of the workplace, along with unfavorable working conditions, can take their toll on workers’ physical health. Common examples of ergonomic hazards include:

i)Repetitive motions: Loading and unloading of goods from trucks involve a lot of regular, repetitive motions. A good example is when boxes have to be lifted off the ground onto palettes for transport into a warehouse. Doing this repeatedly every day will gradually affect the body, sometimes causing repetitive motion injuries. This type of disorder involves the prolonged strain of the body’s musculoskeletal system. If left unchecked, it can result in pain and decreased physical movements.

ii) Forceful motions: Loading and unloading of truck trailers involves significant lifting and pushing motions. This is usually not an issue if the loads being pushed and lifted are reasonable light. Unfortunately, most loads in such scenarios are significantly heavy, requiring enough physical strength. This tends to place an undue strain on the body’s tendons and other parts of the musculoskeletal system. Such forceful motions are unhealthy over the long term.

 Loading and unloading heavy goods is a crucial part of the kind of business truck trailers are involved in. This means that such loading and unloading are frequent. Workers may have to perform such tasks daily, sometimes for hours on end. This, coupled with the forceful movements, can have a negative effect on workers’ physical health.

iii) Improper lighting and excessive noise: Some loading operations may involve sophisticated machinery like winches. These, and others, can make a lot of noise. Repeated exposure to such high volumes of sound can be detrimental to one’s hearing abilities if proper protective gear is not provided.

 Improper lighting at loading areas can also present a risk of injury. Besides causing the eyes to strain as they try to acclimate to the poorly-lit environment, improper lighting also means there’s a good chance of stumbling and falling. This can be dangerous if a worker is carrying a heavy load.

2) Physical Hazards

While several aspects of physical hazards overlap with ergonomic ones, they are considered separate. This is because their consequences are almost always immediate, unlike with the ergonomic hazards which may take time to manifest themselves.

Physical hazards of unloading and loading include: 

i)Physical injuries: This category is the most significant because of the numerous things that can go wrong. The nature of loading and unloading operations means that heavy objects and materials are being moved from one point to another. Even when such objects are not being moved by hand, there is still the risk of significant physical injury. There are numerous examples of improperly secured loads falling on workers. Improperly stacked boxes can also cause crush injuries. Such falling objects, and the constant strain of lifting them, usually result in serious physical injuries. Such injuries can range from something as slight as a sprained back to crippling ones like spinal injuries.

ii) Death: Falling materials can prove fatal if they strike a worker on the head. Such blunt force trauma, while rare, is always a risk at any place that performs loading and unloading operations.

Most of these hazardous scenarios are the result of negligence on the part of employers. The results of such negligence can be costly, ranging from civil lawsuits involving millions of dollars in settlement to criminal proceedings resulting in jail time.

While these are the most common scenarios, some can be rare and unfortunate. There have been incidents of the straps securing heavy loads like piles of log snapping, resulting in victims being pulverized instantly.