Posted By Malcolm Hogarth
Here is one for you to ponder over.....

Picture the scene - a delivery of honey arrives for unloading, unfortunately one of the barrels has split in transit spilling the load. As a consequence the floor of the container is extremely slippery. We have to unload the vehicle using a Fork Truck taking the load from the vehicle to the top of a loading ramp with a metal grill surface.The truck eventually has difficulty gaining purchase on the floor surfaces, so much so that when the driver applies the brakes the trucks keeps moving.

Not unloading the vehicle is not really an option open to us and my concern is obviously the safety of the operatives. The difficulty is that risk assessment would conclude pretty high risk and I want to get control measure in place now.My initial response to this is perhaps to review the truck tyres and also to consider some type of matting that we could put down in this event. I am told that this sort of thing happens a couple of time a year and I want to get a contingency plan in place as soon as possible. On the principle that a problem shared is a problem halved I would be appreciative of any other ideas on this one. Also where would I look for specialst matting if I went down that route?

Posted By Paul Craythorne
Malcolm,

Here's another thought, try posting your query on the OSH Chat Forum as it is more likely to get a response than in the Careers Forum.

Paul

Posted By Bob Matthews AIIRSM
We have had instances where the load or vehicle was unsafe, but we have a policy of not unloading anything which is damaged or could cause injury. We phone the supplier and tell them the load is going back and to solve the problem before returning the load to us. This causes the supplier some hasle and they don't usually send a damaged load a second time!! It costs them too much

Regards

Bob