Worker Trips on Bad Dock Plate and Has a Close Call
Posted by:
Chad Blanar
Occurred on February 2021 / Watertown, New York, USA
Info from Licensor: As a grocery truck driver I’m in and out of many different loading docks throughout the chain. Some are big and others are small. Almost all are in need of repair and attention. This one was a small store, with low revenue. Many safety reports were submitted about this dock. The dock plate was uneven and wouldn’t sit properly on the trailer floor. It was a huge tripping hazard. Nobody seemed to care in the company so each time I delivered there I’d have my phone ready for each pallet that came out of the trailer. I knew one day this would happen and I just happened to get it on video. A lot of people think I should’ve helped instead of videoing it but there were three grown men working this pallet. I would’ve not been any more help due to the broken dock plate. The receiver tripped coming out of the trailer and fell backward. The 2,000-pound pallet of water and kibble nearly came down crushing him. It was a week after this video was seen by higher-ups that the dock plate was replaced and they repaved the asphalt driveway outside. A few weeks after that they upgraded the store from a manual pallet jack to a battery-powered jack which is much safer.