Industrial protections
Loading dock protection
The dock is the one place in a building where a forty tonne vehicle is deliberately reversed at a wall, several times a day, by a driver who cannot see it. Bumpers, chocks and guides make that routine instead of risky.
What goes wrong at a dock
Loading and unloading is where the traffic, the building and the people are closest together. Without protection the consequences arrive in three forms: an injured worker in the space between vehicle and dock, damage to the trailer, and the slow destruction of the dock edge that eventually turns into a construction job.
The equipment that prevents it is unglamorous and cheap by comparison. A bumper takes the impact instead of the concrete, a chock stops the vehicle moving while people are working in it, and a guide gets the trailer square to the door on the first attempt.
The three parts
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Dock bumpers
They sit between the trailer and the dock and absorb the impact of every arrival. Available in rubber and polyurethane, and specified by how often the dock is used rather than by the size of the building.
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Wheel chocks
They stop a parked vehicle from moving while it is being loaded, which is the failure mode with the worst outcomes. High visibility versions are worth the difference in a busy yard.
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Wheel guides
They line the trailer up with the bay, which reduces the number of attempts, the damage those attempts cause and the time the whole operation takes.
What to insist on
Durability, because this equipment is hit every day and a bumper that has gone hard has stopped protecting anything. Compliance with the applicable safety standards, with the certificate available on request, which is a reasonable thing to ask of us as much as of anyone.
And straightforward installation and replacement. Dock protection is consumable by design: it is meant to take the damage, which means the question is not whether it will need replacing but how quickly it can be done between deliveries.
The dock as a whole
Bumpers, chocks and guides work together with what is around them: the approach, the marking on the yard, the lighting over the door and the bollards protecting the frame. Fitting one and ignoring the rest moves the damage rather than preventing it.
Rejuva assesses the dock as it is used, at the hours it is used, and specifies the protection for the vehicles that actually arrive there.
Protection for every point that gets hit
Each of these covers one kind of impact, and most sites need three or four of them rather than all six. Which ones follows from where the damage is already showing.
Two places worth walking through first
A warehouse and a car park fail in different ways, so it is worth reading the whole of one before choosing individual products.
Have a project in mind?
Describe what needs to happen in the building and we will come back with a proposed approach, the specialist who would carry it out and a budget you can work with.