Loading bays can be one of the busiest and most dangerous places in any warehouse or commercial operation. You will never eliminate dangers completely, but modern loading bay technology can contribute significantly to minimising risk.
Your loading bay is an integral part of your smooth operation, and you need maximum efficiency to keep up with the demands your business is now likely to be facing. Yet efficiency has to be balanced against the safety of the people working in the area and the safety of the goods you are moving and loading. Accidents, breakdowns and damage cause costly delays and disruption, so you must pay particular attention to your processes and the equipment and machinery in use.
Modern loading bay technology incorporates many built-in features that will improve safety, protect goods in transit and vastly reduce risks and downtime through malfunctions. Transdek is one such company offering specialist modular loading bay equipment to ensure that commercial operators have the engineering technology with the latest up-to-date loading bay equipment to provide fast, safe, and reliable solutions.
Modern loading bay solutions and their benefits
There are several options you may want to consider:
Modular Dock Levellers
These units are fitted as a modular plug-and-play system that can be installed directly onto the front of your warehouse or unit. Leading suppliers will offer you options for fully integrated doors, safety lighting, traffic lights and dock lighting to ensure that pedestrian and vehicle traffic in the area can move safely to load and unload delivery vehicles. Available as a single or multi-pod option, installation generally will take less than a day. You should ensure your loading bay equipment complies with British Standard EN 1398. Modern dock levellers offer safe loading and unloading solutions for various goods vehicles.
Double Deck Lifts
A modular load house unit can be delivered pre-clad for fitting straight onto a yard floor in a day or two. They offer a low-maintenance solution catering to modern tall UK double-deckers, vehicles with an ultra-low floor, and wheelbox-style vehicles to bring versatility with one easy-to-use, efficient and safe loading solution. Units come complete with interlocked safety gates and integrated safety systems to ensure that anyone involved in loading and unloading can do so safely. Again choose a CE-marked device that conforms with BS/EN standards and the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC and includes ultra modern HDMI touch technology, rapid diagnostics and remote troubleshooting to benefit from the latest digital technology to keep things moving.
Vehicle-to-ground Yard Lifts (V2G)
If you seek the right supplier, you can access a modular loadhouse pod that is surface-mounted to your yard or warehouse floor in less than a day. Such a unit can be fully sealed to your building fascia and optionally provide a temperature-controlled loading solution for sensitive product protection. These units offer a lift that can load goods vehicles to and from ground level with built-in safety features that ensure safety, reliability and low maintenance, a change that will likely bring you the technology of today with the quality to last a lifetime.
Modern technology can revolutionise operations in busy warehouses and production units. Yet, it can be overlooked for its benefits to loading and loading or lifting and lowering goods, where efficiency is vital. Still, it shouldn’t come at the expense of safety and reliability. Many of the up-to-date loading bay solutions can self-diagnose and offer rapid fault finding to reduce the downtime or the number of on-site engineer visits to get you back up and running quickly. Downtime and lack of reliability cost money. The inbuilt safety features, remote operation, barriers and lighting equipment that can be incorporated or added to the modular plug-and-play design solutions now on the market from leading loading bay equipment suppliers will ensure that you have the power and rugged determination inbuilt into your loading bay equipment.