Ep. #11: Deep Dive - Eliminating Gaps at the Loading Dock

Right from the source features Gary Borve. project manager with right height environmental enclosures. Total eclipse. Yeah. Listening to right from the source, expert insights on safety, security, and the same. Productivity, energy system. and environmental control. inside your industrial or commercial facility. This is Right from the Source, and on today's episode, we have Gary Borgerding. Gary, do you want to tell us your title and a little bit about your background with Right Height?

My title is engineering project manager. I've been with Right Height Environmental Enclosures for the last nineteen years. So quite a bevy of information I'm sure that you've garnered over the last nearly twenty years working there. Yes, it's an industry where you never stop learning. So besides working for environmental enclosures, do you have any hobbies outside of work?

Um, my main hobbies mostly include things with my kids. They're active into sports. Aside from that it's mainly I enjoy science fiction type movies, books

Those types of things. So today's episode we want to talk a little bit about the loading dock and specifically looking at light leaks and ways to darken them. When it comes to light gaps, what are those and uh what are you looking for and finding them? So if you can picture yourself standing inside a building at a loading dock.

With the dock door open, the trailer parked in place at the loading dock, it's a very dark area. But when you walk up there close you'll notice big bright beacons of light. Those are the light gaps that we're talking about. Okay. Um You can find them around all around the seals against the trailer. You'll find them down at the lower portion where there's a dock leveler in place. Any area that's not perfectly sealed, you'll see these light gaps.

Does pretty much every loading dock opening have these or is it only just in damage products or something that you might see these light gas I would say you're gonna see them at most loading docks because it's a very difficult area to seal. Uh we have trailers that come in off center to the left or the right.

Various things like that make it difficult to seal and to get a really good seal. So you mentioned a a couple of those spots that you might see them specifically along the edges. You kind of mentioned the the bottom um that kind of that fourth side on the bottom where it meets the leveler. What are some of the trickier spots in terms of seeing these light gaps? The lower area is one of the trickier spots.

mainly because we have to account for the movement of the leveler. So we can't interfere with that movement. Also that's where the dock bumpers are, which the trailer has to back up against. Well the trailer doesn't always stay tight against those bumpers, so as it creeps away, you'll see light gaps between the bumper and the back of the trailer. Now what do these light gaps mean? What's happening when you're seeing

So when you're seeing light gaps, that's basically a direct access from inside to outside. This is the area where you're going to get air infiltration coming into the building. Uh it leaves openings for insects or pests. To come in, possibly even rodents. If they see heat if they see heat escaping a building coming out of that area, they see that and think, ooh, warm.

I can get in there. Oh, that's a major no no, especially if you're in the food industry or you know, something like that. Right. Yep. There are a lot of industries that don't want insects or pests. No kidding. I've got to imagine too that like any kind of I mean you were talking about

some of the the the heat lines, if you will, like coming out of of the loading dock area, it's gotta be a huge drain on energy I would imagine too. Yes, energy costs are a huge part of our business. We're Trying to help the customers reduce. the amount of money they have to spend on heating and cooling costs.

So are there any systems that address these light leaks which lead to all of these bad things like rodents getting in and heat getting out? So yes, we have a product called the Eclipse Dock Shelter. That creates the best seal that the industry has at the moment. We seal along the sides, we seal the the hinge gaps on trailers. There's an option to get a Pipmaster, which is a seal that goes around the bottom area of the leveler. That's mainly the best product out there right now that

That provides a seal for these situations. Yeah. Now, without really sharing too much of the secret sauce of what makes it so great. Can you share a little bit about um some of the advantages that the Eclipse has that maybe some of the competitors don't or just other shelters maybe that even write hike? What sets it apart? So the advantages that the eclipse has is that it creates a tight seal on the sides without intruding into the trailer opening.

That allows product to be moved in and out without damaging the seals or contacting the seals. And that's done by some hook shapes at the end of the seals on the side. That basically wrap around the back edge of the trailer. Across the top We actually have a weighted seal which originally developed from an earlier product. But we added that into this dock shelter and it creates a watertight seal across the top. It blocks all these light gaps.

So it stops infiltration and it creates a better seal than anybody else in the industry can do. And with that weighted header too, um are there advantages to that with serving different sizes of trailers that come to the loading dock? Because it's weighted and it has the ability to float up and down with the trailer, we get an equivalent seal regardless of what the trailer height, as long as it's within the range that we we say this unit will cover.

And no pole chains or anything. I know a lot of listeners are probably familiar with, you know, those kinds of things with getting the a header down. Right. Yep. Nope. This is no pull chains. It's the trucker trailer backs in and everything is set. There's no Manual activation or anything by the end user. So are there specific industries that are gonna require an a shelter

like the eclipse. Yes, the food industry is definitely one of them. Um, along with food industry is the beverage industry. Any industries dealing with Anything people consume, it goes as far as pharmaceuticals. uh medicinal equipment. One interesting industry is the frozen foods facility right now. They're a little different than the other industries as they have a different dock setup. Their ultimate goal is

that their product is never exposed to outside. So a typical loading dock, you're gonna see a trailer pull up outside. They're gonna stop before they're backed into the dock. They'll open their doors, which at that point They've exposed. all of that product to the outside environment. In the frozen food industry, the trend now is

they're actually backing up to the loading dock before they open the trailer doors and they open the doors inside the building after they open the dock door. In that scenario, they're never exposing the product to the outside environment.

So along with this Eclipse series, we have what we call the Eclipse NH. Um the NH stands for no hook. I mentioned earlier about the hooks that seal around hinge gaps. Right. When you open the doors into the building, you don't have the hinge gaps because What makes it able to have that seal, that consistent seal, even with the with the doors being able to to open inside.

There's several aspects. Along the edge of our side curtains we have a an extra layer of fabric that can form Typically on other manufacturer's products, they have like a foam cord type seal on the edge. That foam cord gets bent. In that case it ends up getting creased and gets wrinkles in it.

And those creases and wrinkles never come out. Where by adding this extra flap of fabric along that edge, it doesn't get wrinkled, it doesn't stay creased, so it provides a nice flat seal. How is is right height coming up with product?

like the eclipse? Is it what's the development process like? So basically the development of seals and shelters, it's been an evolution. I mean you start with a product. I think it started with just fabric curtains hanging. You know, somebody had a pest problem, they wanted something to keep some of the pests out. So somebody came up with this

framework that you'd hang some curtains on the trailer would back through. Well, over time you look at it and think, Well, I can make that better. So you make that better. Mm-hmm. And today it's to the point now where we get feedback from our sales reps, our customers. Like all right, these are the things we're noticing. This is the area that needs to be improved. So that's where we focus our energy is on these noticeable areas that need improvement.

So are these facilities actually failing these inspections or are they just kinda getting marks against like, hey, maybe you guys should clean this up a little bit and then Bright Hike can kinda come in and say Right. Generally the way inspections work, the inspectors will come in and they will give them marks and say, All right, here are the things we noticed. The next time I come back, this needs to be

So that's when right height comes in. We have the product that will generally fill all these light gaps at their loading deck. So with developing something like the Eclipse or really any loading dock shelter or seal How does how does that process work for for you guys? Lots of testing I imagine. Yes.

Um, like I mentioned, we get information from customers from our sales reps about areas that need to be worked on. So we go back to our R and D area, look it over. Um actually we spend some time out in the field too looking at what the problem is. Um, we go back to the R and D area. Basically we work on ideas of ways to seal these areas and then we will build prototypes.

We have what we call truck simulators. It's actually a machine that looks like the back end of a truck and it moves in and out like as if it's backing into a loading dock. We can move the truck side to side, we can make it Incline or decline as if the approach isn't level that's coming into the dock. Right. Um and basically we do fit up testing initially. So I we'll move the trailer all around, see how our how our

seal or shelter responds to it, make tweaks as necessary. After we're happy with it in our factory, then we'll build full size prototypes. put them out in the field at customer sites for beta testing. After everybody's happy with it, then we release it out to the field for sale. How much tweaking kind of happens at that phase at the beta site test?

Generally, we're pretty happy with it when we come out of R and D because we've done enough fit up with the trailer in all different positions that we know how it's gonna work. So it's actually pretty rare where we have to make too many changes after we get it to the beta site stage. Well I we've gone through all the questions that we had planned here for today, Gary. So is there anything that I missed about the eclipse or about seals and shelters that you wanted to

I think we covered everything that is relevant to the Eclipse for this podcast. Perfect. Well Gary, thanks for joining us on Right from the Source. It's been a pleasure. If you enjoyed this episode of Right from the Source, be sure to subscribe on your preferred listening platform and follow Right Height's social. Want more supply chain logistics solutions for your facility? Visit right.com.