Ep. #30: Why a Smooth Transition Dock Leveler is Critical at the Loading Dock

This episode of Right from the Source features Chad Delavu, the director of product for right high product. He talks about why it's so important for loading dock levelers to provide a smooth transition for forklift operators going. trailers and ways that a right-height flex deck can help. You're listening to right from the source, expert insights on safety, security, and you can see. Industrial or commercial facilities.

You're listening to right from the source, and today's guest is Chad Delavu. Chad, thanks for being on. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. So to get things kicked off, just give the listeners a brief background about yourself, your title, and what you do. My name's Chad DeleVue. I'm with uh RightHide as the Director of Product Management for Right Height Product. So mainly in charge of our loading dock levelers, vehicle restraint lineup, scraper systems. Any uh hobbies, passions outside of work?

Well, for th the poor listeners that are joining me for like the what, twelfth time or something. I have to c try to come up with something new this time. So I've been uh been an avid curler for probably five or six years now. Part of the Milwaukee Curling Club, which is the oldest curling club in the United States, so that's kinda cool. I've never curled before, but maybe I'll have to check it out.

We're actually older than the state of Wisconsin, the club is. So it was formed before Wisconsin was a state. So it's a good place to learn to curl if that's uh if that's what you'd like to do. Yeah. All right. Today's topic is going to be why a smooth transition leveler So Chad is gonna dive into those topics And with our first question, we just want to talk a little bit about the importance of having a relatively smooth.

uh leveler. That's obviously the idea, but that's not always the case. Can you explain? Well it is it's absolutely the idea. And when we say it's not exactly the case it's because I think a l a lot of people Have a loose interpretation of what that might mean, uh a smooth transition. It's all started probably twenty years ago when Right Height was in the process of redesigning their levelers. So they were doing research and development, they were getting voice of the customer.

And the customer kept talking about these bumps. You need to make the dock level smoother. You have these bumps on it. And at first everybody kind of thought they were talking about the diamond tread plate. And as they got into it, they discovered no, they were talking about, you know, the bump.

Uh in different parts of the transition, as you're going from the dock from the floor of the warehouse into the trailer, there's a series of transitions that actually happen and it's the bumps kind of all along the way that that people were talking about. So about 15 years ago or so, RightHide introduced the world's first dock leveler with a smooth transition dock system.

Now many manufacturers today will take advantage of just the n the normal language smooth transition. And they'll talk on their website about that transition from the warehouse floor to the trailer bed. Uh some even go on on record as saying they have the smoothest transition in the industry, which I think is a risk because I don't think they've proven that. Um what I like about our smooth transition dock system, and we'll talk about it throughout the podcast here is

There's a whole bunch of things that go into it. And at the end of the day, we had independent researchers actually did testing with our dock leveler and found that it did actually reduce the forces that can cause chronic injuries to material handlers. So we do have some data and statistics behind our system that really I think will will resonate with the listeners who uh are are potentially dealing with an aging workforce out there.

You talked a little bit about chronic injuries being a thing and I and I do wanna come back to that.

But are there other concerns that come into play when considering the transition, whether it's injuries or other factors? Yeah, I think there are really four things and I call them negative consequences that come into play when you're considering doc levelers. One is acute injuries.

One is chronic injuries, so those more longer-term injuries that that happen over time and stay with you potentially longer. Then there's damage to material handling equipment. And lastly, there's damage to goods and products. So I think when you're talking about a smooth transition doc system, you're looking at a system that helps to mitigate or helps to prevent each of those types of negative consequences.

How can it tackle all of these challenges? How can it solve these problems? I mentioned s uh a lot of manufacturers will note or talk about this the transition from the warehouse floor onto the trailer bed, right? And that's what they talk about with the smooth transition. A smooth transition dock system though actually focuses on all eight transitions that happen in that one loading and unloading process.

The very first one and one of those bumps that the customers were telling us that they felt was going from the warehouse floor. onto the dock leveler itself. So you've got this area called the rear hinge where the deck plate matches up and and attaches to the frame that's attached to the back of the leveler pit. That can actually create a bump there. Then you've got the transition to the leveler itself, the leveler deck plate itself. Then you're transitioning from the leveler deck.

onto the leveler lip, crossing the front hinge of that bridge, the other side of that bridge, if you will. There's a feature called lip crown that's built in there to help protect that front hinge, but that also creates another bump. And then lastly, as far as going into the trailer, there's that transition off of the leveler lip and onto the trailer bed itself. Leveler manufacturers use a feature there called lip chamfer, but that can absolutely

impact how smooth that transition is into the trailer. So if you think about how traditionally it's talked about, you're done at that point right there, right? You've transitioned from the warehouse floor into the back of the trailer.

That's really only half the process though, because those same four transitions we just talked about happen in reverse. So now we're transitioning from the trailer bed back onto the dock leveler. And we'll spend a little bit of time today talking about self-flexing deck. or self-flex deck and how that can impact and play a role in the the smooth transition and some of these uh negative consequences that we've mentioned. So you're back onto the level or lip, then leveler lip back onto the deck.

Across the deck and then of course you're off of the deck uh back onto the warehouse floor over that rear hinge.

So we really want to concentrate on all eight of those areas in order to provide the smoothest transition for the user. If you think about any bridge, it has to be a couple of things. It has to be strong and it has to be flexible. And from a strength standpoint, Reinhide gets the strength of their dock leveler by starting with the four-sided box construction. And then we use we use beams in order to add the strength to our dock leveler.

And beam structure is kind of an important concept because there are a number of different types of beams to choose from out there. Right height gets our strength in our dock leveler by by the number of beams that we provide. So we provide eight or ten beams depending on the width of the dock leveler. The flexibility that I'm talking about then comes from the type of beam that we provide.

When we're talking beam type, you can start with the big rigid I-beam, which uh provides a lot of deck surface, but not a lot of flexibility. An I beam or a C beam looks like. Picture the letter, right? A capital I or a capital C. You get a sense for what those beam structures look like. Again, that's got a lot of surface area that sits on the deck, creates a nice stiff deck.

Probably the next in the flexibility chain would, or the uh excuse me, inflexibility chain would be the lambda beam. Then the most flexible beam out there would be the the L beam, which is what Right Height uses on our dock leveler. So you picture the the capital letter L, you've got a thin area that's going to attach to the top of the deck, which is going to help provide that deck flexibility. That's really important when we're talking about dock levelers.

So the strength for right height comes from the number of beams, the flexibility comes from the type of beam. Now all dock levelers flex four inches. I don't know of one in the world that doesn't. It's a very common specification. The difference is if you're using one of those rigid style beams, you require the weight of a forklift on the leveler to actually create that four inches of flex.

It's okay. It's not great. We'll talk about why. But it's okay going into the trailer. It can really be harmful to all those consequences that we talked about when you're coming out. So that's where that flexibility is important, provided by the L beam to give Right Height its flex under its own weight. So with Right Height's self-flex deck. being able to flex under its own weight. It helps to mitigate not just those acute injuries.

Uh that might happen to a a forklift operator who's backing out of a trailer. But it also helps to protect and helps to mitigate the damage to the product that's being loaded or unloaded, as well as the material handling equipment. And really this is all happening in step five of that transition we talked about earlier, where we're coming, we're in the trailer and we're coming out of the trailer.

That's a really important part of this process that we'll get into here in a little bit. What other transition points does the cell flex deck impact?

Well there's probably two or three others, but what I think we might do now is let's just go back and let's go through each of those eight transitions and then I'll try to pull in. You you can maybe help remind me, but I'll try to pull in uh where where the the self-flex deck helps with that.

As we're going from the warehouse floor, we're going across that rear hinge. So transition number one onto the leveler deck itself. Most levelers have a gap where that the leveler deck meets that rear hinge. And as the leveler moves up and down through the operating range, that gap changes.

That change in gap, that's what the customers were telling us about this bump. Almost like this speed bump as we're going from the floor right onto the edge of the leveler. And that's what can contribute to these chronic injuries that we're talking about here. So what Ride Eye does is they utilize a constant radius rear hinge.

It maintains about a third of an inch gap throughout the operating range of the leveler, and it almost eliminates that speed bump as you're transitioning from the warehouse floor right onto the back of the leveler. Additionally, traditional levelers, their rear hinges are in, they slide in pockets. And this is what helps them account for the flex that they need when the forklift is on there. The the bad part about this is the pockets work independently.

So, if you picture the front corner of a leveler going down and your rear hinge is in a pocket, that means the opposite back corner is going up. So you're you're potentially creating catch points there for material handling equipment going by or trip points for people walking by. Conversely, if the front edge of a leveler with the rear hinge that is in a pocket goes up. The back opposite corner goes down. So now that gap is again exacerbated, and that creates a shear point potential.

You can get pallets stuck in there, you can get unfortunately fingers or toes stuck in there, different stuff like that. So with this constant radius rear hinge, not only is the gap. A constant one-third inch throughout the operating range. It stays flush and level the whole time whether the DEX is flecting under its own weight or not.

So you don't have any of those catch points, those shear points, anything like that. So you're again you're addressing the chronic injuries, you're addressing the acute injuries, you're addressing material handling equipment damage potentially and products.

So as we move into the third transition, we're transitioning off the leveler deck now onto the lip. It's right at the front hinge of the leveler, and all levelers have what's called crown built into them, which is a slight bend in into the lip.

That bend is really important because that's where the lip meets the deck. And this crown or this bend helps to do two things. One is it helps to keep the lip from peeling away from the front header of the leveler because it's under a tremendous amount of stress.

as it uh a load passes over that. It it's really where that four sided box construction I mentioned earlier Levelers with four sighted box construction really shine in that area because it's a nice firm connection from that lip to the deck. But the second thing the crown or the bend does in the lip is it allows the lip to lie flush inside of a trailer bed if that trailer bed is slightly above dock.

So there's a lot of positive things that come out of lip crown. So I don't want the listener to to come away with this thinking, ooh, lip crown is bad. No, lip crown is really good and we have to have it. But it also creates one of those bumps. That the customer was talking about that, you know, bump, bump, bump, bump, every time you're loading or unloading a trailer that can contribute to these chronic injuries.

So Right Height utilizes an exclusive two-point crown control feature. And what it does is it supports the lip from the underside as well as from the back where the lip actually meets the level or deck. So that allows us to use uh a less of a lip crown to maintain the integrity of that whole front header system. Less lip crown means less bump. And it also uh means that we have to have less bend.

in the lip itself because we've got that extra support, the two points of support going on of that lip instead of a uh one point, which is what traditional leveler would have. So we can provide the the integrity that we need to provide the strength to the leveler by using less crown, which means less bump, which is a win for the customer, because it it helps to mitigate uh those problems that that people are complaining about.

I think the last thing then, the last part of the transition is as you're you're going off of that level or lip and you're going into the bed of the trailer, you know, a dock level or lip is Anywhere from a half an inch, five eighths of an inch, all the way up to an inch thick. And you need to have a taper, right? To taper that steel down so you're not just driving over an inch thick bump.

Right height optimizes that chamfer from the start and we provide the longest chamfer as standard in the industry. All manufacturers can provide any length of chamfer that that the steel will provide. Um I just think it it's pretty cool that as we look at these transition points, Reitheit is providing the longest. Optimize chamfer for that length instead of just providing a standard one one size fits all chamfer across the board, which is what a lot of other manufacturers.

The listener's gonna have to stay with us because we're only halfway through these transitions, right? We're only in the trailer, right? That's where everybody That's where everyone stops talking about this stuff. Okay, we're in the trailer, we're done, it's smooth transition. But we gotta get back out of the trailer. We're halfway there. And this is where that flex. uh self flex deck really comes into play and is so important.

Trailers backed into a dock can be unlevel for a whole bunch of reasons. You know, you there might be snow or ice built up on one side of the drive approach or the other, they might have backed over a pallet or debris that's out there so the one side of the trailer is higher than the other. The suspension systems can be uh out of kilter, so one side of the trailer is higher. The load in the trailer can be not proportionate, so you've got one side higher than the other.

Again, going in, mostly everything is fine. We talked about the catch points, trip points, those are no good, but the real danger in that scenario comes when you're backing out. Because if you have a leveler that doesn't flex under its own weight, the leveler is now popped back up to its natural stiff state, which means one side of the lip might be on the trailer, the other side might be three or four inches off the trailer better.

So now you've got a forklift operator who's turned backwards, looking over their shoulder. with their neck twisted, driving at this lip that's three inches off the trailer on one side, and when they hit that thing, it's a jolt to their entire spine, to their neck, It can cause damage to suspension systems on material healing equipment. We've seen it chunk tires out before. If they're using hard rubber tires, it damages product as it comes out because it's quite a jolt.

So this is the one area, that fifth transition point on the way out that everyone likes to ignore that really addresses all four of those negative consequences that we talked about to start. It it's probably the most important part of the smooth transition story that just gets ignored a lot because people don't understand that there's eight transition points here, not just one.

The rest of the points, six, seven, eight, they become pretty innocuous from there. You know, we're back on, now we're over, we're onto that lip. With the the self-flexing deck, now we're back over the lip crown, back onto the leveler deck itself. We're over the deck. We're over the rear hinge, which if we've got a constant radius rear hinge is a nice consistent one third inch gap. And now we're back onto the trailer flo excuse me, the warehouse floor. We made it. We made it.

So that's certainly a lot more technical than you know some of your competitors will get into. So certainly not uh lip service. Forgive the joke there. Uh so So how how is this proven to help reduce chronic injuries in material handlers, this not just smooth transition lip service, but an actual uh plan of attack here that you have uh with the cell flex deck among other things?

Sure. Well, proven to reduce injuries might be a little bit strong, but I don't mind talking about it in that sense because a few years ago the Ohio State University did a study and they found that a dock leveler that was equipped with the right height smooth transition dock system reduced the forces such as tibial shock, and they were measuring uh different forces and shock on people's bodies as they went across dock levelers.

It reduced those types of forces by up to 16% over traditional design. So if you've ever heard of the term dock shock, Uh essentially that refers to the constant jolting that a material handler's body is exposed to as they navigate across a dock leveler. And they go we talk about chronic injuries, they go across dock leveler hundreds of thousands of times a year. If your job is to drive a forklift,

You you could you millions potentially of crossings every single year. And every one of those bumps that we talked about ha that plays on the bottom. So dock shock is that phenomenon that that people experience by going over these doc levelers hundreds of thousands of times a year. I think if you couple that with a stat a couple of years ago from AARP, I think it was two thousand eighteen Over half of the new jobs that were filled were filled by people fifty five years and older.

So you've got an aging workforce that's coming into play here. You've got this dock shock phenomena if you're a material handler that comes into play. And I think it's just really important that you're taking a look at things like a smooth transition system dock leveler. uh to help mitigate some of these uh accidents or injuries that could occur to your workforce over.

So, Chad, anything else that uh the listeners should be aware of that you'd like to to cover here as far as uh smooth transition and and and our topic today?

Well, I mentioned a couple of options. Uh th there were a couple of options on equipment that could help assist, you know, in offsetting all of these these all four of these negative consequences. I mentioned the smooth deck and lip before is an option. We do offer an option of reduced lip crown. Um, as you get into higher capacities and you get into a heavier front header, that might be an option that can help the customer uh reduce that bump even more.

We also offer I mentioned our optimized lip chamfer. We also offer extended lip chamfer that depending on the thickness of the lip can be added to it. So there are a few things that you can do off of the Still on the menu, I guess, but uh maybe not in the standard dock leveler. There is one though that I think often gets overlooked as well.

It's called a stabilizing trailer restraint. A lot of times we see this in really heavy capacity environments, but a stabilizing restraint actually helps to eliminate both horizontal and vertical movement of the trailer. During the loading and unloading process. And this vertical movement, if you think about 20,000 pounds going over, it can be dramatic. It can be 12, 14 inches. And so you're you're driving on to a trailer with a heavy forklift and you drop 14 inches.

It's not as though you're free falling, but it's also not a nice, you know, uh controlled descent either. I mean that trailer drops pretty quickly. I think you run the risk there of some of the injuries that we talked about, both acute and chronic, but where we see it a lot there is product damage. And you've got a product that's going on that just simply can't handle that type of a drop that fast.

or you're loading something full width, full height, where you just really need that trailer to be stable at all times. I think a a stabilizing restraint is an excellent option for that. And it helps to protect the right. The person, the equipment, as well as the product that's going on the trailer. smooth transition and levelers to actually think of the restraint as well and and how that can play a major role.

For sure. All right, Chad. Well, we appreciate you being on the show today, as always, the w twelfth time you think? Might maybe not that much, but it's challenging me to come up with uh with new passions and hobbies every time. Well, we like to keep you busy outside of work too. So to our listeners, be sure to follow Right Height on all your social media platforms and visit rightheight.com for additional information or to connect with a team member.

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