Ep. #35: Modern Loading Dock Safety

This episode of Right from the Source features The Vice President Right Hike Products Corp. He shares the key pieces of equipment and software that Year 2022 and how that same equipment makes it possible. into a modern loading dock of the future. You're listening to right from the source. Expert insights on safety, security, productivity, energy savings, and environmental control. and inside your industrial or commercial facility.

You're listening to Right from the Source, and today's guest is Ken Bowman. Ken, welcome to the show. Hey Ken, how are ya? I'm doing well. So first give the listeners a little background about yourself, your title, uh what you do specifically in the industry.

Ken Bowman, uh, vice president of marketing for Right High Products Corp, have been in the industry since the mid 90s, started as a on street salesperson, selling and making friends with our customers and solving their safety and material handling needs and move to right height. in the distribution role as a regional sales vice president and global account area and now in a role on the marketing and product development side for Right High Product Score.

All right. So certainly a lot of years of experience, lotta different jobs to to talk about the modern loading dock and and safety involved with it. So that's today's topic. But before we do get into that Outside of work and any hobbies, passions? I have a lot of hobbies. Love pickleball. I love golf and when I can't play pickleball and golf I'm an artist of sorts, watercolor and pottery. Wow. A man of many talents.

So today's topic is modern loading dock safety. And uh for our first question here, uh loading dock operations have obviously changed pretty considerably in the last decade. Uh there's an emphasis on technology while also remaining, you know, safe and productive. And an important piece of safety equipment at nearly every loading dock in the country are gonna be dock lock vehicle restraints, of course. Can you talk about how the value has increased for customers who have dock locks?

Or considering dock locks as part of a modern floating dock safety approach? Yeah, you know, uh dock lock puts safety on the map for right height in nineteen eighty. And I always like to m talk about how proud we are working for a company that literally invented an industry. Before dock lock there was no such thing as a vehicle restraint.

And so upon the launch of that dock lock vehicle restraint We invented a an industry that we have since, through our culture at Right Hide and always looking ahead, always looking to try to bring more value to our customers through our dock lock safety products, right? So the last decade there's been a lot of talk about technology, whether data, whether it's sensors throughout all of our products at right height, and nowhere has it been more noticeable than at the loading desk.

And the dock lock itself, regardless of the dock lock, whether it's our shadow hook restraint or vertical barrier restraint, has become a real vital piece of our customer supply chain. 'Cause if you think about an end to end supply chain approach, whether you're getting the raw materials to make the good, to ship it. To ship it to a distribution center, distribution center to the retail. It's crossing a loading dock every step of the way, and we're helping to keep people safe.

every step of that supply chain. And with the advent and launch of our Internet of Things platform, Optiview, we now have an entry point to loading doc data. from a safety standpoint and a productivity standpoint at the loading dock.

What we always say now around our dock locks is our dock lock vehicle restraints are not only helping to protect people as they go in and out of that trailer, but the advent of technology and solutions we've brought to the loading dock through the dock lock, we're protecting people on and off fork trucks, whether they're inside or they're outside the loading dock.

So obviously dock locks, you know, before all the technology around it and sensors uh already starting to are already starting to create that safe loading dock environment.

Um but there are more aspects to loading dock safety besides those trailer separation accidents. Can you talk about some of the other risks and solutions that companies should be considering? Well, first off, trailer separations is a great place to start and I think being able to help protect against those accidents. all of them with the proper right height restraint based on your application is a great start.

But what we like to say now is our dock lock vehicle restraints really uh are helping to protect again people inside and outside whether on or off fork trucks. We'll start outside with the vehicle restraints. through research we've discovered that our customers had problems with people getting injured or worse out on the approach as the trailer backed in. And a matter of fact, OSHA cited the number two leading cause of back over fatalities.

happened by tractor trailer, unfortunately. And so what we did was we innovated with a feature of our dock lock vehicle restraints we call approach view. So we're viewing the approach and then we're creating a audible and visual alarm as a trailer is backing into the dock, warning somebody that might be in harm's way with the universal language of reverse.

that beeping sound that you hear on a job site, whether it's a dump truck or a backhoe. We brought that to the loading dock through our dock lock vehicle restraint to really help people that might be in harm's way as that trailer backs in. So that's outside where we're helping to protect people. We also have innovated with a product feature called Lockview, and that's a camera outside.

Looking at the vehicle restraint so that when you engage the vehicle restraint you can visually verify that the restraint is properly engaged without having to go outside and potentially put yourself in harm's way. So we're trying to keep people off the approach since it is a dangerous place.

And then when you turn to move inside, uh we have innovated a product we call a pedestrian view. And you there's a trend out in the industry, it's been out there for years with fork truck companies. They're putting blue lights on their fork truck. Forward facing, rear facing. So anytime somebody sees a blue light, they can say, Oh, there's a fork truck. Beware. What we'd observed was when the blue light in the fork truck entered a trailer fifty-three feet, that blue light disappeared.

So you anybody on the loading dock that might be walking by or driving by, it's not visible until the very last second of that fork truck potentially backing out. So what we did was we brought through pedestrian view sensors looking into the trailer for motion. The other part of this is not every bit of traffic that goes into a trailer is a fork truck. People push cars.

People walk into trailers to check on loads and paperwork and whatnot. So we feel like monitoring the activity in that trailer, presenting a blue light outside on the dock leveler anytime there's uh somebody might be in the trailer is a really good extension of the dock lock vehicle restraint. So again, like we said, with the dock lock we're protecting for trailer separations, but we're also protecting People inside and outside, whether they're on or off work trucks. That's

The dock lock has really become a twenty four seven three sixty-five piece of safety equipment that's working for you. Oh that's awesome to see the the evolution of that product and a a full system really. And Y you mentioned earlier, um, I think in the first question that dock lock vehicle restraints are becoming this entry point for data at the loading dock too.

How does data become part of the modern loading dock safety approach? So every dock lock that our customers uh install and we're fortunate enough to put in are installed with a control box at every dock door. That's a very unique position to have controls at every dock position. And through our Optiview Internet of Things platform. When you combine the dock lock with the Optiview platform.

Now you can capture data based on the type of equipment you have in at the dock, whether the restraints engaged, whether the dock doors up, any piece of data you can grab. And what the cool part about Optiview. is not only does it grab the data, it actually we have analytics. that we put together to help you be more safe.

in a modern LODI doc approach. So you can analyze data on a month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year, and you can proactively identify areas that you might want to do some training or put some additional safety equipment in. to reduce the number of potential unsafe actions that are going on at the dock. So it's a real proactive tool for safety managers today. In the modern loading dock approach, safety professionals don't have a lot of proactive tools.

And we're providing one at the dock. On top of that we provide real time alerts. Like everybody on phones and whatnot. If something is deemed really unsafe and the safety manager, shipping manager wants to know about it, boom, they can have it on their phone. So it's the entry point for loading docs. safety from a modern application standpoint. And then there's a whole other discussion around productivity.

because we through Optiview and our dock lock controls provide real time dashboards of i actually what's going on at the loading dock, how long the trailer's been there. If the locks engaged, if the dock door's up. I mean in real time, anybody in the organization, whether you're operating in Chicago, wanna pull it up in Pittsburgh, you can do that to see what's going on. So it's a deep set of value proposition f that Optiview has as part of an entry point

for a modern loading dock approach. Definitely modern, almost futuristic in in some ways. The future's here though, Ken. I suppose, yeah. So you talked about some of the common dangers at loading docks and uh as well as the equipment and and uh

different types of technology that facilities can add uh to come into the future to today. Uh so where do you recommend starting to move towards the the modern loading dock safety solutions? The really fun part about modernizing your loading dock if you're a customer is You could do that whether you have a a dock lock vehicle restraint you bought two years ago or you're looking at buying a new dock lock today. We can modernize much of our dock lock and loading dock equipment.

to new features that can help you continue to modernize like Optiview, right? So a starting point would be traditionally in this space. This is why we wanted to kind of talk in terms of a modern loading dock safety approach. Traditionally when people talk to customers, they talk in terms of what order do you want to push the buttons to operate your dock equipment? Let's engage the restraint.

Make sure you have a safe engagement, then we open the door, then we place the dock leveler, and then we do the reverse. store the dock leveler, we close the door, we disengage the trailer. That from our standpoint, that's not a modern loading dock approach. We've been talking about that for 30 years. Our approach to modern loading dock really begins with the discussion of what is going on right when that carrier

gets on your property. How does the trailer get assigned? How does the driver check in? How do you sign a dock position? How do you properly back the trailer in? Trying to maybe keep boots off the ground, not putting people out in the approach. That's where it starts, right? And then we get into the trailers arrived. Okay, let's get the safe sequence of operations from a loading dock positioning standpoint, right?

And then the reverse happens when they are loaded or unloaded. Now you can leave. But then we don't stop there. We want to say how do you stop Check the driver out. If it's in a snowy climate based on our acquisition of scraper systems, how are you removing snow from the roof? This becomes a much broader discussion in terms of the modern loading deck safety and a modern sequence of operations kind of discussion.

So all of the things. How do you check a driver in? How do they get signed to door? Where do they open the trailer doors? How do you get those open? How do you close them? Where do you place and uh remove the seals from a supply chain integrity standpoint? All of those questions are things we wanna understand so that we can talk about

the best approach for our customers. Oh, that's awesome. Having a plan from the start to the very end, a process that's streamlined that everyone understands and Got some of the equipment to make that all happen. We have all the equipment to make that happen. That's awesome. All right, Ken. Well it was a pleasure having you on the podcast today. And I'm sure our listeners got quite a bit of information about bringing their doc into the the modern age here. So

Um, we thank you for that. So, listeners, be sure to follow RightHide on all social media platforms. Visit RightHight.com for additional information or to connect with a team member. 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 media channels. Want more supply chain logistics solutions for your facility? Is it right height?