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Hello all, from Warehouse and Operations as a Career, the Podcast where we talk about Warehousing and Transportation and the many different positions, equipment and opportunities to be found with a Career in Operations. I’m Marty T Hawkins and I love Op’s, I’ve had the privilege of working with and beside some of the best individuals and teams in the business for over 40 years. Each week we here at WAOC try and share some of our experiences, interview those performing the tasks and answer your questions on any topics or comments sent into us. Shoot us a message to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and we’ll have an opinion or find you an answer to your thought, topic or suggestion! If you enjoy the social scenes we can be found using @whseandops on both Facebook and Twitter, and for you equipment operators, we can usually be found hanging out in the Warehouse Equipment Operators Community Group in Facebook thru-out the week as well!
So lets see, I’ve written down a lot of bullet points for this week but don’t really have anything planned to talk about in particular…I see I’ve written down that we’re in week 49 of the year. Gosh, can you believe 2018’s almost over? Here’s a question, let’s see, it was sent in about two weeks ago, he had a few questions about two wheelers. The gentleman had just switched positions, looks like he’d been working as a Loader for a large foodservice distributor for about 6 months and accepted a driver helper position. He’d asked if I’ve ever used one and what kind I preferred. I don’t remember the episode number but back in March of 2017 we did a short episode on the Driver Helper Position and in June last year we had a show on the two-wheeler, I think it was called Op’s most Go To piece of equipment. Check them out, I think we covered the topics pretty well, at least we had a lot of fun with’em.
Anyway, so to answer his question, yes, I’ve used several, way too many times. I prefer the ones made out of magnesium and aluminum, I don’t usually mention specific brands, but I really like the Magliner myself. If you’re buying your own don’t go cheap. It’s a tool you’re going to be using for work and earning money with, go ahead and spend the money and get what you really need. Now you can spend between $200 and upwards of $500 on a good one. You’ll want to get the proper wheels for your work conditions, the correct blade or scoop for the loads you’ll be carrying and attachments, today there’s all kinds of attachments, extenders, different handle designs, everything can be customized. There’s also some really good breakdowns, you can really move some freight with the right dolly. I know some delivery drivers that have as many as 5 different kinds with them every day. One driver helper, I’d call him a professional driver helper that has a custom ordered one he paid over $600 for. He ordered it with custom wheels, grooved tires, had a hand brake kit put on it, with an extended blade and custom loop handle on it. Again, I’d suggest you get what you really need, like our shoes and boots, In my opinion we need the right tools and we need to be comfortable to do our best work right?
Speaking of shoes and boots, if your job or facility requires you to wear steel toes or composite caped footwear, get a good pair when you can afford them. The cheaper brands are fine to start out with, but I’d strongly urge you to get a well-built pair when you can afford a little luxury. They’ll make a huge difference in your arch area, especially when you’re standing and moving around all day. As for boots, go with some ankle support. They look uncomfortable, but if you’re around pallets a lot, say like order selecting in a productivity setting, their perfect, another opinion I guess, no we’ll call that experience, they’ve saved my ankles a hundred times!
I have a note here about dock plates, so keeping with the theme, I guess we’ll call it the tools we use, lets talk about those for a minute. The gentleman I was speaking with when I made the notation was pointing out how their new dock door system would not let him operate the electric dock plate until the door was fully raised and he didn’t like that. His job was to place any shorts or items that had been left off the trailer earlier in the shift but before the trailer dispatched. With the new system the trailer locks had to be engaged, the electric dock door raised all the way up before the dock plate would come up providing access to the load. The old way, manual doors and dock plates were twice as fast, and he could get things loaded out much faster. Anyone have a horror story about the old chain pulled hydraulic dock plates? I’ve seen 3 fingers almost pulled off and heard about one being ripped from a man’s hand. you know how we use to have to grab that iron ring and give it a good hard yank to get it to pop the release on the hydraulic chamber, releasing the plate to come flying up and then we’d take off running up the plate so the lip would catch the edge of the trailer when it came down. And oh my gosh, anyone ever work with a drop-in dock plate, you know one of those used for bridging the space between the dock and the rail car door. I’ve mashed my fingers several times and again heard about people loosing one or two trying to position them. You know, most of the improvements I’ve seen over the last few years do take a little more time I guess but I think we’d all agree they remedy an unsafe situation. I stood there with him and we timed it, it took 8 seconds for the door to raise. Yep, we could probably sling the door up a few seconds quicker but then we’d have to make sure the dock lock was engaged with the ICC bar and then raise the ramp. I bet all in the new system is faster, it just seems slower because we’re standing still, we don’t have all those other things to do anymore. I like things and systems that make me safer.
How many of us are required to wear PPE’s or personal protective equipment? Some people consider our footwear as a ppe, personally anytime I’m walking around pallets I just consider it common sense. I guess most ppe’s can be related to common sense though right? I like having a high visibility ansi 3 vest on when I’m out walking the floor around equipment, especially if I’m going to be out on the front docks or in the aisles. Remember in a recent episode we learned how 42% of warehouse accidents happen up by the docks! I hear every summer from someone that says their light weight mesh vest is too hot to wear? And eyewear, some fork drivers just don’t want to wear them. I made that mistake a few times. I mean as a fork operator we’re always looking up, pallets are dusty, our forks are going to knock that dust and particles loose when we’re retrieving a pallet up in reserves. I hear about 10 or 12 visits to the clinic every year, someone’s gotten something in their eyes. If you’ve ever had to use an eyewash station you won’t want to have to do it again! Speaking of pallets, what about sorting pallets? That’s real work. I guess the wooden pallet is the most used tool we deal with. Pine pallets, which I hope you never use for anything, at least not for lifting into the reserves. Then we have the Grade A or new oak pallets, the B grades with damaged and repaired runners or slats, oh and then the heavy suckers like peco and chep pallets right? And I guess today we’re seeing a much larger volume of plastic pallets floating around. I know delivery drivers love’em, there much easier to just stack up over to the side of our trailers. Of course there much more costly so I’m sure we’re all held accountable for them, someone’s going to accounting for them! Shoot us an email about your experiences with pallets, I have a hundred stories I could talk about and I’m sure we’d all like to hear about yours too!
So we’re approaching another year, there’s only 3 more weeks in 2018. With our next few episodes we’ll be reviewing this years goals that we achieved and planning out our 2019 plans and objectives to achieve those 2019 goals. We’ll probably wrap up the year doing just that here at WAOC. I’ll reach out to a couple of people that’s achieved a few of their goals, talk about how they planned for them and maybe get them to share a few that were missed with us. We’ll talk a little on planning, maybe I’ll share a few of my personal ones with the group too!
Well, that’s a wrap for this week, I enjoyed just talking from the hip and I hope I hit upon something you can relate too. If so please send us an email and we’ll share your story with the group next week! Until then, please be careful on or with our equipment and tools & use our PPE’s properly!