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Golf Carts and what they’re calling Personnel Carriers are loose in the warehouse. Are you seeing them in your facility? As facilities are growing bigger, I mean a million square feet is becoming the norm as for your large or jumbo D/C’s are concerned, people gotta get around somehow. My old facility was just over 500 sq ft and we had one, a 6 seater golf cart! Kind of a 6 seater, it had 4 seats and two little fold down seats on the rear of it with grab bars! It was only driven by a member of the warehouse management team. Period. No merchandisers, no salespeople, no auditors and no out of town guests, meaning corporate management. Golf carts have been around in the warehouse for quite a while of course but I’m seeing a lot of new units as I’m doing site visits now. I’m Marty and I thank you for visiting with us again this week here at warehouse and operations as a career! Have you seen those big 3 wheel tricycles? I’ve seen a few with baskets even! And crown has some pretty nice one’s out there, I believe their distributing Cushmam’s and Raymond has the Taylor-Dunn units. I think anything those two distributors sell are top of the line in my book. Columbia ParCar is another manufacturer. Looking them up for todays show I wasn’t surprised to find that there are 100’s, and I mean several hundred’s, and different types of personnel carriers out there today. I’ve probably seen 30 different types over the last 10 years. Some really small one’s, really just a platform to stand on, to the 9 rider golf carts. Oh, and those tricycles. Those trikes can fly through a warehouse!
Anyway, what do you think about all this equipment being driven around? I’d never really thought about it, but we had a listener report how they’ed been written up and retrained for hitting one that had been what we’ll call mis-parked. He stated that a salesperson had driven it into the aisle and left it there. He hit it and was disciplined for it.
The next morning, I was at a facility and saw, whom I believe was a merchandiser, jump in a golf cart that was parked over by the office doors and take off through the warehouse. This person never looked around in any direction, They we’re driving in a pedestrian lane and did not honk the horn as they hung a left to go down an aisle. In the wrong direction.
A couple of days later I was visiting a facility that utilized the tricycles to get around the building. I didn’t observe anyone riding them, but it appeared to be the practice as I saw at least 5 of them around the building.
I feel anyone that will be operating a personnel carrier should sit through a PIT class, or at least a short tutorial on how the unit operates, accelerates, turns and most importantly brakes! I know they are not moving any freight but having a little knowledge about what is going on around you is not going to be a bad thing. HR, merchandisers, salespeople, and an array of others probably do need access to the warehouse occasionally, but I believe they also carry the responsibility to do it safely too.
So, the employee we mentioned earlier. He felt like his corrective action was unjust. I have to agree that the cart should not have been left there. But he did hit it, luckily not bad, my understanding was that there was no damage to either piece of equipment, his forklift or the golf cart. I explained that my only concern was the cart could have been a person or someone on a pallet jack or even another forklift operator. As an equipment operator we have to be aware of our surroundings at all times. He eventually agreed, he felt like it sucked, but he accepted the write up and moved on.
I once was on a center drive triple pallet jack and ran over or into a mop bucket in the aisle. You know, those big yellow squeeze mop buckets our sanitation department uses. The sanitation guy had been cleaning up a spill and walked away from it for just a few minutes. I was coming around an end cap, entering the aisle, drove about 25 feet into the aisle and boom. I hit it head on, dirty water went everywhere. I’d made quite the mess. Now to this day that incident bothers me. As an order selector I was used to watching for equipment in my way. I think I was used to noticing people in the aisles too. But a mop bucket, I don’t think my brain ever knew to look for them. I mean, when we’re in the zone, pulling on auto pilot, I believe our minds can start thinking for us sometimes. And that’s a bad thing.
Think about driving to work yesterday, do you remember making every turn, using your turn signal to change lanes? Our mind knows what to do and just does it. Or the new autonomous cars. There computers have to be programed to recognize every obstacle they may incur. I hope they planned for big yellow mop buckets in the road, because it can happen!
Well, I veered off the road with that admission. So getting back on subject, lets see, oh, so I made a phone call to a facility I deal with quite a bit that I knew used a couple of golf carts and asked their HR department how they trained a new salesperson, merchandiser or associate that may occasionally grab the cart and run out into the warehouse. The answer I received was that there was no formal training but that another associate showed them how it works. Well, I think that could be considered training. So I then asked if there was anything written stating that one needed to watch out for Electric pallet jacks, forklifts and pedestrians, or anything like that. I was told no but that tomorrow they would probably have such a piece of paper. It’d just never came up before!
You know, us in the warehouse will find those answers hard to believe. But that’s because safety, and equipment operation is drilled into us the first time we walk onto the floor. We know how dangerous things can be and how quickly bad things can happen. To a salesman, a merchandiser, it’s just a quick trip to the warehouse to check something out. It’s our job to make sure everyone stays safe. We have to be looking for those gold carts or those yellow mop buckets. Oh, I creamed one of those big grey push carts, those huge ones that sanitation uses to carry trash to the compactor or dumpster area once too. A story for another time though!
So, I made 2 more calls to different facilities using personnel carriers and only 1 of them had a training procedure for the office associates, and even that one was going to be looked at again. So, this week there’s 3 facilities changing up, modifying, or developing a training program for the safe operation of their personnel carriers.
If your facility’s salespeople, or office employees are using these carts you should bring up a training program to your supervisor. If they don’t presently have one that’d be a great way to get noticed and you could very well be saving someone from getting hurt on down the line.
And I just had another thought along the same lines. I was speaking to a driver helper, he’d only worked 3 routes, a new boot. He asked if I had ever worked with a hand truck, particularly one with a hand brake. If you’ve ever been rolling a full dolly or hand truck with a brake on it, and have never used it before, then you know where this story is going. Luckly this gentleman hadn’t been going down a truck ramp but rather a curb ramp. He got to the end of the ramp, said he just barely squeezed the brake handle and the whole load flew forward almost catapulting him over the hand truck. I asked him if his driver had given him any instructions on its dangers and he laughed a bit, said it might had been his fault because he told everyone he’d used one before. Please people, don’t do that. You could injure yourself, seriously injure yourself. And for what? Running a dolly or hand truck is quite a skill but it’s easy to learn. The weight on the unit will control everything. Center it and focus, shift your position to turn and you’ve got it. Let someone show you once and in a couple of weeks you’ll have it down. At least good enough that you don’t knock door jams loose or knock over the metro shelving! There a couple of different kinds of brake units. The one I’ve seen the most and used the most are the handbrake mounted on the post bar at the top of the trucks handle. The secret for me was to learn to apply a little pressure from the very beginning. Never releasing the pressure fully but regulating it ever so lightly going down the ramp. That way the rubber or metal paddle stops on the wheels can never just grab.
And for all us experienced boots, please, even when a new associate tells us, oh yeah, I’ve done this forever, watch them for a minute. Theres something in us called human nature. For whatever reason we quit thinking sometimes. We figure, this is simple, I’ll watch you for a minute and I got it!
Be that coach, help us new ladies and gents out. Don’t laugh, just give us a hand!
On that note we’ll wrap it up for the day. If you have any chariot or personnel carrier stories you’d like to share please email us. Host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com.
And seriously, lets help out our peers, be them merchandisers, salespeople or our team members working beside us. The objective is to keep each other safe, my every shift goal is everybody goes home today!