One major problem that arises while loading a truck is managing the space or gap between the dock and truck trailer. Several devices including dock boards, dock levelers, dock plates, and lifts are used for this purpose. Dock boards and dock plates are metal ramps used to bridge the gap between truck and dock. Usually, dock boards and dock plates are manufactured of steel and diamond deck aluminum respectively. While dock boards are designed to handle heavy items, dock plates are portable, lightweight, and can be easily setup by a single person.
These plates act as a ramp or slope for material handling devices such as platform trucks, hand trucks, and pallet jacks. While, the plates are capable of handling weights of 12,000 lbs, they are never used with forklift or motor-powered vehicles. They are used only with manual material handling equipment. The diamond outline on the metal’s surface stops snow, debris, oil, and water from settling on the plates. It also provides good grip for pallet jack wheels as well as work boots.
In order to identify the exact weight of the load that is to be elevated, material handling equipment’s weight is added to the greatest carried load. Then, a dock plate with greater weight carrying capacity than this amount is used. This is an effective measure to avoid overloading by the workers. As people, responsible for loading, sometimes forget or simply do not care about the load they have stacked on pallet jacket or hand-truck, so it is often a good thing to use dock plates that are more powerful than the entire loading material.
The width of a dock plate is calculated by adding 8 inches to the combined width of handling equipment and load. This can be understood better with the help of following instance. The most frequent size of a pallet is 48″ X 40″ (48 inches long and 40inches wide). Now, if we add 8 inches to its width, the size of a dock plate turns out to be 48 inches. This calculation is effective on both pallet jacks and hand trucks. Calculating length, however, is a complex procedure. All dock plates have a maximum height differential which tells the maximum height variation between the truck floor and loading dock. The shorter board will have limited uses as it is capable of linking trucks to loading docks of specific elevations. The long board will, obviously, have greater number of uses.
In the end, the safety of dock loading is related to the profit margins of a company. Lower the number of accidents in a business, fewer the number of insurance claims to be paid. Further, in case of lower number of accidents, the cost of repairing and replacing the damaged pieces of equipment is also low.