Clothing retailer invests in interlocking system to improve warehouse safety.
Bonmarché, the UK’s largest value womenswear retailer for women aged 50+ years, has improved the safety of its loading and unloading operations with the adoption of Castell’s Salvo™.
The interlocking drive-away prevention system has been installed on all seven loading bays at Bonmarché’s Grange Moor head office, near Wakefield, West Yorkshire. Grange Moor, Bonmarché’s only distribution centre, handles an average of 140,000 garments a day, although this rises to 200,000 at peak times.
Third-party drivers arriving at Grange Moor report to security and receive documentation explaining how the Salvo™ system operates. They park in a holding area, where they are met by a supervisor who checks that they understand the information they have been given. Drivers are then asked to reverse into a particular loading bay, before disengaging their engine and fitting either a Salvo™ Susie or SGL lock to their vehicle’s exposed emergency airline coupling. This action effectively immobilises the trailer and releases a key, which the driver hands to a member of the warehouse staff. Inserting and turning the key in the control panel located next to the bay door powers up the bay and enables the door to be raised. Once the dock leveller has been correctly positioned, the driver is asked to pull the cab away, park in the holding area and wait there until further notice while unloading takes place.
Goods-out follows a similar procedure, except that Bonmarché’s warehouse staff fit the Salvo™ Susie or Salvo™ Club, an interlocking steering wheel lock, to the vehicle prior to loading.
The Health & Safety Executive booklet ‘Warehousing and storage: A guide to health and safety’ recommends interlocks as a safe system of work to combat drive-aways. Salvo™ also features as an example of a safe system of work in the Freight Transport Association’s ‘Loading dock safety guide’, produced in conjunction with the Institution of Occupational Safety & Health.
Castell Safety International Ltd
Jason Reed
Tel: 020 8200 1200
Email: jreed@castell.com
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