Ron Koons had to admit the photo he had received of a grossly overloaded lumber truck was pretty funny. There it sat, with the rear end weighted down, lifting the cab a good 6 feet off the ground. Of course, the driver sitting in the cab didn’t look amused.
There’s also nothing funny about the fact that motor vehicle accidents are the top cause of fatal accidents in the workplace, says Koons, a Middletown, Ind.–based safety consultant who specializes in the building materials industry. Neither is the cost of lost wages, replacing damaged materials, fixing vehicles, or repairing relationships with clients when a jobsite accident slows down a project. “If you talk to a dealer with 10 or 15 trucks, motor vehicle accidents are a very big strain on their budget,” Koons says. “It’s usually things like fender benders in parking lots or damage from backing into buildings on jobsites.”
To help dealers reduce the number of accidents related to deliveries, Koons is working with NLBMDA to produce a safety video that will demonstrate proper procedures for building the load in the yard, putting it on the truck, securely fastening it, delivering it to the site, and unloading it. The video, which should be available this fall, will be similar to the well-received video on forklift safety, The Forklift and You, which is also available through NLBMDA (www.dealer.org).
As part of the video, Koons is riding with motor carrier enforcement officers, seeing firsthand the types of violations that will result in fines and take a vehicle out of service. He also spends time on jobsites showing the hazards that can cause injuries or can damage a vehicle, a load, or a house under construction.
“On the jobsite, we’ve had trucks get stuck in trenches and tip over on their sides,” he says. “I’ve heard stories of trucks getting too close to newly poured basement walls, where the wall collapsed and the truck fell in a basement.”
Of course, not all incidents are this dramatic, but it’s important to remember that any accident on the jobsite, regardless of whether or not an injury or OSHA violation occurs, is cause for concern. And training, says Koons, is one of the best ways to head off trouble at the pass.
