Vital Rail Car Chocks Are Dock-Safety Equipment
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Although hardly a day goes by when most drivers don’t notice one if not many semi-trucks on the road, the railroad system is still a key, prevalent means of transporting materials. Long lines of railcars can contain raw materials on their way to factories and processing plants or finished products on their way to the marketplace. Trains remain the most efficient, cost-effective overland means of transporting large quantities of heavy, mined materials such as ore and coal. A key reason for this, apart from the fact that rails cars can hold huge volumes of materials, is that it does not cost significantly more for locomotives to be pulling 60 railcars of coal as opposed to 40 cars. In addition, railroad companies, unlike truck lines, are unaffected by increases in gasoline prices. If you own or manage a business that ships or receives goods via train, you will benefit from the following brief article concerning an important piece of railcar-related equipment.
Whether a business ships and receives materials via railcars, semi-trucks or both, its loading dock area is one of the most potentially hazardous places on its grounds. One reason for this is that there’s often a good deal of movement involving very heavy vehicles, including forklifts and semi-trucks. Secondly, some of people operating these vehicles, such as train or truck drivers, are not your employees, and therefore you don’t know how diligent they are on safety matters. Apart from ensuring that your workers are well trained, the second key thing you can do to help ensure loading dock safety is to use the best dock-area safety equipment available. Concerning trucks and semi-trailers, a key type of such equipment is
wheel chocks, along with their counterpart for trains,
rail car chocks.
The
rail car chock is
material handling equipment that is beautiful in its simplicity and absolutely vital in its function. The job of
railroad chocks, also known as
rail chocks, is to hold railcars firmly in place while they are at your dock being loaded or unloaded. In doing so, the
rail car chock prevents the incidence of a rollaway rail car, which clearly can be very hazardous as well as a potential cause of significant property damage.
Rail car chocks are made of steel and are designed to be fitted directly on top or rails without the need for any tools. When a railcar is moved into position on top of them, the
rail chocks secure the car firmly place for cargo loading and unloading.
When one considers how potentially hazardous and damage causing a rollaway railcar can be,
rail car chocks are very inexpensive and highly cost-effective dock-area safety equipment. In addition to preventing serious injuries,
rail chocks also save industrial companies significant amounts of money in health care bills, worker’s compensation claims, and repair costs for the potentially extensive property damage that a rollaway railcar can cause. Rail car chocks are vital safety equipment for companies that ship or receive materials via rail, and every such company should have several on hand at all times. It is the customer’s responsibility to verify correctness of fit for applications.
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