Truck Restraints Questions and Answers

What are Truck Restraints?

Truck Restraints secure the trailer to the loading dock during loading and unloading procedures. As industrial accident statistics clearly attest, loading dock areas can be very dangerous. A variety of different injury-causing mishaps can and do happen every year. Any type of several-ton equipment is going to be dangerous—doubly so when it has the ability to move.

Why purchased Truck Restraints?

Purchasing all relevant, high-quality dock safety equipment clearly is vital to maintaining a safe loading dock areas. One absolutely essential type of material handling dock safety equipment are Truck Restraints. These units anchor directly to the dock and latch onto either the trailer’s ICC bar or rear impact guard (RIG) to hold the trailer firmly in place while it is being loaded or unloaded at the dock. There are two models of this vital equipment: manual Trailer Restraints and the electric Dock Restraint. Both types of equipment work equally well in ensuring that a truck remains absolutely stationary at the dock until the unloading/loading is complete and the driver has been given a clear go-ahead to pull out.

How do Truck Restraints work?

Truck restraints prevent several dangerous and potentially tragic dock-area occurrences from happening: early driver departure and trailer creep. Dock truck restraints maintain a firm grip on the trailer’s rear portion which will prevent a driver from moving the truck prematurely. Trailer creep refers to the gradual, inch-by-inch movement of a trailer away from a dock, with this movement usually caused by the momentum of repeated forklift crossings from the dock onto the truck bed. The firm grip of dock restraints prevents this, which can result in the potentially disastrous occurrence of a fork truck, with driver on board, falling forward into the gap created by the trailer creep.

What dangers can occur without Truck Restraints?

A potential injury-causing occurrence that a dock truck restraint, when used together with a trailer jack stand, can prevent is trailer upending. This can occur when the trailer is separated from its rig at the dock area. Resembling a tilted seesaw, trailer upending typically occurs when a heavy load is placed at the trailer’s front end, causing its back end to rise up from the dock platform. If a forklift driver happens to be making a trailer-dock crossing when this occurs, the resulting forklift tip over/fall can cause potentially serious injury. The firm trailer-dock grip maintained by the dock restraint eliminates the possibility of this occurring.

Why are Truck Restraints safer?

In short, dock truck restraints, when used in conjunction with other loading dock safety equipment, greatly reduce the chance for dangerous situations and injuries at loading docks.