The health and safety world has paid a great deal of attention to the loading and unloading of goods vehicles over the last decade, making accidents rarer than ever before. But if a load shifts within a vehicle while it is in transit, the first person to discover a problem is likely to be the driver, who may or may not be in a position to make a proper risk assessment before acting.
A lack of training in how to deal with such incidents can lead to life-changing injuries, as proved in one case reported by HSE in January 2023. Andrew Potts, a driver from Nottingham, had his neck broken in five places by a falling pallet of glass at a pallet hub in Lichfield in 2016. At the time, he was attempting to deal with a load that had shifted in transit. In this instance the company concerned, UPN, pleaded guilty to breaches of the Health & Safety Act 1974, and was fined £94,667 plus costs.
More importantly, HSE inspector Andrew Johnson made a statement after the hearing, saying: “Had UPN devised and trained its employees in suitably safe systems of work to deal with shifted loads, then Mr Potts would have continued living the life he had before this incident.”
HSE’s own guidance on the subject can be found in HSG136: A guide to workplace transport safety. Paragraph 151 states: “Every driver should know how to deal with a load that has moved into an unsafe position.” It goes on to talk about: assessing the safety, stability and security of the load before removing any restraints; not opening bulging curtains, instead entering the vehicle to investigate via the back doors – and asking for help from the goods receivers if necessary.
The document also says to “quarantine the vehicle in a safe area, away from other work, until a competent person has decided on a safe system of work for unloading”. Having carried out this task, one solution might be to contact a company that specialises in this kind of work, such as Kent-based Pulka Group. This particular firm is based close to the Port of Dover, enabling it to deal with the kind of freight movement found sometimes in unaccompanied trailers which have endured a rough crossing.
RECOVERY POSITION
“Pulka Group deals only with goods that are unsafe to unload or contaminated; we are solely dedicated to load recovery, unlike other warehouses where they treat this kind of service as an addition,” says Jack Pulka, the company’s MD. “We deal with shifted loads every day, our goal being to minimise waste and save as much product as possible.” Pulka also provides safe disposal for anything which can’t be recovered, for example due to crushed packaging.
The most challenging work involves heavy items that have moved in such a way that they are leaning against the vehicle’s walls, or other freight. “We recently had a load where large slabs of granite had collapsed on the side of the trailer,” Pulka says. “This was a dangerous job to do, as we had to carefully break the slabs into pieces in order to be able to remove them safely.”
In some cases, Pulka is able to provide roadside assistance, usually when the vehicle has been involved in an accident. Inspector Rik Wenham leads the Commercial Vehicle Unit at the Met Police, who are the kind of people likely to be making that call. Depending on the seriousness of the situation, however, they may chose to take a different approach; for relatively simple issues such as a single pallet leaning on a curtain, they may simply take the vehicle to a safe place before assisting the driver to deal with it themselves. First, however, someone has to make a risk assessment.
“At the roadside, it’s going to be a conversation between the police and the operating company,” explains Wenham. “The driver would have a say in it, but then it’s a case of looking at what we know about the load – size, dimensions, weight and the tolerances of any restraints available. Then there’s the question of whether the available restraints were adequate in the first place. Are we going to strap it up, only for the vehicle to go around the next roundabout and the same thing happen again?”
One advantage of camera phones, of course, is that the operator can be sent a picture of the problem to aid this discussion and decide what kind of external help is needed. Because it may be that someone with a truck-mounted forklift or grab can deal with it.
“Many of the larger recovery companies have 150- tonne mobile cranes they can send out for bigger items,” says Wenham.
How the driver and operator may be dealt with legally depends on the severity of the situation. If the load ends up out of the vehicle and on a major road, clean-up crews would need to be sent by National Highways, for example. Quite apart from the expense, something on this level may well warrant being reported to the traffic commissioner. If injuries or worse have resulted, HSE will get involved and prosecution of driver, operator, or both, may result. “At this point all the operator’s documents will be investigated, too,” Wenham cautions. “That means all of their loading documents – and all their safe systems of work.”
Andrew Drewary is a transport investigator and expert witness dealing with precisely these kinds of incidents. He works on behalf of both the companies involved, and the courts dealing with the consequences. He also spends a great deal of his time working to prevent problems happening in the first place. Who does he believe should decide on the best course of action in the event of cargo shifting? “I think it’s reasonable for the driver to make their own risk assessment, but they need to understand what their capabilities are,” answers Drewary. “If it’s a heavy item, or a whole pallet, my advice is just to call it in.”
Prevention is better than cure, and that means improving drivers’ education. Too often, equipment is updated to further reduce the chances of an issue, but no training is given. One of the biggest issues Drewary sees involves EN XL-rated trailers, which are widely – and inaccurately – referred to as having “load restraining curtains”. In reality, that is only the case when the load fills the entire trailer, creating ‘positive fit’. “People are still only using the internal strapping for part loads,” he warns. “But when I’m talking to drivers post-incident, often they aren’t aware that is an inadequate level of restraint.”
Ultimately, however, it’s important to remember that responsibility for safe loading lies with everyone involved in the process, not just the person behind the wheel – at whom fingers will initially point if things go wrong. “One of the big things we talk about when we’re delivering training is how risk is transferred from the depot to the road,” says Drewary. Most forklift drivers, for example, don’t realise that if an incident happens, they too can be prosecuted and fined.
“In the worst case scenario, if a trailer goes over due to load shift and someone is injured or killed, the investigation concentrates on the load first,” he explains. “If the vehicle isn’t loaded correctly – and we can prove that – the standard of driving can be eliminated as the cause. The proves the blame – and therefore the responsibility – lies elsewhere in the chain.”