The control of vehicles during loading and unloading operations is not always done fully and properly. Those involved in the loading and unloading operations can be seriously injured, or even killed, if vehicles drive off unexpectedly.
Tuffnells Parcels Express Ltd was fined £35,000 and ordered to pay £5134 in costs at Bedfordshire Magistrates’ Court in December 2009, after it admitted breaching s.2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work, etc Act 1974. This incident occured at around 7.30am on 18 March 2008, when porter Michael Tierney (aged 53) was nearing the end of his night shift at the depot of Tuffnells Parcels Express Ltd in Leighton Buzzard. Tuffnells Parcels Express Ltd has more than 600 vehicles and 25 depots in the UK. Mr Tierney’s job involved unloading the heavy goods vehicles that brought parcels to the distribution centre, sorting the parcels ready for local delivery and then loading them onto the organisation's smaller delivery lorries.
The incoming and outgoing vehicles were reverse parked in loading bays, connected to the sorting centre by manual loading ramps. The court heard that Mr Tierney was still in the back of one of the smaller lorries when the driver unexpectedly pulled away from the loading dock. He fell from the rear of the vehicle, from a height of about four feet, and fractured his thigh bone when he landed on the ground.
Although this is a wide spread problem for many companies, there are simple, low cost solutions that can be implemented to safeguard those at risk. As an HSE Inspector said when commenting on the case:
“Reasonable practical measures the company could have put in place would have included a simple control system to prevent the driver from pulling away from the loading bay, such as a key cabinet with restricted access or giving the keys to the porter until loading was complete.”