Dock Accessories: A Warehouse Owner's Guide To The Good Stuff
When you buy a warehouse for the first time and begin building a shipping company, you often buy the bare minimum until you can get the business up and running. That often tends to leave you with less than you would like on the docks. Once you finally start turning a profit, you may want to consider upgrading some things in the warehouse. The following dock accessories are definitely the go-to items to have.
Bumper Pads
Bumper pads are thick cushions around the doorways of the dock bays. They prevent a lot of damage from truck drivers backing up a little too hard against the dock openings while trying to align the truck doors perfectly with the dock openings. They are usually one of the first accessories warehouse owners choose to invest in when they finally have a surplus in cash flow.
Automated Dock Ramps
Instead of having to drag over a portable dock ramp that typically weighs about eighty pounds every time a truck shows up, you can install automated dock ramps. These ramps fold up and down electronically or slide in and out of the dock bay. Accommodations are made for the dock overhead doors so that the dock ramps never interfere with the overhead doors and vice versa. It makes for a swifter unloading of the trucks because you just roll up the overhead door, press a button to drop or slide the dock ramp into place, and begin unloading your trucks.
Automated Conveyor Belts
A lot of warehouses use manual conveyors that fold up into a compact accordion sort of package and then fold out when it is time to unload a truck. While that is fine and dandy, nothing beats an automated conveyor that automatically moves product down the belt for workers to grab and stage without having to manually keep pushing products along. The work is completed faster, and the workers are challenged to move faster to keep up with the pace of the conveyor belt. It might set you back a few grand, but it is definitely worth it to get things unloaded quicker.
Lock and Seal Dock Extenders
These dock extenders also fold out and in like an accordion, except that they are attached all the way around the dock bay openings. When folded outward, they latch onto and lock into place, providing a seal all the way around the back of a truck or the opening of a boxcar. Warehouses that take a lot of shipments via boxcar (i.e., train) lose far fewer products by having these lock and seal extenders installed.
Learn more about warehouse docks from an industrial equipment supplier.