New loading dock improves safety and convenience

  • Published
  • By Shawn Jacobs
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. --  The new loading dock recently completed at Arnold Engineering Development Center's (AEDC) Warehouse 1 means unloading trucks will no longer have to block lanes of Hap Arnold Drive.

That should be welcome news to many employees, who have long complained of traffic congestion during shift changes and who use Gate 2 to enter and exit the base. The improvement should also bring greater safety and efficiency to operations at the warehouse.

"It's been an issue for about the last five years or probably more than that," Mike Ramsey, logistics branch manager for Aerospace Testing Alliance (ATA), AEDC's operating contractor, said. "The length of the trailers, especially with the extended cabs on the trucks have gotten to the point where, when they're pulling in perpendicular to the dock to unload, that they're covering part of the lane or all of the lane and blocking traffic so that it's become a safety hazard. Of course, this goes back to the years when trucking was deregulated and the trailers started getting longer, and they're now over 50 feet."

Ramsey said trailers used to be 40 to 45 feet long. In addition, cabs, many with sleepers in them, have increased in length, adding to the safety hazard.

He said various measures have been tried or considered over the years to correct the problem.

"We've tried putting out cones, which put the person who was placing the cones out in the road at risk because they're constantly out in the road and sometimes they were blocked by the cab of a truck from oncoming traffic," Ramsey said. "We stopped that. We talked about putting some type of lights or signs up or even redoing the road and extending or widening the road in one area, but all were seen as kind of limited solutions."

Officials even considered unloading behind the warehouse, but that idea was scrapped because of safety concerns over creating congestion for Warehouse 2, where outgoing trucks are loaded. Ramsey said, due to limited space, trucks would have trouble backing into that area, creating even more of a safety risk. He said the new "island dock" was decided upon as the solution.

"It's a dock that's built off of our primary loading dock that allows the truck to pull in parallel to the existing dock on either side of that new island dock, as opposed to being perpendicular to the dock," Ramsey said. "What that means is, while trucks are unloading, there won't be any blockage in the lanes at all ... so, we can off-load two trucks at the same time ... with both of them being out of the roadway.
Ramsey said the new dock includes other safety features.

"There's an arm that's got a light on it that puts some light into the trailer while we're unloading," he said. "We put the roof on this one, too, and we've got some guard rails around the dock as added safety measures.

"It's also got a dock arrester where when the truck backs up it will automatically lock into the bumper of that truck as a safety measure, and it's got a light that will activate that goes red when they back up and that dock arrester is activated. The truck driver can't drive away until that light is green. It's another safety measure that's built into the dock that we didn't have before."

Keith Marshall, ATA manager of storage and distribution, explained how the new dock will make work easier and more efficient for him and his employees.

"It'll get the traffic moving down the road, which has been a major problem at AEDC for a long time," Marshall said. "We get lots of comments about holding up traffic in the morning and in the afternoon when people are coming in and leaving. It should make us ... more efficient in loading and unloading and not being in the road, not having to hurry to get the truck unloaded. [We can] be safer at the same time."

The new dock was constructed under an Air Force contract, with help from the Design and Safety offices on base.