The fleet management team at Glenelg Shire Council in Victoria have developed a way for operators to safely enter a plant tipper body without any risk of falling.
The Supervisor of the council’s fleet operations Norm Mutch says there is currently no standard for steps or ladders fitted onto truck bodies. Compounding this, is the fact there are very real risks of slipping and falling.
“With the typical steps you find on trucks, we you hop into the tipper body, you actually change your weight distribution,” Mutch says. “Your weight goes onto one foot, which twists. This causes issues with slipping and falling from heights two to three metres above the ground.”
He says the solution came to him to by chance as he was leaving the workshop one evening. He observed one of the workshop’s platform ladders and realised it would be suitable for scaling the height of a truck.
However, some thought was needed to make it possible to safely enter the tipper body.
“We came up with an idea to fold another ladder down into the tipper body, which would then provide safe access,” Mutch says. “It would have to comply with the AS 1657 standard for fixed platforms, walkways, stairways and ladders.
“The reason we hop into the back of trucks is to clean them or complete tasks such as removing the tailgate. Some truck bodies can be quite muddy and therefore the steps can become muddy.
“The ladder has eliminated any chance of the operator falling, as well as everything else we identified in the hazard tests.”
Mutch says the industry would benefit from having a specific standard for ladder access to mobile plant, but concedes this would be very difficult.
“You cannot design an access ladder built onto a piece of mobile plant that meets the AS 1657 standards,” he adds. “You have to have steps of a certain height and depth as well as adequate ballast. It’s very hard to build these onto a plant body.
“When you go over the top of a tipper body, you must have the three points of contact. I don’t think a standard for mobile plant would eliminate the issue of the distribution of weight due to your foot twisting.
“The standards are more designed for buildings. For that reason, we decided to remove any steps from the vehicles and get them to return to the workshop if there were any issues. This way the ladder would comply with the standards.”
The platform ladder was inspected by WorkSafe Victoria personnel and has been entered in for a WorkSafe Victoria Award.