Salt Lake City, Utah
Arbon Equipment Corporation specializes in selling, installing and servicing loading dock equipment (including levelers), industrial doors and other in-plant solutions. Some of the most important products they offer come from PS Safety Access™, including safety gates and more.
Recently, one of Arbon’s customers in Salt Lake City, Utah, approached them with a unique challenge that required an innovative solution. The customer utilized a double-wide door on their loading dock with two separate levelers. However, to comply with the company’s own internal safety standards, only half of the doorway could be used at a time, receiving one truck at a time on one of the levelers. This meant that the other half of the opened double doorway needed to be protected so workers didn’t accidentally fall off the loading dock.
Mitch Davis, an in-plant solutions specialist at Arbon, led the project. “One of the biggest challenges was that a traditional loading dock safety gate opens horizontally, and that requires a lot of floor space,” Davis says. “Instead, I contacted PS Safety Access, and we agreed that they had the perfect solution.”
The EdgeSafe® Smart Gate (in a double configuration) checked all the boxes for the situation’s unique requirements. “I’ve used the EdgeSafe Smart Gate in the past, and it’s an excellent product,” says Davis. “Each side of the gate opens vertically, easily raising up to get out of the way of incoming pallets, etc., without needing to swing open over a wide area. These gates are also expandable, which was important for this application as well.”
The Arbon team sought an estimate from PS Safety Access for how long installation of the double gate would take, and their assessment proved accurate, requiring just a single installer for the job. “Installation went very smoothly,” Davis says, “and the customer is very happy with the gate. It was absolutely the right solution, and a win for everyone involved.”
“In fact,” he adds, “they’re already considering switching it over to powered operation so it’s easier for forklift operators to open and close.”
In other projects featuring the EdgeSafe Smart Gate, Davis points out that the optional toeboard was also an important feature. “When you use a gate like this on an elevated platform where objects can potentially roll off the edge, the toeboard becomes critical. You just need that extra protection.”
If your business is looking to improve worker safety around loading docks, machinery and raised platforms, the EdgeSafe® Smart Gate may be an excellent option for your facility. Its flexible sizing and vertical opening make it a perfect fit for virtually any situation, including loading docks, fall protection/railing openings, mezzanines, machine guarding, equipment protection, ground-level traffic/pedestrian control, aisle violator, area perimeter protection and pedestrian control where forklift traffic (or other machinery) is present.