Speed Up Loading Dock Turnaround Times with Efficient Dock Area Design

Nowadays, in a highly competitive market, it is imperative for products to flow in and out of facilities as quickly and easily as possible. To speed up loading dock turnaround times, one needs to first look towards the dock area design and then look at other aspects such as equipment.

Proper Planning Will Speed Up Loading Dock Turnaround Times

In an ideal world, you could plan your loading docks from scratch and design them in such a way that everything would flow incredibly smoothly. There wouldn’t be any tight access points, making it almost impossible for a van or truck to turn around, there wouldn’t be any awkwardly positioned bays and you certainly wouldn’t have vehicles blocked as they waited for others to unload.

However, since this isn’t the ideal world, you probably don’t have the luxury of rebuilding your loading docks so you need to look at other, more cost-effective solutions that can help you achieve the same results, namely to speed up loading dock turnaround times.

So, what can you do if you don’t have enough loading bays or trucks are finding it practically impossible to line up with your bays because there just isn’t enough manoeuvring space? One solution is to install vehicle turntables.

Vehicle turntables are rotating platforms that turn a vehicle 360 degrees, making it easy to line up with a loading bay, no matter how awkwardly it is positioned. For example, if trucks generally have to perform complex manoeuvres to line up with your loading bays because access is achieved via a parallel driveway that is very narrow, you can significantly speed up loading dock turnaround times by installing these turntables. Simply line them up with the loading bays and then trucks can drive straight onto them. A push of the button and the platform will turn the truck to the proper angle for ideal access.

Safety Is Essential

While it’s essential to speed up loading dock turnaround times, safety is also a critical consideration. You simply can’t have unsafe work practices in the workplace today, which means you need to do everything you can to minimise accidents that could cause lead to serious injury.

car turntable are highly effective because they allow the driver maximum visibility by ensuring the vehicle is in the proper position to depart without having to back out of an awkward space. And this is even more important for trucks because backing-out is a time-consuming, dangerous manoeuvre and countless accidents have occurred. For this reason, vehicle turntables are critical to any facility that handles freight as they will speed up loading dock turnaround times as well as reduce the likelihood of accidents occurring.

Picking the Right Car Park Solutions

Just because your main goal is to speed up loading dock turnaround times, you shouldn’t forget about the other vehicles using the facility. Thus, you can maximise the space your trucks have by reducing the area required for parking cars. With car turntables, you will be able to use even the most awkward and tight areas to park smaller vehicles and get them out of the way of the main operation.

If you want to speed up loading dock turnaround times without being forced to perform a major overhaul of your facility, the most cost-effective solution is to install vehicle turntables. They will speed up loading and unloading times while also reducing the likelihood of accidents occurring.