Safety is essential in warehouses, which are among the most hazardous places to work. Data from the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) confirm this year after year: Warehouse workers are more than twice as likely to be hurt or become ill on the job compared to their counterparts in private industry. The rate of injury or illness was 4.8 per 100 full-time warehouse workers compared to 2.3 per 100 full-time workers across the private sector, according to OSHA data from 2024, the most recent available.
As a result, most companies put a special focus on loading dock safety—training employees in safe operation, regularly auditing equipment and systems to make sure everything is in working order, and often investing in new technologies that can make the environment safer. These practices are especially important for the truck drivers who move in and out of facilities each and every day and have a unique responsibility to create safe conditions across the logistics industry.
“Drivers have a responsibility to be safe while driving the truck and while interacting with a customer at a loading dock or their place of business,” explains Matt Godfrey, president of less-than-truckload (LTL) freight carrier ABF Freight, which operates 240 service centers nationwide and has a network of local drivers that begin and end each day on a loading dock, visiting multiple facilities in between.
“When [our employees] come into work, we want them to go home in the same condition,” Godfrey says, emphasizing the importance of developing a companywide safety mindset. “And we want to treat our customers’ freight in the same way—[we want it to be] on time, intact, and damage free.”
To that end, drivers need a double-duty education, learning how to operate safely behind the wheel as well as on the dock. Godfrey and others say that training is becoming increasingly important in a fast-moving, high-tech logistics world.
Here are two ways companies can build a safety culture that cuts across both aspects of the business.
START WITH AN EDUCATION
Developing a safety mindset begins the moment an associate is hired—whether to work the docks, drive a truck, or both. Godfrey explains that ABF Freight’s “city drivers”—who deliver freight from local service centers to multiple customers in a defined area—must be trained drivers and dock workers because about 95% of them perform both duties.
“Our city drivers who are making those deliveries to customer locations, the overwhelming majority of the time they have worked our docks before making a delivery,” Godfrey explains. “So they are very familiar with how the facility works on the cross dock. They have knowledge that is invaluable.”
Freight service centers, where those drivers start and end their day, are places where freight is briefly stored, consolidated, and transferred, a process referred to as “cross-docking.” Godfrey says it’s common practice in the LTL industry for associates to both work the docks and make deliveries (drivers must have a valid commercial driver’s license), making loading dock training a crucial part of any new-hire onboarding process.
“The training starts from day one of onboarding,” Godfrey says.
Clint McCoy, chief operating officer at LTL carrier FedEx Freight, agrees, adding that dock safety starts with the structure of the dock itself—ensuring cleanliness, safe traffic flow, and proper storage and maintenance of equipment, as basic steps—and continues with onboarding and recurring education and training.
“When we hire someone, [they receive a] three-week onboarding experience, which includes classroom and mentor-led on-the-dock training,” McCoy explains. “At the end of that three-week period, if a mentor is not comfortable [with the person’s readiness], they get more training.”
That training continues regularly and is done any time there is an incident or near-incident, McCoy adds. He points to forklift certifications as an example: OSHA requires forklift recertification every three years, but FedEx Freight employees go through the process every two years to ensure that they are up to date.
On top of that, anytime a worker is involved in a forklift-related incident, he or she is required to complete additional training and forklift recertification.
“We take that seriously,” he says, noting that any kind of “near miss” in the truck or on the dock triggers a call with the associate and their manager, all the way up to the director level. “We talk about what happened so we understand, and the employee can understand, what to do differently.”
He says drivers should also be educated on the processes and procedures in place at each customer’s location—conditions that can vary widely.
“Understanding your surroundings and always having your head on a swivel [is important],” he says, emphasizing the level of activity and equipment in motion on loading docks. “You encounter so many different things—some [customers] don’t want drivers on their docks, some want them to help, [and] some don’t have docks, so you have to deliver off the ground.”
Those conditions necessitate a “safety above all” mindset, according to McCoy.
THEN ADD TECHNOLOGY
Carriers and drivers today can avail themselves of a wide array of technologies designed to help them operate more safely—both in the cab of the truck and on the loading dock. In the truck, forward-facing cameras monitor road incidents to improve visibility into fleet operations and reduce risk, and a plethora of truck telematics offer insight into incidents, driver behavior, fuel usage, and the like. Technology is advancing on the dock as well: Common examples include automated dock levelers and restraints, and sensor-based systems that help control the movement of trucks in and out of a facility—all of which are steadily advancing and finding greater use in warehouses of all types and sizes.
Pilot testing those new technologies should be a routine part of a carrier’s business, Godfrey says.
“All of the technology out there is aimed at making the equipment safer [and] giving more tools to people who are using the equipment,” he explains. “We have great, safe employees, but we want to go as far as we possibly can to augment their ability to be safe.
“We continue to test a variety of products to uncover what is the best fit for us … so [drivers] can be safer out on the road or at a customer’s location.”
McCoy points to truck telematics, cameras, and advanced systems such as collision mitigation and lane-departure warnings as road-safety staples. He says the loading dock is changing in much the same way, pointing to forklift telematics as a key example: Just like the telematics on a truck, forklift telematics systems collect information from the fleet—including data on usage, maintenance needs, operator behavior, and location tracking—that can help reduce accidents and improve safety.
“The safety on the trucks has advanced rapidly over the last several years, and on the dock, things are evolving rapidly [as well],” he says. “There is so much more we can do in the future [on our loading docks]—we are starting to explore those capabilities.”
Such efforts are likely to keep loading dock safety at the top of every warehouse’s risk management strategy.
“We look at every incident as serious—because of the critical nature [of our business],” McCoy says. “We work around things that are very dangerous; one second of inattention can lead to catastrophic outcomes.”