Roll-off trailer manufacturer tries to thwart safety violations.
Greg Brown doesn’t like hearing about accidents involving roll-off trucks and trailers. As the owner of Benlee, a manufacturer of roll-off equipment, he knows the mistakes people make are preventable.
“It’s done to save time and it can end up in death. The question is what equipment designers can do to outthink the person who is trying to sidestep the system,” says Brown. In the 10 years he has owned the company near Detroit, Benlee has made 42 improvements to its roll-off equipment, many of which were aimed at improving the safety of its roll-off trailers.
The company is now offering new safety devices at their cost to help prevent two common types of incidents. In a six-week span in the fall of 2014, Brown says he heard of two cases involving power lines and two load-height accidents, resulting in two deaths. “It’s sad, because people know better. In the electrocution, the person just wasn’t careful, he wasn’t watching what he was doing.” A driver killed when his load hit an overpass may have survived if he had been wearing his seatbelt.
Roll-offs have large warning stickers about power lines. Benlee is now offering a new 12-inch-square “Look Up” sign with a bracket that mounts directly behind the controls. “It’s right in the operator’s face,” says Brown. It is available at Benlee’s cost of $25. Also available at cost ($95) is a set of lights that point upward to help operators see power lines in the dark.
“Our equipment carries heavy loads,” says Brown, “so we are very focused on safety.” Benlee has served the scrap industry for decades and now provides fleets of roll-off equipment for the tar sand industry, such as in Pennsylvania and Canada.
Besides owning Benlee, Brown has scrap metal recycling companies in Raleigh and Goldsboro, North Carolina, so he uses the products he manufactures. In fact, one of his own drivers escaped injury when he hit an overpass on a customer’s property, but it cost the company plenty. “I just got the bill for an enormous amount of money.”
He says audible hoist alarms are often disabled by drivers or not connected on trailer units, because the noise is annoying. Benlee now offers an amber blinking alarm light and hoist up switch ($80) that is mounted on the driver’s side of the trailer and visible only in the rearview mirror. It isn’t a bother and clearly reminds the driver that the hoist is raised.
Brown says Benlee is always seeking safety improvement ideas from customers and has reduced risk in other ways, including remote operation of controls to prevent injury in case of equipment or hose failure. The company also added a “dead man” button to make it easier to operate truck and trailer brakes. To make proper settings, a driver usually has to get out of the cab, climb back in and then get out again, which increases the chance of injury. With the dead man button, the trailer brake is set in the cab and the operator only has to exit once. “When you hold the button in, it disengages the trailer brake. Let go and the brake is engaged,” explains Brown.
Benlee also offers a simple product called a wheel-check. The brightly colored arrows are installed on wheel nuts after they are torqued. If the nut comes loose, the wheel-check will be out of align and easily seen during a walk-around inspection.
Benlee’s new safety offerings are available from its online store at Benlee.com or by phone at 734/722-8100.
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