Advice: Load restraint essentials

First up, the LRG points out that freight falling off a truck or trailer, or heavy stuff moving in transit and making a truck or trailer unstable is a very serious situation that’s likely to caused damage, disruption or even death.

The Chain of Responsibility starts with anyone who packs, loads, moves or unloads a vehicle and progresses through management layers, right up to the business owners.

Back in the good ol’ days of tarped loads – yes, Virginia, before eight-year-olds knew there wasn’t a Santa Claus and long before curtain-siders – it was matter of practicality for loads to be correctly secured.

See, back then, if you were sloppy with your tie downs – ropes or chains – you might have to slacken off the tarps to fix them en route, which was twice as difficult. Also, any driver worth his salt had perfectly fitted tarps and no-one wanted to disturb and retie them.

These days, tensioning a load is much easier, thanks to winches and webbing for most freight, load-rated side gates and chain turnbuckles instead of the jaw-smashing dogs of yesteryear. Perhaps the ease of load security has led to complacency.

The LRG lists a simple formula for ensuring load security:

Every freight movement requires load restraint and there are 10 key parameters.

Loading and unloading the vehicle
6. Ensure the load is stabilised.
7. Understand and use safe work practices when loading and unloading.
8. Ensure there’s sufficient load restraint to keep everyone safe.

Driving according to the load, vehicle and road conditions
9. Allow for vehicle stability, steering and braking when driving the loaded vehicle.
10. Check the load, the vehicle and all restraints regularly during the journey.

If every vehicle loader and driver followed those simple steps we wouldn’t have loads falling off or shifting. The fact that such incidents are daily occurrences indicates that the above 10 steps aren’t being followed.

The problem we see with the LRG is its length and complexity, and that puts off many people who should read it. We know that very few will digest its near-300 page length, but that’s missing the point: if the above ’10 Steps’ are followed in principle their procedures can be backed up by reference to the detailed sections of the LRG.

For example, a driver has to load several pallets of stacked individual items and is concerned that they might not remain stacked neatly during the journey: there are several illustrations of how such pallet loads can checked for stability.

Another illustration covers what can happen when carrying loads that can ‘settle’ or compress under the vibration of road travel. Tight straps at the start of the journey may loosen after a few klicks and require regular checking to make sure they continue to restrain the load.

Gates are familiar – too familiar, in some cases – and are often relied on inappropriately. The LRG shows how to stabilise non-load-restraint-rated gates with straps, to reinforce them. Also it shows that even load-restraint-rated gates need to be used correctly, so their restraint capability can be used.

For example, a load that’s free to move back and forth inside gates can easily develop enough momentum to break through their restraint. Less than trailer length and width loads need to be restrained independently of the gates, or ‘blocked’ with dunnage or empty pallets to prevent unrestrained movement against the headboard or gates.

The recent bushfire crisis on the east coast saw the need for many people to pick up 1000-litre intermediate bulk containers (IBCs) – plastic water tanks inside protective steel cages – to aid with fire-fighting. Drivers unused to carting liquids can be unpleasantly surprised by the propensity of part-filled liquid containers to cause roll-overs or unexpected ‘surges’ in acceleration, as more than few would-be fire-fighters found out.

The LRG has a comprehensive chapter on how to transport liquids.

Loads that are likely to become ‘spears’ in the event of emergency braking or a rear or frontal impact – pipes, logs, lengths of sawn timber – get special treatment under the LRG, so drivers unused to loading such materials can easily see what can go wrong.

Not all truck and trailer headboards are restraint-rated for ‘spear’ loads and may need additional chain or webbing reinforcement. Check out a log-truck headboard to see how strong such a load-restraint needs to be.

Tall loads are also well covered, emphasising their ability to topple and cause instability in the truck or trailer.

Low-height loads – stacked flat sheets, for example – are ideal from a load stability point of view, but difficult to retrain with lashings. A strap angle of less than 30-degrees don’t provide sufficient downward clamping force on the load and it may shift.

The importance of friction is highlighted in several sections of the LRG: the effect of a slippery tray deck and the need for more load restraint on smooth-surfaced loads or protective packaging.

Loads that can roll – vehicles, wheeled implements and coiled steel – are given special treatment that takes into account their natural ability to ‘escape’.

Pick-up and delivery drivers are shown the need for consolidating loads during the work process, where the original load restraint needs to be varied to suit drops and collections.

I could go on with more examples, but you get the picture: download a copy of the 2018 Load Restraint Guide and read the first bit, then flick through it, so you know where to find the correct load restraint information when you need it. We’ve been loading and unloading trucks and trailers for years and we learnt plenty.

How many times have you seen poorly loaded light trucks and utes on the road? It’s obvious that the people who loaded them didn’t know that the total width of the loaded vehicle shouldn’t exceed 2.5 metres – with 150mm maximum projection on each side – or the back edge of the overhanging load shouldn’t be more than 3.7 metres from the rear axle, or 60 per cent of the vehicle’s wheelbase.

That’s one of the items covered in the 20-page-long Load Restraint Guide for Light Vehicles. (There’s no excuse for not reading a 20-page PDF.)

Frontal overhang is another issue, because it’s not allowed to be more than 1.2 metres from the front of the vehicle. (In WA, both front and rear overhangs can’t be more than 1.2 metres from the ends of the vehicle.)

Most people know they have to attach a 300mm-long brightly-coloured flag to rear overhanging loads, but how many know that at night it must be a red light that’s visible from 200 metres away?

The dog in the back of the cocky’s or tradie’s ute is an Aussie icon, but the laws differ around the country. A cage that offers shade and water is by far the best solution, but how many dog owners do that?

Unless you’re absolutely sure you know how to load, unload and move every type of freight on every truck, trailer, ute or light truck we suggest you download copies of the Load Restraint Guides and have them easily accessible.

As the old bloke who showed me how to drive a truck many years ago used to say: “Safety should never be sacrificed for any reason”. It’s a good maxim.