Dump Truck Safety: The Rewards are not Worth the Risks

Whether you drive a dump truck or merely work around them, it is important to remember that they have the potential to be dangerous. There is a tendency for even experienced dump truck drivers to do things the easy way rather than the safe way. A dump truck is a piece of heavy equipment and should always be treated with the respect and care it deserves.

Accidents should not occur around dump trucks, sadly they are quite common. The following example is taken from a public health report on the University of Iowa website:

During the fall of 1999, a 53-year-old construction worker was killed after he unloaded sand from a dump truck. He partially raised the box of his truck to dump out a portion of wet sand at a work location, then leaned under the box to manually trip the hydraulic linkage to bring the box down. The hydraulic linkage was located at the hydraulic pump, behind the cab between the main frames of the truck. This action was apparently a habit to save some time from walking around the truck to push the dump lever inside the truck cab. However, this time, because of the heavy load of sand, and because the box was only partially raised, the truck box came down immediately pinning the man between the box and the frame of the dump truck. The man suffered massive head injuries and was dead at the scene. The deceased truck driver had several years of experience with machinery and was the lead man for the small construction company.

If you do a Google search for “dump truck safety” you will be surprised at the amount of similar case studies that you are able to find. While there are cases of equipment failure, most of the fatalities and serious injuries would have been avoided had the dump truck driver followed standard safety protocols. Everyone likes to get the job done efficiently, but few would argue that the few extra seconds that it takes to operate the box from the proper controls are worth risking one’s life over.

If you are thinking about learning how to drive a dump truck and are interested in learning more, contact us at Associated Training Services.