Lift Gates vs Ramps

You can get hurt bad with either of them. Ramps, even ones that are ah crap, what term am I looking for, describing small ridges to keep you from slipping????
Anyway all ramps can become slick and very dangerous in rain or snow. So can liftgates for that matter.
But both have their own special uses. I don't believe the questions " which are safer," or " which are better," can have a generic answer.

 

As stated above both have their ups and downs. A truck with a ramp can haul more product and make more deliveries in a trip. When a liftgate can make speedier deliveries but to less customers. Ramp you can fall off the sides if not balanced. Lift gate you can keep going of the end if you cant stop the pallet jack in time and dont let go. Both you have to be careful. Whatever you prefer you have to be careful at what you do. Guys including me get in a rush but if slowing down and getting it done is key. I rather waste 10 more mins. at a stop then a couple days trying to heal up from a fall

 

My wheelchair van has a little fold down lip on the end of the ramp that prevents the chair rolling off the edge - engages and disengages on contact with the ground,

Surprised that tail lift technology hasn't adopted this to prevent run away pallets on jacks.

Just a thought.

 

I'm not in the food or beverage ind, but we deliver & install office furn and copy machines.

There is no way I would send my guys out to move a 500lb fire file or deliver a $10K copy with a truck that only has a ramp.

I don't know anyone her locally that uses ramps-except the moving co.'s, and I'm sure they have trucks with liftgates.

 

They do have this technology, except you have to lift the tip up manually. I never really used it unless I had an extremely heavy pallet, but if you turn the pallet sideways on the liftgate, and drop the pallet, you can prevent runaways from happening. It's not 100% foolproof, but its better than pushing the pallet straight forward, unless you have one of those long rail freight liftgates.

 

When I did beverage delivery we used lift gates. The metal ramps scare the #### outta me. The way they become slick and going up/down them with 80+lbs of stuff on a two wheeler.. Scary!

 

lift gates are much faster than ramps (and mostly safer) as long as you have electric pallet jacks.

Take a 2500lb pallet (100 cases +/-), park #### near anywhere you like (meaning bigger truck), pull the pallet out, and put it right near the back door. (sometimes even inside, man I LOVED 4' doors) and then just break it down and wheel it in from there. Cuts the distance you walk by tons. You are only wheeling from the back door in. And safer because you can park the truck anywhere and just EPJ it over. Plus the #### 400lb worth of crap on the wheeler doesn't go flying down the ramp with you behind it.

manual pallet jacks on a lift gate suck and are dangerous as hell. Won't ever do that again. (EPJ's have a brake, the pallet can't/shouldn't knock you off the back, which is easy as heck to do in a manual pallet jack.)

 

we use stander ad welcher ramps 12 foot for the straight trucks, 14 for the semi's. all but two of our trailers have liftgates, and two straight trucks have them. for just running boxes and light furniture's ramps are nice. but for those ungodly heavy pieces lift gates are a gift for god.. i think more injuries occur with ramps. (smashed fingers, smacking your head on the lid of the bellybox,sliding down a ramp with very little grit left etc.)