3 Reasons To Check The Wheels On Hand Trucks Every Day
From maneuvering large packages and stacks of merchandise to transporting large drums of materials, hand trucks serve a highly valuable purpose in an industrial workplace or warehouse facility. These simple material handling devices are truly basic in their design, consisting of a support frame and wheels for maneuverability.
Yet, these simplistic material handling devices deserve the proper level of maintenance and attention. The primary point of maintenance with hand trucks is the wheels that make these pieces of equipment portable, but too many business owners neglect the wheels on their hand trucks. Check out this short list of reasons to check the wheels on your facility's hand trucks on a daily basis.
1. Hand trucks will be more difficult to maneuver with bad wheels.
Did you know that bad wheels on a hand truck could actually affect workplace productivity? It really could because wheels that do not roll smoothly are harder to push and maneuver, which means it will take longer to push or pull a hand truck if it has bad wheels.
2. Spotting bad wheels will help avoid safety incidents in the workplace.
Imagine this: an employee grabs a hand truck parked close to a load of palletized merchandise and starts loading it up. They get a good heavy load on the hand truck, and then they take off on their way to move the merchandise to another area. That employee did not see that the hand truck had a bad tire, so when they push the unit to propel it forward, the hand truck is thrown off balance and topples over, causing the employee to trip and fall. This is exactly what can happen when your hand trucks are not inspected daily for bad wheels.
3. Bad wheels should be replaced early on to protect the life of the unit.
Bad wheels and tires on a hand truck may not sound like that big of an issue, but if the wheels and tires are bad on a hand truck, you are going to put more stress on the equipment overall. Changes in the tires mean changes in the support, which can cause extra stress and unbalanced stress when you are hauling a load on the unit. Therefore, not changing the wheels and tires on a hand truck when problems are first spotted could easily be stressing enough to cause the frame of the unit to bend, connective hardware to break, or other problems.
For more information on maintaining material handling products, contact your local equipment supplier.
