On February 13, a truck driver died at a New York wholesale lumber yard when he was struck and killed by lumber as his truck was unloaded. The next day, a truck driver in Antioch, California, was crushed by lumber he was unloading. These incidents underscore the fact that simply requiring truck drivers to wear hard hats and reflective vests during unloading is not enough when it comes to good safety practices. Unloading materials from trucks, particularly materials like lumber and other wood products, pipes, and metal beams and slabs, can cause serious injury or death when hundreds or thousands of pounds of material come crashing down.

Establishing a few simple rules above and beyond a hard hat and vest can ensure the safety of not only your own employees but also others working at your site. Here are tips to keep in mind:

• Insist that truck drivers in your fleet follow all U.S. Department of Transportation regulations regarding loading, securing, and inspecting loads in transit. This will help to ensure that loads are stable when they arrive at their destinations.
• Remember to set the brakes before unloading.
• Keep the load secured until it has been checked to make sure it has not shifted and become unstable during transport. If the load is unstable, reposition material before unsecuring the load.
• If you have regular truck traffic at your facility, establish safe areas for unloading trucks that are level and provide enough room to unload without encountering obstacles—either overhead or to the side.
• Forklift operators should never move material or even approach a truck to unload it unless they know where the driver is.
• Instruct all personnel, including drivers, to stay clear of the load while it is being removed from the truck. This includes not standing on the opposite side of the truck from where unloading is taking place. Drivers have been injured—and killed—by material that was inadvertently pushed off the other side of the truck during unloading.
• Do not allow personnel to work on one end of a truck while the other is being unloaded. Work on one side could destabilize the rest of the load.
• Never allow anyone to stand on material that is in the process of being unloaded.
• If unloading in a remote location (at a construction site, for example), ensure that procedures and equipment (for example, providing a truck with its own forklift) are in place to have the material unloaded safely. Do not use improvised, unsafe unloading methods.

Although they are not the most common safety incidents, injuries resulting from a truckload of material falling on someone are some of the most serious. A few simple—and inexpensive—policies and procedures can help to reduce the chance that they'll happen at your site.