Tether Track Fall Arrest System

Mike Vance does not wear a cape to work. He's not from a planet with a red sun, and he's unable to leap buildings in a single bound. He's never considered himself a superhero by any means. Yet, as Director of Engineering at Bristol Metals in Tennessee, you could call him a Man of Steel, and he also bears a superhero's burden in that his job is all about keeping people safe.

"We're a manufacturer of stainless steel pipe, and all day we're loading flatbed trucks with multiple stacks of the pipe for shipment," said Vance. "We've been loading trucks at this facility for 50 years, and the risk is certainly there for someone to fall off of the truck while it's being loaded. There have been incidents where people have fallen. Nobody has been seriously injured, but the risk is there."

Having stepped up their safety program in recent years, Vance and his safety team took a proactive look at health and safety risks at the facility, and identified the truck loading as the highest safety risk for their employees. While on the bed of the trucks, all workers fall under OSHA's requirement to have some form of fall protection. OSHA 1926 requires fall protection for employees who work at elevation, defined as 4' per OSHA 1910 for general industry and 6' per OSHA construction standards.

The company explored several solutions to maintain an effective loading process while creating a safer work environment.

"We looked into a new building that would have overhead cranes to load the trucks, but that didn't change anything for the workers, who would still need to be tied off. We talked about using man-lifts to reach over and keep the men off the truck, but after studying the situation, it would be very difficult to effectively load unless they can actually be on the truck."

They found a solution with a lower cost than a new building and allowed the workers to remain on the truck in the form of two free standing Tether Track fall protection systems by Gorbel. The primary system features two cantilevered monorails, which enables two flatbeds to be loaded in the same area simultaneously. Each monorail uses Gorbel's dual track, allowing two workers to pass one another safely without disconnecting the lanyard from their harness. A second Tether Track system featured a single cantilevered monorail, also with the dual track.

"We narrowed it down to two companies, and we chose Gorbel Tether Track based on the fact that they had the dual track and we could put two men up there and they could pass each other," said Vance. "The other systems that we found could not offer that."