It's Still A Dangerous Job

[Bob Bufkin]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/18/newsprint-roll-brandywine-valley-railways-engineer_n_1528272.html

[Chris333]

The full newsprint rolls we use weigh around 2000 pounds each. If you just lift them up 6" and drop they make a pretty loud thump.

When they load them in a truck they are made to roll right out, but they double stack them. So you roll the first one out and the top one will drop about 4 feet inside the trailer.

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[termite]

Some VERY sick, sad and disgusting comments posted to that site about this. Any time that someone dies in an accident, it' a terrible thing to happen, not a thing to joke about.


Alan

[Hyperion]

Some VERY sick, sad and disgusting comments posted to that site about this. Any time that someone dies in an accident, it' a terrible thing to happen, not a thing to joke about.

Welcome to the internet.  Let someone say something anonymously and they'll say anything.

And, yes, it's still an extremely dangerous job.

The industry had almost 20,000 injuries last year and 21 employee deaths.  We were most unfortunate to have 9 fellow employees killed on duty on the BNSF last year.

[lock4244]

I hate news like this.  Very sad.

[rswinnerton]

The full newsprint rolls we use weigh around 2000 pounds each. If you just lift them up 6" and drop they make a pretty loud thump. When they load them in a truck they are made to roll right out, but they double stack them. So you roll the first one out and the top one will drop about 4 feet inside the trailer.
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I've never seen rolled paper carried on its side. Ever. Although a 2000 Lb roll is awfully small. Most newsprint I carry is either 4200LB (short roll stock aka tabloid size stock) or 7200 Lbs which are set on end 6 to a trailer. Also, if you're dropping rolls, be careful they don't go through the floor. Even a 2000 roll will do damage. Also, how do they secure the rolls (based on your diagram)? That's a really odd way to do it.
Thanks!
Russ

[Kevin Yutz]

I've actually had instances where we've received paper rolls on their sides banded down to the pallets.  Before I was at my current company we were a 3PL doing paper forms and such and thus got rolls of things for Bank of America.  Those things were heavy and were always awkward.  One wrong move and those things were everywhere.  We would only limit them in our warehouse to the floor or 2nd rack due to the weight and even lifting it that high sometimes seemed leary with our reach trucks.

[Chris333]

They call it "bilge loading" where I work. The first roll goes in and they put 2 wedge shaped blocks under it, all the lower rolls get the blocks. The last roll on the truck gets those blocks nailed down to the trailer floor.  Once the first roll has it's blocks removed we use a 4' long wooden "bar" to work that roll out till the one on top drops down. Very much like this video I found:

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Where I work the rolls roll off the truck onto the dock and about 4' later they drop into a special roll elevator that takes them to the basement where they automatically roll off and the guy grabs it with a clamp truck. Then we rotate and stack them normally. Every once in a while the roll show up stacked flat. We have the driver go around the building to another dock and we use a tow motor and a freight elevator to unload them one at a time. It is a pain in the a$$hat.

Our press is now 44" wide so a 44" roll is a "full roll", 33" is a 3/4 roll, and 22" is a half roll. Half rolls come with two packages together so they are the same size as a full roll. We also have "dink" rolls that are 11" wide they are packaged with 2 or 4 roll together.