Pilkington UK (NSG) is an excellent and longstanding client of Supertrucks, and are proud to manufacture 95% of Pilkingtons trailers.
I was approached by Pilkington’s H & S Officer, who had decided that they should have a cable based fall arrest safety system in each vehicle, to prevent the driver/loader from falling from the vehicle, and preventing a potentially fatal accident. A non-fatal accident had occurred with one of their vehicles, which was the trigger for the search to find a solution to prevent further potentially worse accidents.
This is something as a trailer manufacturer that we hadn’t been asked for previously, so I commenced research to see what I could find out. To my surprise there was not a great deal of information from manufacturers of these systems, and two of the three companies I contacted didn’t even bother to contact me back.
However, Ken Diable of Heightsafe Systems thankfully did respond. Although the main area of work for Heightsafe, was working at height on bricks and mortar structures, not vehicles, Ken explained that he had been working for the past 18 months on developing a couple of unique vehicle/trailer systems. From here Ken and his team visited us on countless occasions with drawings, dimensions, material samples, and ultimately a couple of different cable systems we could actually trial.
What we required was very bespoke given the nature of the trailers we manufacture, and Ken and his team were determined they could get around the specific issues I presented them and worked tirelessly to solve them.
After a number of trial installations, and all of us returning to the drawing board to tweek the systems, we were finally presented with the finished article, which we have successfully installed in several vehicles, and invited the H & S Office from Pilkingtons back to site to inspect it. He had previously inspected a couple of the trial/mock up cable systems Trucksafe™ had installed, but wasn’t 100% satisfied, hence the drawn out process of ‘getting it right’.
The H & S Officer was astounded to see the bespoke track system Trucksafe™ had designed and manufactured specifically for these trailers, and Supertrucks has since commissioned Trucksafe™ to start installations in all Pilkington vehicles.
I am delighted now to be associated with Trucksafe™ and I honestly believe their patented product Glidesafe® will revolutionise fall arrest and fall prevention in commercial vehicles, and I wish Trucksafe™ well showcasing their new product range at the Commercial Vehicle Show this year.
I would highly recommend anyone looking for fall prevention systems for their vehicles to get in touch with Ken, as I know he and his dedicated team of Engineers will definitely find you a solution.
Andy Geoghegan
Director
Supertrucks Ltd