EP 568: Advancing Dock Safety with GMR Safety’s Power Chock
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Come see their solutions and meet the Big Joe leadership team, including Martin Boyd, Jason Dunnigan, and Nick Malwecki, March 17th to 20th at ProMat in Chicago, booth N7157. That's booth N7157. The New Warehouse Podcast, hosted by Kevin Lawton, is your source for insights and ideas from the distribution, transportation, and logistics industries.

A new episode every Monday morning brings you the latest from industry experts and thought leaders. And now, here's Kevin.

Hey, it's Kevin with the New Warehouse Podcast, bringing you a new episode today. And on today's episode, I am going to be joined by Pascal Jette, and he is the VP of Business Development and GMR Safety. And you may remember that we had GMR Safety on previously. So we're going to be checking in with them, getting information,

an update from them on what they've been up to and what's going on in the market that they're seeing as well. And I think this is going to be an episode, we'll say, that will be chock full of good insights because they are dealing with chocks within the warehouse environment. And we'll learn a little bit more about that too as well. So, Pascal, welcome to the show. How are you? I am good. How about yourself, Kevin? Ah,

I'm doing well, doing well. Good to get you on the show here and good to get GMR Safety back on as well. It's been a little while since we've had you on, so why don't you tell us a little bit about your role with GMR Safety. We've had Jay on before, but this is your first time on the show, so tell us about that.

little bit about your role there and what GMR safety is all about. Thanks for asking Kevin. So I've been with GMR for 20 some years at this point. We're manufacturers of unique technologies, all patented technologies to prevent accidents in the loading dock operations for large companies.

Personally, I've been doing business development. Beginning, I was doing mainly parts of Canada, mainly Toronto. And in the last 14 years, been focusing mainly on the US. Obviously, great people, great territory, great opportunities. With the GMR, like you mentioned before, and you are correct, we have a different approach to safety.

We have unique technologies or actually we're aiming at 100% of the times. Every time, every one of our customers do their dock operations, we're trying to make sure it's always going to be covered. Okay. So, yes, we have a chalk, but a chalk with some bite.

That's what we've been doing, looting dock safety, and it's all patented solutions. So, you know, unless you've seen the bar truck in one of the shows like ProMat or MODEX, it's not something that you're just going to run into. It's a very different approach.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I've seen it at the shows and it certainly is a much more robust chalk than some of the other options that are out on the market there. And I guess maybe too, for people that are not familiar with the term chalk, why don't you tell us what, what that is exactly and what it does. Okay. So, so,

Bottom line, all customers and you know, everybody watching your home, you're drinking a can of Coca-Cola, you're you're having any product that you are purchasing in a store. Actually people get, you know, manufacture those products and need to ship them to the stores eventually to you. So you can use those products.

So what we came up with is called the Power Chalk. It's a technology that we are going to make sure that whenever they ship a product to any customers, that they're going to do it safely.

So loading docks and there's been a trend and as we all know with Amazon and now everybody had to react and you know people do shipments now to people's facility, people's homes to smaller facilities. So there's been a trend in the industry instead of having lots of 53-foot trailers but there's also a lot more now straight trucks and smaller trucks to

to be able to do delivery. This is where GMR comes in. And that's why so many customers now have been standardizing with with our technologies. Interesting. Yeah. And essentially the the the chalk itself, right is keeping that trailer in place, right? So there's no movement when you're going in and out of it, correct?

Correct. Yes. So, so the shock will actually prevent a driver from pulling away. Okay. So let's say, you know, accidents are often for simple reasons like communications or you know, drivers not paying attention. Everybody has good days and bad days. Thank God when I'm sitting behind my computer, nobody actually can notice that I'm having a bad day. But you know, if a driver doesn't pay attention, doesn't look at lights,

Well, sometimes you need a solution to make sure that he is not able to pull away and create an accident for your dock employees. That's why we work with lots of companies that everybody's familiar with, like the Walgreens, the Home Depots. Well, these guys have so many loading docks.

A good process will go a long way, but what we do with the power truck is that we actually implement that and force that process to make sure that our power truck, which yes, prevents the truck from pulling away, is always going to be in use whenever

anyone is trying to proceed with the loading. Leaving the option for people to use or not to use safety. If you look at cars, at some point back in the days, people could just put the seatbelt or just leave it hanging. Realistically, at some point, the car industry just came up with a concept that, hey, we'll make sure it's going to buzz all the way down unless you do whatever is safe for you.

With the Power Chalk, we go one step further, the sense that we don't have a buzzer. We don't have... No, we're actually going to cut the power to your dock plates, unless it's going to be safe for your dock employees to proceed with the loading.

Yeah, yeah, and definitely a critical thing because, as you mentioned, I mean, it can be a very dangerous situation, right, if there is some movement within those tasks and those things going on in the dock area as well as the yard too. So very important product that you're bringing to the market here. So tell us, you know, I think the last time we had GMR safety on was –

probably over a year ago, I think, at this point now. So tell us a little bit about, you know, in the last year or so, how the industry has kind of changed a little bit and how GMR has been able to evolve and keep up with some of the changes in the industry. GMR over the last number of years has changed.

We have such strong relationships with our customers and most products, most technologies, most improvements we've done over the years came up from discussions we had with our partners, customers that about situations they were dealing with and they needed to resolve.

So one of the latest technologies and products we came up with is called the Power Truck Auto that it's actually going to provide that same 100% safety that we always provide. But what we find is that sometimes customers want to make sure that it's going to be done automatically.

There is a trend in the market where people want to make sure they keep control for the safety process and they can do it from the inside. So that's one of the things that we've been testing and that's been very successful.

Okay. Also, we've got other aspects. Okay. Some customers were asking, well, hey, what if someone really wants to try and how much beef or beef or

safer can you make the power chalk. So we actually came up with something that even if they got making a chalk, our chalk is a beast. It's 19 inches high. Okay. So it's providing already the best restraint, best restraining force on the market. What we came up with as well, it's something to go all the way high to like

more than halfway through the wheel, we go to 23 inches high. So even if drivers and several tests were made, actually purposely we're going to decide and create an incident, which obviously is not something that would be common, but we would departure would 100% prevent it from happening. So that's a couple of the new features we've been coming up with.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, going to 23 inches tall, I mean, it's very high. Right. And I think that's it's very different than a lot of the other solutions for for chocks that I've seen on on the market. Right. So tell us a little bit about I guess tell us a little bit about kind of the the idea of the power chock and where it's

where that idea came from and how it's kind of different to some of the other solutions on the market that are trying to accomplish the same thing. Power Truck's been around for a while now, and people who came up with the concept were familiar with different technologies that were existing and that work. There's good products on the market. They mainly work with the ICC bar in the back of the tractor-trailer.

If people, as they drive on the highway, maybe you're going to pay attention now, if you look, there's like a U-shaped bar in the back of the trailer, which is, naturally it's made to make sure that people don't go and run under the trucks and kill themselves as they're driving. But it's been used to prevent vehicles from pulling out of the loading bar.

All the technologies that exist on the market for this have been using this, which is a good idea, a good option. Unfortunately, different vehicle designs don't have an ICC bar, okay? Because you've got straight trucks, you do home deliveries, like I was mentioning earlier, or also some of them are going to be bent or damaged because a car hit it, for whatever reasons.

At the end of the day, those products will mostly be reliable, but they're probably going to work depending on the industries, 60, 70, 80, even 90% of the time. When you're looking at safety,

I don't know if anybody would be satisfied with a solution that's going to work 80% of the time. So four times out of five. You've got 50 loading dots and you're going to be, okay, well these 10 dots need to have some kind of alternate process to make sure that we can have some kind of operations that will still be secure.

what makes the power truck so unique okay and whenever people try it they actually makes their life so much easier because we actually have a solution that provides a hundred percent safety when any one of those companies where we know they've got hundreds of facilities they've got thousands of loading doors

People have better things to do in their everyday life than to try and micromanage to make sure that every loading dock in their distribution centers or their manufacturing facilities are going to be safe. Okay? So this is where we come in and we offer a solution that will bring peace of mind to all our customers. So it's 100% safety.

It's all interconnected with lights, with alarms, with all the bells and whistles. So people don't have the option but to follow process. You know, every one, every one of those big companies has very strict processes in place. But then they are in many ways struggling to make sure that people follow them on a daily basis. What we do with the PowerChalk is that we enforce it.

Okay, the different sensors with our control packages, we enforce it to make sure that no loading can ever happen unless it's going to be secured previously. Okay. And this, you know, again, probably most of our customers who are using other types of technologies before, once you start using the bar chart, you can actually focus on what you're supposed to do with it, which is

ship the products you've been manufacturing, you know, take care of your own business instead of trying to find ways to take care of maintenance on products that it's really, it's not your specialty. We'll be back after a quick break.

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Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's such an interesting approach, right? To, to make it this very sound and,

structured type of approach to the chalking the wheel, right? Like you said, if it's not engaged, then you're not going to load essentially, right? So it's making sure that you have that 100% safety that you talked about, which I think is very, very important. So, I mean, tell us a little bit about, you know, how does that make you kind of the leader in this space? And you talked about, you know, most of your customers, right?

you know, had other solutions in place before they got to yours. So, I mean, how did that kind of change what their safety program looked like and how did that change just the overall, I guess, way that their dock would operate? Lots of companies, like we say, have

their own safety process or different products in place. But accidents at the loading docks are typically because you've got a four-clutch, you've got the goods that is extremely heavy if you're in the beverage industry, pulp and paper. So accidents at the loading docks are known to be the most significant because of the configuration and the tractor trailer and the weight.

people are desperately looking for ways to make sure that actually there are thousands of loading dogs. They're people, they're process because they care significantly about their employees. It's a teamwork. And so when people get us involved, they are looking for

Actually, how, Pascal, how can you make sure that, you know, every single day I come here and I don't have to worry about that? One thing with the car shop is that we have a system that it's all mechanical. There's all the bells and whistles. There's different sensors, but it's a simple design.

So people have been familiar with using solutions that work with the ICC bar, but then they will have

second and a third option for dock safety because they want to make sure that they cover 100% of their bases when it comes to safety. Okay. So which involve, you know, sometimes signing off that you're bypassing the safety process, but you have no choice, but then you go with the alternate and the alternate solution. So people, when they move to the power chop, it just simplifies their process.

because they know that it's always going to work. And also the fact that there's very simple design also means that there's almost no maintenance on the power truck. So one thing that's also a big factor that companies really appreciate is that when a solution like the ICC restraints is going to work on probably 80% of your fleet,

Well, what's going to happen is that you're going to need to make sure that people have access to keys to bypass the safety process. What's going to happen on a regular basis is that other loadings, even though they should be secured, might not be because people decided to just proceed. And it gives employees the option to not always follow process.

Because you do need to have access to the keys and to making sure the system is not going to be used. With the power chalk, this will not happen because people 100% of the time will be able to use their safety process. So manager has a key, the director, the guy in charge of maintenance, if you need to do maintenance on your dock plates.

But on a daily basis, you walk down a big facility of Shaw Industries or Dr. Pepper or Cisco or PFG that has hundreds of power shops and all units are going to be in functioning condition.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, making it so easy, right, to engage and work with, I think is such a key to having a successful solution there. Because, you know, oftentimes these safety things, whether it's around the dock or just the warehouse in general, can be an added step, right? Which oftentimes can make it something that maybe people...

ignore from time to time or don't do every single time. And that's where you run into potential safety issues there. I'm curious for, you know, companies that

don't have any type of dock restraint system in place or maybe using some older technology like the, you know, classic rubber chalk block, right? I mean, what would you say to them and how do you, you know, kind of go about, I guess, explaining to them that, you know, the power chalk is something that they need?

With the power chalk, you know, that your operations are always going to be secured and they're always going to be safe and your process is always going to be identical. Okay. So. Anyone who has not yet invested in doc safety might look at the oh, well, you know, it's a.

There's different solutions. Some of them are automated. So from the inside, you go and you can press on the button and just activate an ICC restraint, which is a priority for some people, that automation. The beauty about the power truck is that, yes, the standard power truck is a manual process. As I mentioned before, the power truck auto would be automatic and manipulated from the inside.

But the power truck, the standard one is from the outside. It's a manual process. But again, as OSHA will always require, everyone is involved in the process. The fact that the truck driver is actually involved, he's the one that's taking action. He becomes accountable. He becomes part of the process, makes the environment safer.

So my advice to anybody who's got no solution would be, well, try and compare. Okay. If the objective of the process is to have automation, you know, then definitely the solutions that are push button from the inside might, you know, look good to you guys.

If the objective is to make sure your dock employees are safe 100% of the time, and that even if the truck tries to pull out, it's not able to, well, then the power truck is just a way better solution. Because the level of safety and security, reliability, there's no product on the market that compares to it.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that accountability piece that you mentioned there is such a key aspect, right, to to be able to create that accountability from from all parties involved. It sounds like and I think that's that's definitely critical to be able to reinforce accountability.

that safety aspect and make sure that it's, it's happening, right. And it's going into place and, you know, people are following the steps in the process. They need to, to ensure that everyone involved is, is as safe as, as possible. So I love that it's bringing that to the table and allowing people to do that further. So now you're going to be at,

at Promat coming up, right? So tell us a little bit about, you know, what that looks like for GMR safety. What are you guys going to be showing there? Will we be able to see the GMR, the auto power truck that you were mentioning? Yeah, no, we will be showing the power truck auto. Lots of our customers are, you know, have been

informed and they've been looking forward to seeing the power truck in action. To be honest with you, when we had the discussion with lots of our customers, they really like the idea that the power truck auto is automated, but they've been used to the concept that

everyone is involved in the process, okay? And it's made actually their environment so much safer. So yeah, we will be exhibiting the Power Chalk Auto as an alternative to the Power Chalk. The higher chalk, the one that with the different designs, patented designs to make sure that you just cannot go over it.

different other options as well that we will be having in our booth at ProMad. All right, great. And we'll definitely be looking forward to seeing that in person and seeing what that looks like here at ProMad. And I'm very curious to see the auto and how it's automated and how that engages for the safety of those warehouse workers out there.

So it's great to have you on the show here, Pascal, and talk to you about the latest with GMR safety and how you're continuing to improve the safety overall within our operations and our warehouse distribution centers out there. So I really appreciate what you're doing. If people want to learn more about GMR safety right now or find out more information from you, what's the best way to do that or get in touch?

You can find us under GMRSafety.com. You can go, if you look out for the power truck, you'll be able to see our clips, our videos on the power truck, Auto S12, that's also using our concept of our huge truck sitting on our ground plate. And yeah, we're looking forward to meeting with you guys at ProMath and

in Chicago in a couple of weeks. So we can shake your hand and, uh, you know, get, uh, get the chance to have a nice discussion with, uh, with you guys. All right. Fantastic. And we'll definitely look forward to that. And we'll put all that information, uh, at the new warehouse.com as well. And if people want to see you at ProMat, what is the booth number? Yeah. So our booth number is S4150. And yeah, we'll have, uh,

big team on site and we're looking forward to meeting up with all of you guys. All right. Awesome. And that's S4150, which is in the South Hall of McCormick Place there in Chicago. So we'll be looking forward to seeing GMR safety over there and we'll put all that information at thenewwarehouse.com and in the show notes here as well so people can find it. So Pascal, thank you once again for your time on the show today.

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