Magic carpet ride: General Industry Coverage

This month’s column is a safety lesson with a happy ending that could have easily gone the other way. For the people involved, the planets aligned and everything came out alright with nobody losing their head—literally.

The shop I was working in at the time was extremely busy and on a crushing deadline to complete a large machine. I was working on a large stainless steel fabrication. To our dismay, we expected to run short of 11-gauge sheet metal on this critical part. I informed the project engineer, who then mobilized the purchasing agent. After several phone calls and some mad scrambling, they found a sheet locally that we could pick up.

Our shop helper was an older man who worked to stay busy. We cornered him well before lunch and told him we needed this sheet picked up right away.

The shop pickup truck was a smaller model equipped with an overhead lumber rack. For most material deliveries, it worked fine. However, nobody stopped to think how the helper was going to secure a 4 ‘×10 ‘ sheet and return it safely by himself. Oops!

We were working furiously for hours before somebody realized the helper had not come back. This was before cell phones were common, so we had no indication anything was wrong. More time passed before we started to really wonder what was going on.

The buyer called the metal supplier and confirmed our man had picked up the material several hours ago. Several hours!? Where the heck was he? We guessed he may have had a flat tire or possibly stopped for lunch. Everybody was pretty upset and impatient that he hadn’t returned.

Finally, in the late afternoon, he wheeled into the yard, ashen faced and wide-eyed. To his credit, he at least had the sheet. The first thing I noticed was the stainless sheet was haphazardly tied and damaged. As he told the story, we realized it could easily have been a horror show.