Early departure at the dock: the deadliest logistics accident, and how to document the chock
A truck that pulls away while the forklift is still inside the trailer. Two causes, one device, and a dock camera that can prove, every day, that the chock is in place.
A forklift drives into a trailer to load the last pallet. The truck driver, who believes loading is finished, pulls away. The forklift and its operator fall from the dock. This scenario, the early departure, is among the most serious accidents in French logistics according to CNAM statistics and INRS feedback, as reported by a conference given at Préventica Lyon.1
It has a quieter cousin, trailer creep: under the back-and-forth of the forklift, an unchocked vehicle rolls back a few centimetres, then a few dozen, until the dock plate drops. Same fall, without anyone having started anything.
Two causes, one device
The conference is clear on prevention: the two causes are premature departure and creep, and the answer is mechanical, a wheel lock or a chock, backed by a key-exchange or dock-light procedure.1 None of this is new. Most sites have chocks. The question an HSE manager cannot settle from their office is simpler and more uncomfortable: is the chock in place, for every truck, at every dock, today?
Between the rule and the practice there is the pace of a dock at 7 a.m., the carrier in a hurry, this week’s temporary forklift operator, and the chock left against the wall “because the truck leaves in five minutes”.
What a dock camera already sees
Almost every dock is filmed, for security and delivery disputes. The same camera sees the trailer, its wheels, the chock and the dock plate. It does not know that these objects form a risky situation. Camly teaches it to check a sentence written by the site:
| State written with the site | What the agent checks | What comes out |
|---|---|---|
| “Dock 3: truck present, chock in place” | A trailer at the dock with no chock visible at the wheel | Alert with image, time, dock |
| “Dock plate engaged only if chock in place” | Plate lowered and chock absent | Dated episode, with its duration |
| “No unchocked trailer for more than two minutes” | Persistence of the state | Line in the monthly report, per dock |
The detail matters: the state is written with the site, because every dock has its geometry, its type of chock, its camera. A task tuned on dock 3 is not valid on dock 7 until someone has looked.
The dock timeline as evidence
What Camly produces is a timeline per dock: every trailer, the arrival time, the moment the chock appears, the moment the plate is engaged, any period without a chock. After a month, the site knows how many times the chock was missing, on which docks, at what hours, with which carriers on the other side. It is no longer an impression; it is a recurrence.
That recurrence goes into the risk assessment document (DUERP), is presented to the works council, and is shown to the insurer or the labour inspectorate as proof that the rule is followed, or that deviations are seen and corrected. It is also what lets you go to a carrier with dates rather than with a complaint.
What Camly does not do
- Camly does not lock the trailer. The wheel lock, the chock and the key procedure do. The agent checks that the device is there; it does not replace it.
- A periodic check catches what lasts: the unchocked trailer during a loading. It does not intercept a departure to the second, and we do not promise that.
- Findings are about a dock and objects. The forklift operator and the driver are not identified, stored images are blurred, and no indicator is produced per person.
Where to start
Pick the two busiest docks on your site, check that their camera sees the rear wheel of the trailer, and write with your team the sentence that describes a safe dock. Thirty days later you will have the timeline of every truck and the number of times the chock was missing. That is the scope of a Camly pilot, and it is the kind of number that changes a works council meeting.
Sources
- Préventica Lyon, Norsud conference on loading and unloading docks: causes of early departure and creep, wheel-locking devices, CNAM statistics and INRS feedback. preventica.com (PDF)