Beverage Delivery

Volume 1, Number 5

Beverage delivery drivers are responsible for driving to the customer’s location, unloading the order from the truck, and transporting it to the cooler, storage locations, or display area. This usually involves numerous cycles of unloading the truck, stacking the items on a hand truck, wheeling them into the establishment, unloading and stacking them, then returning to the truck. For each trip, overhead roll-up doors must be opened and closed. In addition to delivering the product, drivers must rotate existing stock in order to make room for the new product being delivered.

Customers include grocery and convenience stores, restaurants, and bars. During a typical delivery, a delivery person:

1. Manually lifts up to 550 cases of soft drinks/beer and/or kegs piece-by-piece from the truck and stacks them onto a hand truck.
2. Wheels the loaded hand truck to the point of delivery specified by the customer.
3. Manually unloads the hand truck and either re-stacks the product on in the storage area(s), onto display shelves, or both, if requested by the customer.

In the process, each item is manually handled a minimum of two times, but three to four times when sorting, rotating, or rearranging the displays are required. Products delivered range from cases of cans and bottles to kegs weighing up to 150 pounds. When hand trucks are fully loaded, the total weight of the load can exceed 350 pounds.

Images from FED/OSHA’s Web site www.osha.gov

• In a 1996 study (NIOSH Publication No. 96-109), researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) concluded that modifications to the delivery truck, hand trucks, and packaging, used in combination with improved work practices, would significantly reduce fatigue, the amount of product handled per day, and awkward postures during product handling. This would also improve efficiency.
• Adjustable height shelving can help accommodate the variety of products and packages and reduce multiple handling of product. Additionally, external grab handles between all bay doors can improve biomechanical leverage when handling product in the truck.
• Heavy loads should be stored in the trailer bays that capitalize on the best posture and location for retrieval of these loads. Palletizing orders would greatly improve the delivery process, minimizing the number of times the product is handled. Better package design for easier handling may be the most cost effective improvement toward reducing muscoloskeletal disorders among drivers.

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