Plywood
- Thread starter Kid_7
- Start date
mrgoodtude
Not a Member
Hey Kid,
The plywood is used when you have to take your pallet jack across a nice floor so as not to scratch the surface.. Those pallet jacks can mess up marble etc. You will find it useful in IBM data or server pick up's.
Hope this helps.
Mike and Cyn
The plywood is used when you have to take your pallet jack across a nice floor so as not to scratch the surface.. Those pallet jacks can mess up marble etc. You will find it useful in IBM data or server pick up's.
Hope this helps.
Mike and Cyn
FedEx calls them decking sheets. In theory, they are used to deck freight. If you have skids that say "Do not stack" and they are not tall, you use your shoring beams (E-Track load bars) and the decking sheets to build a deck. If the non-stackable skids are short, you could potentially double the number you can carry by decking them.
Shoring beams may be sufficient for a deck with pallets. For odd-ball freight that cannot be stacked, the plywood may be necessary.
In three years, we've used our decking sheets three times.
1. While delivering a tall, heavy computer server that had tiny wheels on it. We delivered it to a contractor's trailer at the base of one of those big windmills you see in the CA wind farms. The trailer had an overhead door on one end. We backed our truck up to it, used the lift gate to bring the computer to the level of the trailer floor and wheeled the computer inside; at which point the tiny wheels broke through the trailer's plywood floor, fixing the computer in place.
They had reinforced the floor at the other end of the trailer where the computer would sit but our problem was (a) how do we get the computer unstuck, and (b) how do we get it to the other end of the trailer? We used a Johnson bar (J bar, lever dolly) to get the computer unstuck and up onto our decking sheets; and then rolled it to its designated place.
2. A shipper with a forklift brought several tall pallets of drugs to the back of the truck. The skids were stacked floor to ceiling with boxes about 8" square. The shirnk wrap that kept this tower of tiny boxes together reminded me of Grandma's nylons. At my request, they re-wrapped it, again poorly. I then asked for a roll of shrink wrap so i could wrsp the skids myself. It helped but was still not great. Even with a couple extra hands from the shipper, it was hard to get a good tight wrap on the stack. The boxes were just too small and too light. Load bars or ratchet straps alone would not have kept the stacks secure because each baro or strap would only contact one of many rows of small boxes. I used the decking sheets to bracket the towers of small boxes in place. Worked like a charm.
3. Once, we actually used the decking sheets for decking. It was a load of store fixtures that filled the truck. As with many store fixture loads, we arrived to be presented with the fixtures themselves. They were not wrapped or packaged or palletized in any way. We spent a couple hours padding and strapping those pieces in the truck. Some were light but bulky. One deck built in the front of the truck created a nice out-of-the-way home for those pieces, leaving room on the floor underneath for heavier pieces.
We store our decking sheets in the front of the truck, strapped against the front wall, using the E-Track rows we had installed in the front wall for that purpose. If you have no E-Track in your front wall, you can store the sheets along the front wall and use your other WG equipment to hold them in place.
Stack your furniture pads on a four-wheel dolly and secure that pad stack to the dolly itself with those 1" ratchet straps that have J hooks on the ends. Use that stack to hold the sheets in place by putting the sheets against the front wall and the pads against the sheets. Then strap or load bar the pads in place. Putting your pads on a dolly also enables you to move the whole stack around without undoing them if the stack needs to be repositioned in the truck or wheeled inside a building to pad freight there.
Alternatively, you can use 2x4s and wood sockets to secure the decking sheets along your front wall, if there is no front-wall E-Track for you to use.
We like to store decking sheets against the front wall. Putting them on the side wall blocks off a lot of E-Track that would otherwise be available.
These are just a couple suggestions. No two WG trucks are alike when it comes to organizing and securing your WG freight-handling equipment. There are probably better ways to do this that we have either not yet learned from other drivers or figured out on our own.
Shoring beams may be sufficient for a deck with pallets. For odd-ball freight that cannot be stacked, the plywood may be necessary.
In three years, we've used our decking sheets three times.
1. While delivering a tall, heavy computer server that had tiny wheels on it. We delivered it to a contractor's trailer at the base of one of those big windmills you see in the CA wind farms. The trailer had an overhead door on one end. We backed our truck up to it, used the lift gate to bring the computer to the level of the trailer floor and wheeled the computer inside; at which point the tiny wheels broke through the trailer's plywood floor, fixing the computer in place.
They had reinforced the floor at the other end of the trailer where the computer would sit but our problem was (a) how do we get the computer unstuck, and (b) how do we get it to the other end of the trailer? We used a Johnson bar (J bar, lever dolly) to get the computer unstuck and up onto our decking sheets; and then rolled it to its designated place.
2. A shipper with a forklift brought several tall pallets of drugs to the back of the truck. The skids were stacked floor to ceiling with boxes about 8" square. The shirnk wrap that kept this tower of tiny boxes together reminded me of Grandma's nylons. At my request, they re-wrapped it, again poorly. I then asked for a roll of shrink wrap so i could wrsp the skids myself. It helped but was still not great. Even with a couple extra hands from the shipper, it was hard to get a good tight wrap on the stack. The boxes were just too small and too light. Load bars or ratchet straps alone would not have kept the stacks secure because each baro or strap would only contact one of many rows of small boxes. I used the decking sheets to bracket the towers of small boxes in place. Worked like a charm.
3. Once, we actually used the decking sheets for decking. It was a load of store fixtures that filled the truck. As with many store fixture loads, we arrived to be presented with the fixtures themselves. They were not wrapped or packaged or palletized in any way. We spent a couple hours padding and strapping those pieces in the truck. Some were light but bulky. One deck built in the front of the truck created a nice out-of-the-way home for those pieces, leaving room on the floor underneath for heavier pieces.
We store our decking sheets in the front of the truck, strapped against the front wall, using the E-Track rows we had installed in the front wall for that purpose. If you have no E-Track in your front wall, you can store the sheets along the front wall and use your other WG equipment to hold them in place.
Stack your furniture pads on a four-wheel dolly and secure that pad stack to the dolly itself with those 1" ratchet straps that have J hooks on the ends. Use that stack to hold the sheets in place by putting the sheets against the front wall and the pads against the sheets. Then strap or load bar the pads in place. Putting your pads on a dolly also enables you to move the whole stack around without undoing them if the stack needs to be repositioned in the truck or wheeled inside a building to pad freight there.
Alternatively, you can use 2x4s and wood sockets to secure the decking sheets along your front wall, if there is no front-wall E-Track for you to use.
We like to store decking sheets against the front wall. Putting them on the side wall blocks off a lot of E-Track that would otherwise be available.
These are just a couple suggestions. No two WG trucks are alike when it comes to organizing and securing your WG freight-handling equipment. There are probably better ways to do this that we have either not yet learned from other drivers or figured out on our own.
