Your delivery cannot be made to your customer because there is no dock available. This means that you are constrained in what you can load onto the truck provided by your haulage company without relying on the client to unload. Even without a loading dock at your own business, crane vans can still be of assistance.
Without a dock of your own, you must rely on the van’s pallet truck to locate your load properly, even if you have a forklift to use to load. It is not ideal to load from the ground up, and you might run into problems if there is no dock. You can solve such issues with the aid of crane vans, as shown below.
Customer Has No Dock
As the supplier, you are ultimately responsible for solving this issue if your customer lacks an unloading dock. Forklifts and pallet tucks are not required by them to be available in order to load your products onto their property. Unless otherwise specified in writing, you are responsible for that as the supplier or vendor. The best delivery service to fulfill that obligation is up to you to decide.
What then do you do if your customer doesn’t have a dock to enable unloading and you have a heavy or bulky item to load and deliver? A crane van could be one solution. Any size or weight of item that fits the truck or van can be delivered by utilizing a haulage service that offers a truck or van equipped with a gantry crane.
Using Crane Vans
A gantry crane that looks like a wheeled crane on rails will be installed on the van itself. The item can be loaded onto the ground using the rails that run from the back to the front of the van and have an extension that can be pulled out.
There is no need for fork trucks or pallet trucks during loading because the crane can place the item inside the van or truck to lie over the axles or in the best transit position. It can unload at ground level, either onto a pallet for straightforward removal or into a box, which would be nearly impossible with a lift truck.
Neither the supplier nor the customer will experience any issues as a result of the lack of a dock thanks to crane trucks. When you have the right goods to deliver, all you have to do as a supplier is order this service. By doing so, you can avoid problems with your clients or even with your drivers who might be tempted to unload manually and risk injury claims!
As a client, you can insist on such a crane van service by informing your supplier that you lack a dock and that you need on-board lifting equipment in order to unload your order safely and damage-free. That could be a shipment of delicate crystal glasses, furniture being delivered, or even a load of cakes that can’t stand up to rough handling or being dropped.
When you don’t have a dock for loading or your customer will only accept ground-level unloading, crane vans can help you solve issues like these. Except for the larger retail stores, not many non-industrial buildings have loading/unloading bays. When choosing a haulage service for your goods, keep that in mind.