Flexible panel reduces dock door panel repairs and replacements

Within Propak Corp,’s 65,000-square-foot warehouse in Kansas City, Kan., five forklifts handle 500 trailer transactions per week spread among 11 dock doors. The conditions create a high degree of operational risk, and plant manager Trevor Walker found that frequent forklift dock door impacts required replacement of bottom and intermediate panels twice a month.

As a result, his repair and replacement costs had risen to about $1,000 per month. After installing durable high-impact polymer door panels (APS Resource), the company reduced maintenance costs and operational slowdowns.

“I was trying to find a solution to the recurring panel damage so it wouldn’t happen anymore,” Walker says. “I needed to eliminate the problem.”

In May 2017, Walker tried one door panel on the dock door with the highest traffic volume. From May to September 2017, he closely monitored the new door panel’s performance as it withstood repeated abuse. Once the trial stage concluded, Walker laid out a budget that allowed him to add one high-impact panel per month to his dock locations.

“The new door panels have not only greatly reduced my repair costs, but they have also boosted the safety on my loading dock,” Walker says. “The product is definitely doing its job.”

Walker is aware that the high volume of daily traffic will result in human error, which is simply the nature of the industry. Although forklifts are still hitting the dock doors, the new panels and the doors themselves have yet to succumb to what Walker calls “the nature of the industry.”