Washdown. Sampling at the hatch. Venting the top on older trucks. Receiving bulk cream, juice, and corn syrup. Food & beverage plants put people above eight feet more often than almost any industry, usually without a part number for the fix. We walk the bays, read them the way OSHA likely would, and right-size the access: sometimes a platform, sometimes a single gangway, sometimes less than you expected to buy.
Most F&B plants tell us "we bottom-load. We're fine." Then we watch a shift: the hatch still gets vented, the tank still gets washed, the sample still gets pulled. Here's where we find the exposure, plant after plant.
Tankers all day, every day, and washdown or CIP hookup on top between loads. The wet, repeated climb is the one OSHA writes up.
Older trailers need the hatch opened to vent even when you load from the bottom. That two-minute climb is still a fall exposure. It just doesn't show on the process diagram.
QA pulls a sample from the top before the load is accepted. No tie-off, no platform. The most routine task in the plant is often the least protected.
Fructose, corn syrup, concentrate. Heated, viscous, and received by the truckload. Receiving crews work the top more than anyone admits on paper.
Bringing rail in for the first time? Railcar tops are a different height, a different hatch, and a different set of rules than your truck bays. The time to size access is before the first car arrives.
Lines change, platforms don't. Modular no-weld crossovers move when the line does, no hot-work permit inside a food plant.
General industry fall protection starts at four feet (29 CFR 1910.28(b)). Every catwalk, mezzanine, and crossover in your plant answers to it, along with the ladders that reach them (1910.23). But the tops of trucks and railcars sit in one of the grayest areas OSHA enforces, governed as much by interpretation letters and the General Duty Clause as by any single line of code.
That gray area is exactly where judgment earns its keep: we've watched how inspectors actually treat receiving bays, spurs, and washdown decks, and we'll tell you what we'd flag, what we'd expect to be fine, and what's genuinely your call.
One unit serves multiple bays. Rolled where the work is. Quoted in days, on site in weeks, no permitting, no civil work. The fastest way to take the exposure off your receiving deck this quarter, and it tells us both whether a fixed spot is ever worth it.
For the bay that runs every shift: a fixed, self-leveling gangway with a hatch cage on a stair-access platform, plus a tracking carriage when one bay serves two spots. Sized for washdown and sampling, not just loading; engineered drawing and OSHA references included.
Pre-engineered, no-weld, bolt-together. Reconfigurable when the line changes, installable without hot work. The platform around the real work area, not a custom-fabricated monument.
And because plants run on parts as much as projects: our sister company Consolidated keeps the transfer side. Hoses, fittings, swivels, loading components. Moving on the recurring side of the same relationship.
Plants don't get cited for the hazards they know about. They get cited for the ones nobody ever wrote down. So that's the offer: we walk your receiving bays, spurs, and decks and tell you what we'd flag. Including the part nobody else puts in writing: what you don't need to buy.
Three ways in: the free Site Visit (one problem, solved and quoted) · the Operational Assessment (a whole operation. Receiving, tank farm, loadout. Studied and logged. Fee credited back on your first solution) · the Gangway Inspection Program (we service the gangways you already own. Any major brand. Springs, parts, and a spec list of what to watch).
Central Valley and Southern California processing. The Front Range and Greeley. Cache Valley. The Vegas corridor. The Northwest. Site visits measured in hours of driving, not a flight from the other coast.
We come stand in front of it. Measurements, the spatial envelope, a worked solution, and a quote. Free, every time. That's how we earn the next conversation.
Book the visit →Have the spec or the drawing? Skip the walk. Send it over and we'll turn the quote fast, engineered drawing and references attached.
Start an RFQ →