Mobile safety steps: how many sets, and where they stand in the aisle

How many sets of mobile safety steps does one site need?

Count the places where stock sits above shoulder height, not the floor area. A cash and carry with six pick zones and a goods in bay has seven places where somebody will want steps during a shift. The honest test is walking distance: if fetching the steps takes longer than the job at the top shelf, the steps stay parked and the picker puts a boot on the bottom beam of the racking instead.

Three counts cover most orders. One set for each pick zone or aisle run that holds stock out of reach. One at goods in or the back door, where cases are checked and put away. One more where two shifts overlap, because a set in use at six in the morning is no use to the team coming on at two in the afternoon.

A small shop or stock room is different. A single light set that lives in a named corner covers a shop floor of a few hundred square metres, as long as staff can move it with one hand and will actually put it back. The entry point in the ladder truck range is from £40 ex VAT, so the count is usually settled by where the steps will live rather than by the budget.

What each type costs, and which job it takes

Four shapes cover nearly all restocking work. A ladder trolley is two treads on castors that the picker pushes along with them. A platform ladder truck on two wheels tilts and pulls like a sack truck, so one person can take it the length of an aisle. A guardrail platform gives a flat standing area with a rail all round for work that takes minutes rather than seconds. A six step rolling platform reaches the top shelf in a high bay.

These are guide prices in GBP ex VAT. Freight, VAT and lead time are confirmed on your written quote.

Where the steps stand between jobs

Every set needs a named home inside the zone it serves, marked on the floor and wide enough that the base fits without anybody shuffling it. Steps left in a gangway get pushed aside by whoever trips over them, and by the end of the week nobody knows which aisle they went down. A painted bay at the end of an aisle run, or a gap kept clear against a rack upright, is enough.

Keep the parking bay out of fire exit routes and clear of the turning circle of a pallet truck. Two things decide whether staff respect it: how far it is from the work, and whether the brakes hold when the set is parked on a slope at the loading bay. Spray a zone number on the frame if sets wander between departments, because steps that belong to everybody belong to nobody.

Busy weeks and new starters: what the 500 kg rating covers

Autumn and winter bring longer restocking rounds and extra hands who have never used your kit. Most sets in the range are rated 500 kg, and that figure covers the person, their boots, their tools and whatever they carry up. It is a working limit for everything on the steps at once, not a shelf capacity and not a licence to send two people up together.

Brief new starters on three points before the first shift: both hands free going up, one person on the steps at a time, brakes on before the first tread. If the job needs both arms at the top, the stock should ride on a trolley from the warehouse trolley range and go up in stages, or the picker needs a platform with a full rail so there is something to lean against.

What to check before you buy mobile safety steps

• Platform height against your top shelf. Work to the shelf lip, not the ceiling, and allow for the case the picker has to lift over it.
• Base footprint against the narrowest aisle it will stand in, with a pallet truck still able to pass.
• Tread depth and an anti slip surface, which matter more than the number of treads once a round lasts an hour.
• A handrail or full guardrail on anything a picker stands on above about a metre.
• Castors with brakes, or spring castors that drop onto feet under the weight of the user, so nothing rolls mid job.
• Whether it folds. Folding or two wheel sets suit a tight stock room, fixed platforms suit a bay that is always theirs.
• Frame finish. Stainless steel earns its money in chilled rooms, wash down areas and food handling; painted steel is fine everywhere else.
• Who will move it. If the set lives in one aisle, weight hardly matters; if it crosses the building twice a shift, pick a two wheel model.

Keeping a set in service once it arrives

PUWER 1998 expects work equipment to be suitable for the job, maintained and inspected, and steps are work equipment like anything else on the floor. Decide before delivery who does the quick pre use look over and who records the periodic check, because a set nobody owns is a set nobody reports.

The pre use look takes under a minute: treads clean and dry, no cracked welds or splayed feet, rail and platform fixings tight, castors free of shrink wrap and banding, brakes gripping. Anything bent, cracked or missing takes the set out of use until it is repaired, and a label on the frame saying who to tell is worth more than a poster in the canteen. Ordering a spare set for a busy zone keeps a damaged one from being used anyway.