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The Loading & Unloading Specialists

01246 260981

Providing The Right (Un)Loading Solutions Achieves Consistent Customer Satisfaction For Thorworld

Enabling companies to load and unload vehicles safely and efficiently is what Thorworld Industries is all about. An ever-increasing number of major businesses rely on them to achieve simple and cost-effective solutions to their loading bay equipment problems, providing total peace of mind. 

Thorworld is firmly established as a market-leading designer, manufacturer and supplier of loading and unloading equipment, together with an extensive range of accessories and safety aids. 

The company provides a one-stop single source for a wide variety of loading bay and materials handling products, including mobile yardramps which are ideal for the fast loading and unloading of vehicle trailers by fork truck, particularly where there is no raised loading dock.

In addition to mobile container loading ramps, available for purchase or rental, Thorworld's comprehensive product offering includes dock shelters & seals, dock levellers, dock plates & boards, dock & vehicle bumpers, wheel chocks, vehicle restraints and modular loading docks, as well as the Truckloada mobile yardlift and the Dockloada scissor lift platform.

Its Standard, Deluxe and Super Deluxe (light, medium and heavy duty) container loading ramp ranges feature models with 6, 7, 10, 12 and 15 tonne capacities and lengths from 11 to 12.2 metres.

With a strong presence in the distribution, logistics, transport, retail, food, drink, manufacturing and service industries, the company's large volume of repeat business and consistently favourable comments received clearly demonstrate the significant level of customer satisfaction being achieved in relation to both its product quality and sales/service support.

Its ramps are used by JCB Industrial for customer and dealer demonstrations where they show off their highly versatile Teletruk forklifts in conjunction with a container vehicle. A JCB spokesman said: "The Thorworld mobile ramp complements our activities perfectly."

Thorworld supplied a 15 tonne capacity ramp to Terex, who use it to load and unload heavy construction equipment. It was built with a useable width of 2650mm so that it could be used with the widest machines handled.

Grass cutting machinery suppliers Lely (UK) use a 12.2 m long 7 tonne capacity Thorworld ramp to simplify the loading of commercial grass cutters onto beaver-tailed low-loaders for delivery to customers.

Lely's transport manager, Kevin Morgan, said: "The ramp has made us much more efficient as we can now load the low-loaders faster and with greater ease."

Thorworld ramps are also proving the ideal loading solution for recycling applications.

Eurokey Recycling, a plastics recycler, has two 10 tonne capacity ramps to load containers at a site without loading bays. Fork trucks drive up the ramps with either a bale or one tonne sack of granulated material and place them inside the container.

A spokesman for Eurokey said the Thorworld ramps have the advantage of featuring hand-operated hydraulic pumps. This allows them to be finely adjusted and raised to the required height for use with every size and type of container vehicle handled.

Veolia Environmental Services uses a 10 tonne capacity Thorworld ramp at its busy materials recovery facility in Essex.

The plant operates a three shift system, three days a week, handling around 50,000 tonnes of recyclable waste material annually. Up to 15 container trucks are loaded via the ramp every 24 hours,

Two 15 tonne capacity ramps have been bought by waste paper recycler, Pearce Recycling Group, for its two depots.

Other companies who use Thorworld ramps include kitchen appliance manufacturer, Baumatic, which has two 10 tonne capacity versions at its Oxfordshire site, and furniture supplier Norfolk Oak, who replaced a poorly-built and potentially dangerous Eastern European sourced unit with a Thorworld 10 tonne model.

Norfolk Oak's operations director Jamie Everett said the Thorworld ramp was well-designed and ruggedly built. "We need a strong ramp for the job and I have total confidence in the Thorworld product."

East End Foods Plc, one of the country's leading spice, lentil and rice importers, has two 3 tonne capacity Thorworld lightweight mobile loading platforms at its processing plant.

Director Jitendra Wouhra said: "The mobile platforms can be positioned in the most convenient spot for the unloading of containers and have made us much more efficient. They also provide a far safer working environment for our warehouse staff."

When business mail company DX acquired additional premises, there was no direct way for vehicles to enter a planned unloading area as the road level was over a metre above the basement floor.

The solution was to install a bespoke 8 tonne capacity Thorworld ramp measuring 4.5 wide x 8m long. 

Mike Stone, Chief Operating Officer for DX, said: "Having the ramp has proved to be an economic, highly efficient and simple solution to the access problem we faced. The alternative would have meant costly and lengthy construction work."

Thorworld also solved a problem for catering equipment supplier Nisbets when it rented two temporary warehouses that did not have raised loading docks.

Two Truckloada 2 tonne capacity mobile lifting platforms were supplied by Thorworld to provide a safe and cost-effective method of unloading container vehicles.

A spokesman for Nisbets said the Truckloada was chosen because of its rugged build quality, its extensive safety feature and the fact that it was well proven. He described it as a versatile tool that offered a safe unloading method and offered a simple and economic solution to their problem. 

Companies that have installed Thorworld dock levellers to smooth out loading and unloading problems include rubber compounders Eastland Compounding.

Managing director Keith O'Brien said the dock leveller was perfect for use with the different sized vehicles that use their warehouse. It ensures safe and efficient working, so that warehouse personnel and goods cannot fall between vehicles and the loading dock.

Other dock leveller users include DIY retailer In-Excess UK and on-line retailer Firebox.com. The managing director of the on-line retailer said that considerable time savings were being achieved as they no longer had to manually load and unload vehicles.

As well as providing single items of equipment, Thorworld designs, manufactures and installs complete bespoke loading/unloading systems.

The lack of a loading bay at expanding food and drinks business, the Serious Food Company, was solved with a combined Thorworld mobile yardramp and loading platform system. 

The system consist of a 10 tonne capacity yard ramp, together with a loading platform fitted with a 6 tonne capacity electro hydraulic swing lip type dock leveller and a 6 tonne capacity loading platform.

Thorworld was chosen for the project because of the Serious Food Company's satisfaction with two of the company's 7 tonne mobile ramps that have been used by them for several years.

For KAB Seating, a world renowned manufacturer of seating systems, Thorworld designed a modular loading dock system, including the provision of various accessories.

Said KAB Seating's facilities engineer Brian Bateman: "The modular loading dock system gives us three fixed loading areas, where none existed before. The loading of containers has been made much more efficient and we have removed the former two-man loading operation. It's also safer for our despatch staff and, with the resulting cost savings, payback should be achieved in one year."

A combination of a Thorworld yardramp and an extending dock leveller has cut down turnaround time for trucks unloading finished items at the goods inwards warehouse of kitchen appliance manufacturer, CDA Group Ltd.

The versatile system is used to help offload the different types and sizes of vehicles that serve the warehouse. These vary from standard container trucks to low-wheelbase Continental-style vehicles.

A bespoke modular platform system was also selected by Interserve, a joinery manufacturer and interior fit-out specialist, after it moved into a building with no loading bay.

It considered using fork trucks, or a vehicle tail lift when available, but this was ruled out as being too complicated and time consuming. Building a permanent ramp was thought to be too inflexible.

The Thorworld system consists of a 3 tonne capacity mobile yardramp and a work platform measuring 3.6m x 2.4m x 1.3m. The platform was made to the customer's specifications, with the addition of a second dock leveller so that two vehicles of differing heights can be loaded at the same time.

Thorworld managing director John Meale said: "We continue to grow our sales because customers trust us to provide appropriate and cost-effective, high quality solutions to their materials handling problems – precisely meeting their individual loading/unloading needs.

"To ensure long-term efficiencies and cost savings with safe working in and around the loading bay it pays to buy high quality equipment such as ours that is well-built, fully conforming to all UK & EU safety directives & legislation, and which is absolutely right for the job."

Published: 09/10/2009