Supermarket cages (also known as roll containers, roll cages, roll pallets etc) can be a danger to you, whether you work in a supermarket or simply shop in one. Unfortunately many accidents involving supermarket cages have happened in the past and continue to happen to date.
The Research Report 009 titled “Safety of roll containers” describes a roll container as follows:
“Roll containers are half pallet-sized platforms, with four running castors and with a wire cage used to contain goods during transport. They may be used to transport goods in a lorry between a warehouse and a retail store for instance or within a supermarket to transport goods from the store room to the sales floor.”
Notwithstanding the technical description, I am sure if you have ever been in a supermarket then you will have seen staff walking around the store pushing roll containers full of goods in order to stack the shelves, or pushing roll containers back into the warehouse to re-fill. The fact is, roll containers are very useful for supermarkets, they allow stock to be pulled off the back of a lorry and taken directly into the store and put on the shelf. They also allow this to be done in bulk.
One main benefit of roll containers is that they reduce the amount of manual handling for staff. This is because, rather obviously, stock can be pushed or pulled along using the roll container rather than manually removing stock from the back of a lorry and manually carrying a large box of stock into the store in order to stack the shelves.
In the report titled “Safety of roll containers” which I have already referred to, it notes that many injuries to staff could be avoided by the use of adequate personal protective equipment (known as PPE). Correct PPE could be gloves but the report does state that this may not be practical as the person would need to hold the handles on the roll container and gloves may restrict this. The report does note that PPE should include roll container operators using safety shoes. Accidents could be reduced simply by the use of safety shoes and the report notes:
“…we were surprised that safety footwear was not more widely used.”
Roll containers do not completely remove manual handling but they certainly reduce the amount of manual handling required. If a member of staff is stacking stock onto a roll container he or she should adhere to general lifting and handling rules at the same time. Back injuries are common and care should always be taken when carrying, lifting or moving boxes or stock.
Roll containers should be adequately maintained. There will always be a risk with roll containers but we believe that, with a common sense approach, the amount of accidents involving roll containers could be significantly reduced. Simple measures such as not making the load too heavy so that the roll container is difficult to move or control, not making the stack within the roll container too high so as to obstruct vision, never climbing into an empty roll container (an obvious one but it does happen) etc.
If you have been injured as a result of a roll container then you may be entitled to make a claim for compensation. It does not matter if your accident occurred while at work in the supermarket or while you were out doing your shopping.
We are specialists personal injury lawyers, you can contact us today to discuss your claim on 0800 634 75 75.
