Author: christopher Harper

Avoid Safety Hazards to Make Efficient Use of Material Handling Solutions

Material handling solutions from DJ Products are safe, ergonomically correct, and cost effective. Our battery powered “walk-behind” units make it possible for an operator to have increased control and maneuver with ease, even in the tightest spaces. You’ll find that our motorized carts and powered tugs are easier to control than traditional electric equipment such as fork trucks, walks, or motorized riding tugs. Take a look at our website to find the material handling solution that will work best for your business and keep in mind that our tugs, pushers and pullers can be customized to better suit your needs.

However, as much as our products can assist you in transporting raw materials and products, they cannot rid your workplace of potential safety hazards.

ComplianceandSafety.com offers tips to make sure that your equipment travels smoothly and your employees stay safe:

Fix or report torn carpeting, loose floorboards or tiles, or otherwise unstable surfaces.

Fix or report broken furniture, burnt-out light bulbs or other appliances, and other defective equipment.

Look out for frayed, torn, or otherwise damaged electrical cords, cables, etc.
Keep floors and walkways clear of cords; coil excess cables or use cable ties to keep them out of the way.

Remove obstructions in walkways and (especially) exits.
Safety signs and exit signs should be clearly marked and easily seen.

Never touch electrical switches, outlets, or plugs with wet hands.

Fix or report fire hazards; check the sprinkler system, renew batteries for smoke detectors, have fire extinguishers on-hand.
Use flame-retardant materials.
Label and safely store all combustible items and fluids.

Transport Spring Cleaning Safely with a Motorized Linen Cart

In most of the United States we have just pushed our clocks ahead one hour. This means that we also get less sleep, although the effects of losing that hour normally wear off after the first week of Daylight Saving Time.

So now that we have sprung ahead and your employees will be up an hour earlier getting their work done, why not examine the equipment they use to make certain that it is up to the task? It is okay for us to spring forward in hours but it is not okay for your employees to use clean linen carts that lurch forward at odd times, sending clean laundry to the floor. And laundry is not the only thing that may be damaged if your allow your employees to use rickety laundry carts to transport clean laundry: there is the possibility that your employees themselves may get hurt if an unstable laundry cart is overturned.

The Motorized Linen Cart eliminates the manual pushing of heavy clean linen carts, especially where carpeting makes them difficult to push. The powered cart is motorized for moving clean linens used for daily duties in hospitality and hospital environments. It can haul loads of up to 700 lbs. It’s variable speed twist grip allows the operator to travel forwards or backwards at speeds between 0 and 3 miles per hour, all while maintaining control.

Watch this video to see our motorized clean linen wire cart in action. And if you have further questions about this or any of our other material handling solutions, feel free to call us at 800-686-2651.

Get Ergonomic Material Handling Solutions and Retain Older Workers

Some older workers, particularly those who work in jobs that require them to use a certain amount of physical strength, are feeling nervous these days. They worry that if it seems like they cannot handle their work, they may see themselves replaced by younger workers. This fear may cause some older workers to attempt too much in order to prove their value to an organization. They may injure themselves not because they are too old, but because they strain themselves to prove their worth.

Today’s organizations need people of various ages to work together. Older workers have experience and know-how that younger workers do not have; young workers have fresh perspectives that can energize operations. Rather than lose older workers, you can see to it that all of your employees have ergonomic material handling equipment that prevents fatigue, muscle strain, and other injuries. You are probably well aware that it is costly to recruit, hire, and train a slew of new employees, so why not invest in making sure the ones you already have remain on the job?

A DJ Products Power Puller can maneuver in extremely tight spaces and ease the work of transporting hospital carts, laundry carts, maintenance carts and parts carts. These types of carts typically are less than 1500 lbs. and are generally maneuvered manually. Due to the nature of these carts’ uses, some organizations mainly assign elderly employees to maneuver them but our power pullers can also help younger employees as well. If our battery power puller is used, risks of fatigue and injury to valuable workers can be reduced.

A Truck Pusher Moves Vehicles Around a Dealership Effortlessly

Car dealerships move a number of cars and trucks over the course of a year and if you run a dealership and have your employees move these vehicles on their own, you should consider giving them some mechanical assistance. The DealerCaddy truck pusher is a multi-purpose battery powered device that aids car dealerships in a number of different pushing, pulling, and hauling functions.

For one thing, you want to make certain that vehicles do no get damaged on your lot. Whether they are vehicles that have yet to be sold or vehicles that were brought in for repair, it is important they remain in good shape.

And, more importantly, you also want to keep your employees in good shape. With the DealerCaddy trailer and truck pusher, an employee can effortlessly push a large vehicle that weighs up to 10,000 lbs. Because the DealerCaddy is ergonomically designed to reduce strain, you don’t have to worry about your service mechanics injuring themselves before or after they are able to work in a vehicle. In their effort to get work done efficiently, your workers may hurriedly try to move a vehicle on their own, thinking they are going to be able to get through a number of repairs quickly. What they may not realize is that they can strain muscles in such a way that they might be away from work for weeks, leaving their co-workers to be strained under a heavier workload.

Our DealerCaddy truck pusher has an adjustable push pad created to contour the bumper on the back of any vehicle. An adjustable height push pad flips back to expose a ball hitch that can pull cargo or a utility trailer from your parking lot into service bays.

Use Powered Roll Pusher to Push Paper Efficiently

When you ask some people what they do for a living, the response you get is, “I push paper.” These people are likely referring to office work where they process or pass along documents. They are not really pushing paper, as much as they are passing it along and with the use of computers, the volume of paper being processed in office environments has decreased.

Even with new technology, there are, however, still people who really do push paper, and lots of it. Paper companies still make paper and it still has to be transported through warehouses and onto trucks and distributed around the world. A paper company may have employees transport paper rolls that weigh up to 10,000 lbs. In the past, they used air pushers, but found that these were not exactly efficient. DJ Products, Inc. offers a paper roll pusher system that can be adjusted to accommodate paper rolls of different heights. The great thing about a powered paper roll pusher is that it efficiently allows rolls of different sizes to be transported while efficiently only requiring a single operator to push and maneuver rolls and there is not need for the limitations presented by air hoses.

And while you can opt to use fork trucks, walkies or riding tugs to move rolls at your paper manufacturing facility, keep in mind that this kind of equipment will require a lot more storage space than is need for the CartCaddy powered roll pusher. Additionally, you can also use a powered roll pusher from DJ Products to transport wire spools as well as paper rolls.

Resorts and Hotels: Get Motorized Housekeeping Carts for the Demands of Summer Crowds

Summer vacation will soon be here and at this time of year many families are traveling with kids and pets in tow. These guests will certainly keep your staff on its toes…and you don’t want any unsteady carts running over any toes (staff or guest). We offer powered carts for hospitality environments such as resorts and hotels. Keep your operations running efficiently during this buy season with…

A Powered Housekeeping Cart that can get rid of the need for a staff member to push a heavy housekeeping cart using his or her own strength.

A Powered Dirty Linen Cart that will allow a staff member can transport soiled linens safely through hallways without fear of having an overloaded cart full of things that need to be washed spilling.

A Motorized Clean Linen Wire Cart that can help staff quickly replace linens without having clean linens spill out and needing to be rewashed.

Each of our motorized carts has a variable speed twist grips that allows the operator to travel at speeds of 0-3 mph forward or backward. This helps to ensure that they can be operated safely or moved out of the way if necessary. In a packed hotel of resort, staff may not be able to completely avoid customers but you can reduce collisions with energetic children or other staff members when you provide the right kind of equipment. You can also reduce instances of injury and muscle strain because with the demands of summer, your staff will have more to do and you do cannot afford to lose staff members to preventable injuries.

Save Money with a Shopping Cart Retriever

We see shopping carts everywhere and think little of them but if you are a retailer who offers them to customers they are one of the many items that you must account for. A DJ Products Shopping Cart Retriever can save you money on to separate fronts:

Reduce Employee Injury
Shopping cart retrievers are great labor-saving devices. Employees that have to round up shopping arts risk possible injury from the physical labor and must deal with weather conditions such as extreme heat and cold, rain, snow and hail. Providing your employees with this mechanical assistance means you lessen the chances that one of them gets injured retrieving carts or calls in sick because of heat exhaustion. And since cart retrieval tends to be the kind of task assigned to new or low-ranking employees, you may not make these employees excited to do this work but you can make this work easier because retaining employees you have trained also saves you money.

Lose Fewer Shopping Carts
The other way that a shopping cart retriever can save you money is pretty simple: The faster you get cart rounded up, the less likely it is that stray carts will be removed from your property. You may lose some carts here and there, but overall you do not want to see a number of your shopping carts either abandoned or being pushed around other parts of town. Retailers have been used to absorbing the loss of shopping carts but you can be proactive and see to it that your carts remain on your property for your customers to use.

Call 800-686-2651 to speak with one of our Sales Engineers about cart retrievers and other material handling solutions.

Increase Efficiency and Safety with a Car Pusher

If you own a car care center or car dealership that offers repairs or then you probably already know that vehicle manufacturers use car pushers to help keep things moving during the assembly process but you may not have considered how a car pusher can be an asset in your business as well.

Streetdirectory.com explained why a car pusher could be a good investment:
“A good car pusher is not very big and it is compact, thus allowing pushing and even pulling wheeled equipment. Such a pusher is a good investment because it allows a business to save workmen hours. Imagine for example working in a car repair center and having to push cars around all day long. Your body will be tired and you will have aching muscles or even worse strained muscles.”

A CarCaddy car pusher from DJ Products makes it much easier to move cars, trucks, buses and even RVs. This makes things so much safer for your employees and your customers as well. Your employees will not feel as strained and even if you don’t allow customers near the work area, your facility will be safer overall because our car pushers can help move vehicles even in tight quarters. Workers who experience muscle strain that does not require them to stop working may be reluctant to speak up but their work will suffer and you want your workers at their best.

Call us at 800-686-2651 to learn more about the CarCaddy and other material handling solutions such as electric carts that can make your workplace more efficient.

A Heavy Duty Cart Mover Gets the Job Done Safely

You would think that a cart itself would be enough to transport loads that a person cannot carry on his or her own, but when it comes to industry, sometimes even the carts need a little help. This is when a cart mover can come in very handy. The CartCaddyHD from DJ Products has been designed to push, pull, or maneuver carts or equipment up to 50,000 pounds.

If you’re wondering just why someone would load something up with that much weight, think about how long it would take if you were to break that 50,000 pounds in to smaller, more manageable loads—the kind that one person could carry comfortably. It would take a very long time to transport the kind of load or move a very heavy piece of equipment that has been broken down in that way. Sometimes transporting goods and machinery in these large quantities just makes sense.

So while many warehouses, factories and other places have seen the logic in having weighty loads to make things more efficient, they haven’t examined another factor in efficiency and that’s human capacity. There will be times when it is necessary to transport loads that are quite heavy for efficiency’s sake but you do not want to overburden workers. Have an uninjured workforce is also a key component in keeping things running smoothly and you don’t want workers with overtaxed musculoskeletal systems continuing to work until they become injured.

Try the CartCaddyHD—this battery powered cart mover offers a variable speed twist grip that allowed the cart to move forwards and backwards, allowing smooth movement and protecting the operator from carpel tunnel syndrome.

Move Horse Trailers with a Powered Trailer Dolly

There was a time when horses were our main source of transportation. We rode on them and used them to move heavy loads. Horses are still used to do a lot of heavy lifting and pulling but there are times when even they must be transported and they cannot be the means of transport. In those instances, we put horses into horse trailers that move the animals along.

Just as horses who can transport themselves sometimes have to be put into horse trailers, so too sometimes you may need help moving a horse trailer itself. Moving something like a horse trailer, even a short distance, can cause muscle strain and possibly cause injury. This is where a powered trailer dolly can be of great benefit. With its compact size, variable speed and the ease with which it can be maneuvered, a powered trailer dolly is a great alternative to yard tractors and pick up trucks.

Skeptical? You should know that our powered trailer dolly features a heavy-duty 36-volt motor that generates an enormous amount of power in the compact powered dolly.

The TrailerCaddyHD Extreme from DJ Products is not just for transporting horses; it can also be used to move boats, RVs, toy haulers and equipment trailers. If your workplace needs a horse trailer, there is a good chance that you will be able to put a powered trailer dolly to use in several ways. This powered dolly unit is the perfect solution for manufacturers, warehouses, distributors, and anyone who has to move heavy trailers short distances either indoors or outdoors.