Dock bumpers can help you safeguard your dock area, your dock equipment and trailers. Every product that passes through your warehouse or manufacturing facility goes through the dock, so it’s essential to preserve it and keep all doors available and in good condition.
Types of Dock Bumpers
Typically, dock bumpers are situated so that a truck or trailer runs into the bumper before hitting your building. This safeguards your facility, your dock levelers and the truck or trailer that uses your dock.
There are quite a few categories of bumpers, and selecting a suitable bumper can be consequential, depending on the volume of your dock operation. Using overly-lightweight dock bumpers can sometimes lead to premature failure, while adding dock bumpers that are excessively heavy duty will be ineffective and could actually cause problems when docking trailers and trucks.
Not all facilities are the same, and the kind of dock bumpers you choose will be dependent upon the average vehicle or trailer height, the approach, overall volume and many other variables. For docks where trucks or trailers have the potential to sway during loading movements, bumpers can be mounted horizontally or vertically.
Molded Bumpers (Light Duty): Bumpers made from molded rubber can offer protection for light duty loading docks. Additionally, molded bumpers can be used on the interior of a warehouse to safeguard doorways, walls and other structural elements from lift trucks and other warehouse and dock equipment.
Molded rubber is can’t take as much abuse as other styles of dock bumpers and may chip or gouge over time. They may be a feasible option for your operation if your loading dock does not get a high volume of truck traffic.
Laminated Bumpers (Medium Duty): Laminated bumpers have superior shock absorption capabilities because they have more substantial pads. They are constructed from cut-to-size strips of used truck tires that are mounted between steel brackets.
These bumpers have a reasonably good level of wear resistance and are versatile with regard to thickness, length, and height. They are commonly used on docks configured with pit-style dock levelers or edge-of-dock levelers, since they offer prolonged protection for high traffic loading docks.
