Commercial
Loading Dock Equipment
The door is one part of a dock. The rest of it has to work too.
Most people think about the door and stop there. But a loading dock is a system, and the parts that decide whether it works are the ones bridging the gap between your floor and a trailer bed that is never quite the same height twice.
We install and service Pioneer dock equipment: levelers, seals, shelters, restraints and the hardware around them.
Levelers
The leveler is the ramp that makes your floor and the trailer floor into one surface. Which type you need depends mostly on how the building was built.
Pit levelers sit in a recess in the dock floor and carry the most capacity. This is the standard for a purpose-built dock.
Edge-of-dock levelers mount to the face of the dock and take up no floor. They suit lighter loads and buildings without a pit, and they are usually the answer in a retrofit where cutting a pit is not practical.
Hydraulic top-of-dock levelers mount on the dock surface, which makes them the retrofit answer where a pit is not an option. They are powered rather than mechanical, so they also suit higher cycle counts and heavier work.
Boards and ramps handle occasional or portable needs, including yard work and buildings with no dock at all.
Image coming soon
Seals and Shelters
When a trailer backs in, the gap around it is an open doorway to the outside. A seal compresses against the trailer and closes it. A shelter reaches out over the trailer and does the same job with more clearance, which suits varied trailer sizes better.
If your building is conditioned, or you handle anything temperature-sensitive, this is where the money leaks. It is also where dust, rain and pests get in.
Pioneer's Dura Seal covers general weather sealing, and ThermoGuard Under Seal handles the underside gap in temperature-controlled operations, which is the part most people forget is there.
Truck Restraints
A restraint holds the trailer to the dock so it cannot creep forward or pull away while a forklift is inside it. Trailer creep and early departure are two of the ways dock work seriously injures people, and a wheel chock alone is not the same control.
Pioneer builds automatic restraints in several capacities, plus manual versions for lower-volume docks.
If you are specifying a dock from scratch, put restraints in the first budget rather than the second. They are much harder to add later, and the reason to have them does not change.
The Rest of It
Bumpers, including impact-absorbing versions that protect the dock face rather than just cushioning it. Wheel chocks. Dock lights and fans. Traffic lights so the driver and the dock crew agree on what is happening. Guard rails. High-volume low-speed fans for moving air through a warehouse without a wind tunnel.
Retrofit and New Build
New construction is straightforward, because everything is specified to fit before anything is poured.
Retrofit is where the survey earns its money. Dock height, approach slope, trailer mix and pit condition all change what will actually work, and the answer that fits one dock position may not fit the one next to it. We would rather measure than guess.
Tell us what your dock handles and we'll come look at it.
Call us or ask for a free estimate and we'll take it from there.