Cardboard with a slip-inhibiting coating

Good Strips

Article in VerkehrsRUNDSCHAU No. 33/2009
by Rocco Swantusch

Securing the load with little effort and at low cost. For most transports, slip-inhibiting materials help drivers and loaders to achieve this target.

Often just one strip is enough to safely deal with the often considered bothersome topic load safety efficiently. An anti-slip mat or other slip-inhibiting materials help securing almost all transports bar bulk materials, tank and silo transports. The underlay material – if correctly placed – increases the so-called coefficient of sliding friction, so that cargo will not start slipping and the driver not start sweating. The range of materials extends from anti-slip mats with rubber granules or full material and slip-inhibiting solid cardboard to anti-slip pallets from plastic.

“With all this choice there is no labelling obligation. Help is at hand in the form of the published standard part 15 of the guideline series VDI 2700. This specifies the qualitative requirements for slip-inhibiting materials and also their suitability and use,” VDI expert Volker Kirsten explains. It describes how materials can become deformed during use or the effect different temperatures have on them.

“Part 14 answers the difficult question of what measuring method to use in order to establish the coefficient of sliding friction,” Kirsten says. The draft is already available. The objection period ends at the end of August so that this standard will be finalised subsequently.

Markus Strecker also recommends looking at the standards: “For a good anti-slip mat, the coefficient of sliding friction should be µ 0.6. This value should be established using standardised specifications such as VDI standard 2700 part 14 so that it can be compared with other materials,” the load safety professional and head of occupational safety and driving training at SVG South Baden in Freiburg suggests.

A multitude of suppliers
The team in the Multi-Cargo department of Nordpack GmbH have been testing and improving a load safety solution called Safety Grip since 2005. This is not a standard rubber mat but cardboard with a slip-inhibiting coating.
“A customer’s inquiry for export to Japan, looking for an ecological as well as economical application that covers the loader in questions of load safety liability was the initial impulse that made us research a one-way solution,” the responsible manager at Multi-Cargo remembers.
He quickly discovered the first obstacles. “It was then not defined sufficiently or explicitly what the testing of slip-inhibiting materials should look like,” the product manager explains and adds: “Today we operate our own testing facilities for testing the coefficient of sliding friction with weights of up to five tonnes.”

When should the mats be discarded?
A practical problem is the discard criteria of the mats. “How often can an anti-slip mat be re-used? How can the lorry driver or the loading personnel establish whether the re-used mat still has the anti-slip properties established by the manufacturer for new anti-slip mats when dirt and wear lower the sliding friction?” the product specialist at Nordpack GmbH asks.
It is clear to Nordpack that the anti-slip mat can only be used once – damage-free and clean – in order to guarantee maximum safety. Nordpack recommends covering under the pallet runners rather than working with small pads.

Among the users of the one-way solution is the chemical company Clariant International from Muttenz, Switzerland. “There is no load safety for free but our own experience has shown that the costs are low compared with possible damage. This is not the right place to be making savings,” Paul Mitter, who is in charge of corporate transport safety at Clariant, makes plain.

Loader and driver both secure
In the Swiss company, driver and loader share responsibility for the load securing. That is: Driver and loading personnel secure the load together. The driver provides the lashing straps and Clariant, the one-way anti-slip mats for securing the pallets. “A one-way solution is ideal so we don’t have to follow the anti-slip mats around,” Mitter stresses. In the international company, most trips do not go straight back to the loader.

For more than a year, Safety-Grip mats have been helping to secure the up to 35 lorries that leave the loading bay every day. A special e-learning course in load securing explains exactly to the loading personnel how to place the anti-slip strips in order to increase the coefficient of friction effectively.

“With the help of anti-slip mats we were able to halve the number of necessary lashing straps to around 11 per lorry,” load safety executive Mitter calculates. The one-way devices are disposed of in the waste paper collection at the destination. New strips are laid out for the next cargo.