Amazon worker killed on the job, not the first time

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
D

DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
Sad, but this one seems self-inflicted:

"Jody Rhoads, 52, died on June 1 from wounds she suffered when the pallet jack she was operating [...] crashed into shelving and pinned her"

If you have hundreds of thousands of workers in warehouses, it's not surprising that 1 or 2 are going to have accidents.

Even if you buy all your items from local mom 'n' pop stores, those stores get much of their stock from giant warehouse operations too.
 
zerocool84

zerocool84

Lifer
Nov 11, 2004
36,041
472
126
Hate to say it but many people die in a warehouse because there's so much that can go wrong so it's not uncommon and since Amazon is so huge with so many more workers, there's more of a chance for someone to get injured or killed.
 
OILFIELDTRASH

OILFIELDTRASH

Lifer
May 13, 2009
12,333
612
126
Wtf are you serious? People die in many lines of work. I drive an oilfield tanker truck and have personally known at least a few guys that have rolled a truck and died. Yes it sucks but when you work with heavy machinery anything can happen. This is in no way Amazon's fault.
 
Brovane

Brovane

Diamond Member
Dec 18, 2001
6,240
2,475
136
I know that years ago at the Costco I regularly go to a worker was killed. A forklift pushed a pallet off a shelf and it fell and killed the lady. As other people have pointed out deaths can happen especially in a Warehouse and dealing with heavy machinery.
 
Engineer

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,230
701
126
RIP.

Hopefully, some better safety policy (or technology) will happen from this so that it doesn't happen again.
 
H

Howard

Lifer
Oct 14, 1999
47,982
11
81
A pallet jack? Like a hand truck?

Sounds like she drove it poorly and killed herself...
 
S

s0me0nesmind1

Lifer
Nov 8, 2012
20,842
4,785
146
davesimmons said:
sad, but this one seems self-inflicted:

"jody rhoads, 52, died on june 1 from wounds she suffered when the pallet jack she was operating [...] crashed into shelving and pinned her"

if you have hundreds of thousands of workers in warehouses, it's not surprising that 1 or 2 are going to have accidents.

Even if you buy all your items from local mom 'n' pop stores, those stores get much of their stock from giant warehouse operations too.
Click to expand...

shut the fuck up! She was killed by the hard slave labor of american corporations.

You will speak nothing of self-inflicted wounds. Continue forth peasant.
 
Jeff7

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
19
81
Howard said:
A pallet jack? Like a hand truck?

Sounds like she drove it poorly and killed herself...
Click to expand...
Or they might not maintain their equipment very well.
I worked two summers at a Home Depot warehouse. The pallet jacks were lousy. Several had crappy wheels with flat spots, so I had to keep stopping to pick up boxes that got shaken off of the pallets I was carrying.
One of them had a really fun problem: The power cable routing was done in such a way that raising the pallets off the floor could sometimes yank out the main power cable. So instead of being able to slow it down using the normal speed controls, I once suddenly found myself unable to stop. I had to quick turn around, grab hold of the main body, and push back on the handle to engage the wheel lock and come to a rapid halt. (That was when I discovered the cable routing problem.)
And the floor underneath the charging stations had to be cleaned a lot because the batteries tended to leak.

The training on the equipment is also not very good.




I know there's someone else here who works in a warehouse. I know the avatar, but not the name. :\
I believe the avatar is Anne Hathaway, with a rather unusual expression. :D
 
Last edited:
K

kmcrowl

Member
Nov 5, 2003
58
1
0
You hit the nail on the head..poor training. The workers should know the in and outs of the equipment they run.
 
Ichinisan

Ichinisan

Lifer
Oct 9, 2002
28,298
1,235
136
DaveSimmons said:
Sad, but this one seems self-inflicted:

"Jody Rhoads, 52, died on June 1 from wounds she suffered when the pallet jack she was operating [...] crashed into shelving and pinned her"

If you have hundreds of thousands of workers in warehouses, it's not surprising that 1 or 2 are going to have accidents.

Even if you buy all your items from local mom 'n' pop stores, those stores get much of their stock from giant warehouse operations too.
Click to expand...

When I worked at a high-velocity food distribution center, the Raymond pallet runners were nearly all defective. The stop / reverse function would intermittently fail and you couldn't stop it when you were walking along side and loading your pallets. I can't believe there were no deaths because of it while I worked there for over 1 year. It severely impacted productivity and all the management seemed to be in denial about the problem.
 
H

Howard

Lifer
Oct 14, 1999
47,982
11
81
Jeff7 said:
Or they might not maintain their equipment very well.
I worked two summers at a Home Depot warehouse. The pallet jacks were lousy. Several had crappy wheels with flat spots, so I had to keep stopping to pick up boxes that got shaken off of the pallets I was carrying.
One of them had a really fun problem: The power cable routing was done in such a way that raising the pallets off the floor could sometimes yank out the main power cable. So instead of being able to slow it down using the normal speed controls, I once suddenly found myself unable to stop. I had to quick turn around, grab hold of the main body, and push back on the handle to engage the wheel lock and come to a rapid halt. (That was when I discovered the cable routing problem.)
And the floor underneath the charging stations had to be cleaned a lot because the batteries tended to leak.

The training on the equipment is also not very good.




I know there's someone else here who works in a warehouse. I know the avatar, but not the name. :\
I believe the avatar is Anne Hathaway, with a rather unusual expression. :D
Click to expand...
Article doesn't mention whether the pallet jack is electric or manual.
 
gorcorps

gorcorps

aka Brandon
Jul 18, 2004
30,739
454
126
L

LennyZ

Golden Member
Oct 24, 1999
1,557
0
76
Having worked in a warehouse, Getting killed or maimed is pretty common.
Worst i ever saw was forklift driven off loading dock and operator jumped off of it
to the wrong side. Squashed like a bug. (big forklift)
 
mmntech

mmntech

Lifer
Sep 20, 2007
17,501
12
0
Warehouses, at least around here, don't exactly hire the most competent people. A lot of them have a skeleton staff and just hire day labourers during busy periods. We had one of those staffing places next door to a one of the stores I worked at. I swear all the guys who would line up there were all crack heads.
 
E

Eli

Super Moderator | Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
50,419
8
81
Last edited:
Engineer

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,230
701
126
LennyZ said:
Having worked in a warehouse, Getting killed or maimed is pretty common.
Worst i ever saw was forklift driven off loading dock and operator jumped off of it
to the wrong side. Squashed like a bug. (big forklift)
Click to expand...

Getting killed is pretty common = warehouse getting shut down. Define how often "getting killed is pretty common" occurs.
 
SKORPI0

SKORPI0

Lifer
Jan 18, 2000
18,471
2,411
136
Jeff7 said:
I know there's someone else here who works in a warehouse. I know the avatar, but not the name. :\
I believe the avatar is Anne Hathaway, with a rather unusual expression. :D
Click to expand...
That's me. ;)

I work at Lowe's shipping/receiving dept. Fully trained to use all the power equipment. Maintenance at the store is a f*cking joke. Daily checklist are rarely done, if ever. Monthly breakdowns, cart wheels noisy and dirty, ladders shaky. Stores did away with electric pallet jacks 2010, to save money. Most of the "accidents", carelessness/not looking where they are going/not getting enough training/hiring the wrong people. There was a time in 2013 that we had accidents every other week. We had a visit from OSHA. No 60 day cookouts for us that year. I shake my head and wonder how the store functions at all with all, an make $30 million in sales a year.
 
Jeff7

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
19
81
SKORPI0 said:
That's me. ;)
Click to expand...
Yeah, there you are. :)
I remembered that the name started with S and contained a 0.



I work at Lowe's shipping/receiving dept. Fully trained to use all the power equipment. Maintenance at the store is a f*cking joke. Daily checklist are rarely done, if ever. Monthly breakdowns, cart wheels noisy and dirty, ladders shaky. Stores did away with electric pallet jacks 2010, to save money. Most of the "accidents", carelessness/not looking where they are going/not getting enough training/hiring the wrong people. There was a time in 2013 that we had accidents every other week. We had a visit from OSHA. No 60 day cookouts for us that year. I shake my head and wonder how the store functions at all with all, an make $30 million in sales a year.
Click to expand...
Sounds like this is par for the course for warehouses.



And as for manual pallet jacks, those could cause injury as well, depending on what's being carried. Get a nice 1-ton pallet of salt moving at a walking pace, and it isn't going to want to stop easily. I don't know how heavy anything at Amazon is going to be though.
I'd always use a pallet jack ready to brake the thing at a moment's notice, either by spinning the handle and skidding to a stop, or dropping the pallet. (Avoiding it if possible though. The maintenance guys don't like it if you e-brake those things and scrape up their nicely-waxed floors.)



No 60 day cookouts for us that year.
Click to expand...
That's always nice of them, isn't it?
"We didn't give you adequate tools or training, and you naturally got hurt. So, we're going to take away one of our little token niceties."
 
E

Eli

Super Moderator | Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
50,419
8
81
Some other accidents from big corps..

5/2/2014 - Time Warner Cable SE, LLC - Worker electrocuted when aerial lift contacted an overhead power line.
4/29/2014 - Home Depot USA Inc., - Worker rearranging shelves died after fall from ladder
3/31/2014 - Home Depot - Worker struck and killed by vehicle while collecting store carts :(
3/18/2014 - The Coca Cola Company - Worker killed in fall on stairway
3/8/2014 - Kraft Foods Group, Inc. - Worker killed after becoming caught in food blender during cleaning operations :eek:
2/28/2014 - Nordstrom Inc., - Worker killed in fall from ladder
1/1/2014 - Wal-Mart, Inc., - Worker killed in fall from ladder

Clearly, we need to ban ladders.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom