Safety Tidbit 3.28 – Fall Protection on Truck Trailers - Clarification

Safety Tidbit 3.28 – Fall Protection on Truck Trailers - Clarification

Reference:       1910.28 – OSHA Walking Working Surfaces

                        OSHA 2007 Letter of Interpretation

                        OSHA 1996 Letter to Regional Administrators

                        Federal Register Volume 81, No. 223/Friday, November 18, 2016, pp. 82505-82509

This Safety Tidbit is a follow-on to Tidbit #3.26 from a couple of weeks ago on a discussion about the new walking-working surfaces standard. I said the class members and instructor could not find a letter of interpretation pertinent to walk-working surfaces. However, if we would have looked under 1910.132, we would have found one. This is complements of a friend in DC.

All that I said before was correct. OSHA’s definition is Walking-working surface means any horizontal or vertical surface on or through which an employee walks, works, or gains access to a work area or workplace location. The top of a semi-truck bed seems to fit that definition. Thus, the discussion began since some folks have trucks that move supplies from a warehouse to a job site.

As I noted, we could not find a letter of interpretation on the topic however, there was a letter under 1910.132(d). The 1996 RA letter states: “The current fall protection standard in general industry (Subpart D) does not specifically address fall hazards from the tops of rolling stock. The new proposed fall protection standard, 55 Fed. Reg. 13360, explicitly excludes rolling stock from coverage. The enforcement policy of the Agency, consequently, is that falls from rolling stock also will not be cited under Subpart D.” So OSHA will not cite the fall hazard under the proper standard and force us to look somewhere else.

In the next paragraph is says: “… it would not be appropriate to use the personal protection equipment standard, 29 CFR 1910.132(d), to cite exposure to fall hazards from the tops of rolling stock, unless employees are working atop stock that is positioned inside of or contiguous to a building or other structure where the installation of fall protection is feasible. In such cases, fall protection systems often can be and, in fact, are used in many facilities in the industry.”  Therefore, OSHA will cite under the failure of the employer to assess their workplace for hazards.

Digging deeper into the new Rule. There is a discussion on rolling stock in the final rule on walking-working surfaces. Interestingly, OSHA makes a good case that workers should be protected from fall off. Page 82508 of the Federal Register OSHA sums up their findings by stating: “OSHA believes the evidence employers and industry associations submitted shows it is technologically feasible in many cases for employers to provide fall protection for rolling stock and motor vehicles regardless of their location.”

Unfortunately, OSHA waffled in the final paragraph of the rolling stock discussion. Page 82509 of the discussion specifically about jurisdiction: “FMCSA addresses fall hazards for certain commercial motor vehicles in 49 CFR part 399. Since the Agency did not propose any specific fall protection requirements for rolling stock or motor vehicles, OSHA has not included any in this final rule. However, it will continue to consider the comments it has received, and in the future the Agency may determine whether it is appropriate to pursue any action on this issue.” With this omission, OSHA keeps the 1996 Enforcement Directive to the Regional Administrators viable.

Therefore, my take home message has not really changed. If you have trucks that move supplies from a warehouse or other storage location, that falls under General Industry standards, and the workers working on/from the trucks are 4 feet or more above the ground, they must be protected from falling if feasible to do so. However, you will need to be prepared to defend your position of why protecting your workers was infeasible and this is increasingly difficult to do given the innovations in fall protection systems.

Hope this was helpful and thanks for reading my Safety Tidbits! Comments and questions are always welcome. ~ Bryan

P.S. If you have an interesting safety or health question please let me know.