Safely Moving Heavy Objects on Job Sites

Our natural inclination when moving something is to lift it and carry it. This is fine when the object or item isn’t particularly heavy or bulky. But at some point, this approach carries risk of back strain, finger crushing, or other injury. The first step in protecting yourself is to know your limits. The second step is to reduce them by about half.

Don’t confuse being able to squat or bench X amount of weight in the gym with setting your limit. What you can safely lift in a controlled environment with controlled motion while grasping a bar made just for human hands greatly exceeds what you can lift from a truck bed while standing on gravel or what you can carry in a bucket where the weight might shift.

What a coworker seems to lift safely has no bearing on where to set your personal limit. If they carry eight sticks of ¾ EMT on one shoulder, does that mean you are obligated to do the same? Maybe they are causing themselves physical damage from carrying such a heavy load.

You set your limit based on what is comfortable for you. In the aforementioned case, a 10-ft-long bundle is best carried by two people instead of being balanced on your shoulder. It’s not so much the weight — it’s the bulk. It’s much harder to see where your feet are landing or where you are going, much less keep your balance and keep the load balanced. It’s harder to move around obstacles and easier to hit some other person as you swing to take a corner. You can’t really control that load.

If you go to a home center, you will see carts that are designed specifically for long objects, such as 12-ft long 2×4s, piping, and raceway. The slots for these hold the long objects low relative to the person pushing the cart. The center of gravity is low for balance, and the bulk is below the line of sight, so it doesn’t obstruct vision.

That kind of solution can be used on the job site, as well. The team lift approach can also be used, and if it is used it could work better for the people carrying the long objects to hold them low instead of up on their shoulders. Sometimes using a set of slings make this approach easier.

Some other common solutions include:

• Walk it. By lifting up on one corner, tilting the item forward, and then repeating on the opposite corner you can move a heavy or bulky item by lifting only a portion of its weight. But there are limits. For example, the portion can still be too much for you or you may have to place your hands or feet under a place where a slip can mean an injury.
• Make two trips. This simple solution reduces the load roughly in half. It doesn’t necessarily take twice as long either.
• Team lift. There’s a reason caskets have six pall bearers rather than just two. For bulky items, a team lift is usually not just the safest but also the most efficient. Using lifting straps can allow more people to help than if you rely solely on people to directly grab onto the item.
• Load up a flatbed pushcart. This is similar to the home center solution for long objects, except in this case, you put all those boxes of fittings, the cases of test equipment, the power tool boxes, and so forth on a flat bed cart that you push. This way, you carry each item only a very short distance and push them all on the cart. The cart bears the collective weight.
• Palletize and lift truck it. This is the default method for an electrical services firm in central Tennessee. In their system, the job planner enters the tools and materials needed for a given job. Then a report is printed out, everything needed gets put on a pallet, and the pallet is wrapped in plastic that’s rolled off a spool in the loading bay. This is then set onto the back of the van or pickup truck with a lift truck. Because they work in existing plants, there’s another lift truck at the other end to take the pallet off. But they would have the option of removing the items from the pallet while it’s still on the truck, as a Plan B.

Never be in a hurry to move stuff. Don’t take it upon yourself to “just get the job done” because there’s nobody to help you or the help is taking too long. Once you rip a bicep muscle, rupture a disk, or lose a couple of fingers, it’s too late for a do-over.