Eighty-four licensed drivers operating a fleet of 30 forklift trucks in a three-shift operation require good supervision and planning in order to expeditiously and safely handle the over 400 million pounds of poultry products shipped annually from the Rocco Distribution Center in Mt. Crawford, Virginia.   

The 156,000 square foot facility, located in the northern part of the Shenandoah Valley, is the main shipping point of quality products from Rocco Enterprises, Inc., one of the largest turkey and institutional chicken suppliers in the country.  Rocco employs 3,600 people and works with 450 farmers in Virgina and West Virginia to raise chickens and turkeys under strict health, environmental and safety standards.  The Rocco premium brand products: Shady Brook Foods, Marval and Valley Chef, are shipped across the USA and exported to 40 foreign countries around the world.

 As activity increased in the busy distribution center, Mike Cornell, the plant manager took notice of increased rack damage, product damage and truck maintenance downtime.  The damage incidents were accompanied by increasing operational costs. Each incident was usually accompanied by finger pointing, blaming another shift or other operators. Thus, it was timely when Jim Carver of Dougherty Equipment, their local lift truck dealer, told Cornell about a possible solution, the Shockswitch ID™ system, a product of Dallas, Texas based Shockwatch. Carver brought in Shockwatch Regional Manager, Bill Johel, who demonstrated the system, which controls forklift access by requiring a prospective driver to “log on”with a simple key device called a touch memory module, personally assigned to each authorized driver.  Supervisors use a similar key to download stored information from the truck mounted Shockswitch ID™ units and input the data to the Shockwatch management software package on their office computer.

 Each Shockswitch ID™ driver’s key contains a unique identification number by which a licensed lift truck driver may be identified.  Each Shockswitch ID™ unit, on board a particular truck, senses, records and reports such data as: 

·        abnormal  impacts (adjustable to a particular environment)

·        exact time of abnormal impact event and operator identity

·        truck operating history – hours in use, etc.   

·        truck periodic maintenance history

·        pending lapse in driver certification – date when required retraining is due

 Cornell decided to try Shockswitch ID™ on the Rocco Distribution Center lift trucks and one year later they have equipped 14 of the stand-up rider lift trucks in the warehouse and plan to install additional Shockswitch ID's on the remaining fleet inventory. In a recent interview when Mike was asked to comment on his experience with the program, he replied, “It gives us better supervisory control by eliminating finger pointing and comments such as “I didn’t damage the racks or the standup jack"!  We had a control situation with six supervisors overseeing 84 drivers operating a total of 30 trucks, 24 hours a day on three shifts, and to further complicate accountability, each driver has a primary truck and an alternate or backup assignment.”  He added, “We see a definite decrease in product crushing on put-away and other product damage. Less damage to the racks and the lift trucks means lower maintenance as well as better equipment utilization, more uptime. The Shockswitch ID™ program has definitely paid for itself.”

 We asked Mike, how the lift truck operators reacted to the system and he commented,  “At the earliest stages the operators regarded it as a watchdog and they had a tendency to complain that we had set the impact sensors too low.  After they saw the resulting fairness and accuracy, most of them came to like the system as well as management. They all became better, more cautious operators. I would caution that acceptance and success requires a good game plan as you implement the program.  I use information derived from the Shockswitch™ program as a part of each supervisor’s periodic performance evaluation. They, in turn use the data as they evaluate performance of the operators.  Support has been good from our local dealer, from the regional office and the factory.  All in all it has been a good experience. We have plans to equip the rest of our fleet with the Shockswitch™ system.”                                           The End

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