the top 5 loading and unloading challenges in 2026

As new workers familiarise themselves with life in the transport and warehousing sectors, thorough training to load and unload safety is essential. Operatives need to be aware of the common mistakes that can cause inefficiencies in the loading and unloading process and how these can be avoided, such as maximising the loading space and ensuring ergonomic movements.

Training should be given on lifting techniques and on maximum lift limits when working independently without equipment. Operatives also need to be aware of any warehouse travel strategies designed to minimise the amount of time spent travelling through the warehouse and as a result, being readily available for loading or unloading activity.

Health & Safety regulators such as the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) identify workplace transport, including loading and unloading, as one of the leading causes of fatal and serious injuries in warehousing environments.

In the transport and storage sector, over 40,000 non-fatal injuries occurred in 2024/25, which is significantly higher compared to other injuries.

Read our article on the Roles of Loading Automation in Warehouse Safety

It can be challenging to ensure complete oversight when multiple loading docks are being utilised at the same time as a supervisor can only be in one place at any one time.

Dock management systems, integrated with CCTV or sensors, can give a single view of activity and allow loading and unloading practices to be observed and corrected where necessary. It can also ensure loading plans are being followed and any inefficiencies dealt with prior to transport.

By utilising the latest digital and engineering technologies in a combined, automated loading system can be a cost-effective and efficient way of saving your business time, money and resource...

Consider this, with an automated loading system, you can help your business to overcome the loading and unloading challenges listed above. With an automated loading system, you can integrate loading technology solutions into your business seamlessly to reduce (or even irradicate) the need for forklift trucks (including fuel and maintenance), labour and potentially costly negligence claims that derive from accidents.

An automated loading solution can, at the press of a button, load a full trailer in a matter of minutes. We have three automated loading solutions, the Trailerskate, the Slipchain and the Moving Floor solution and as loading experts, we can fully assess your needs to help specify and tailor a solution that's exactly right for your requirements...

Load a truck or trailer incorrectly and you could cause an accident. It’s a responsible job, and you can’t just load a truck any way that suits you. You have to consider how the weight of the load might affect the vehicle once it’s in transit, plus several other factors so that you do so safely.

In our article, Fifteen Essential Truck Loading Tips, we provide you with a series of tips to help you transfer your cargo to your truck or trailer appropriately. Before going into the tips themselves, though, we discuss some fundamental terms that, if you’re responsible for loading a truck or trailer, you should know.

In our featured case study with MM Packaging, we explore how transitioning from manual forklift processes to a bespoke Slipchain Automated Loading System transformed their operations.

By addressing core challenges such as safety risks and dock bottlenecks, they successfully reduced trailer unloading times to just three minutes, while achieving 100% end-of-line traceability.

David Whitworth, Operations Director at MMP Deeside commented: "We faced a labour-intensive process that ran the risk of bottlenecks and inhibited our capacity to scale... with the automated system, the physicality of loading pallets every single day has been eliminated and we have achieved a fully automated process.

Explore the full case study to see how expert-led docking infrastructure can future-proof your logistics and deliver a significant return on investment.

Around the world, we’re known as the number one; the global leader in loading and unloading solutions. This is not only because we are the largest but also the first too; we've been pioneering loading solutions since 1962.

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