Bucket Trucks, Digger Derricks, & More – I-80 Equipment

Today’s bucket trucks are much safer than ever. Technology and analytics have provided a continuous refinement of safety measures built into lift trucks. In this post, we’ll look at exactly what the biggest safety tools for bucket trucks and analyze how they work.

The first and one of the biggest safety measures is the insulated boom. Common in trucks that work in the tree or landscape business and of course, the electric line industry, insulated booms keeps the truck from grounding and becoming energized. By no means does this allow operators to disregard other safety precautions near energized lines, it is merely a safe-guard and more of a last chance to save those working on or near the truck from injury or death.

Insulated Boom on a Bucket Truck

The next biggest safety innovation on bucket trucks, or any type of lift truck, are outriggers. Outriggers are the arms that extend from a truck and act to stabilize it. They help keep the truck secure on uneven surfaces and prevent tip-overs. Tip-overs used to be quite common in the line truck industry and the invention of outriggers as well as implementation of safety standards has drastically reduced the number of deaths from tip-over.

Bucket Truck With Outriggers Down

Lanyards are simple yet effective. A lanyard is the harness that is worn by the worker in the bucket and is attached to an anchor point in either the bucket or attached to the boom. A lanyard is cheap, easy to put on, and one of the most effective ways to prevent injury or death from accidents, including falls.

Forestry Bucket Truck With a Cab Guard

A cab guard is another simple invention and is mostly seen on forestry bucket trucks. A cab guard is a metal cage that covers the cab of the truck. It’s purpose is to protect the driver or passenger in the cab from falling limbs and debris. In the forestry industry, there is lots of falling debris at any given job site and the cab guard is ideal for anyone who needs to be close to the job site and on the ground.

These four safety measures may seem simple but they save the lives of workers on a daily basis. As technology advances, bucket trucks and other kinds of lift trucks will evolve with it. The idea is to make working on or near bucket trucks completely safe and to reduce the number of lift truck related fatalities to zero. I’m confident we are on the right track and am excited to see the new kinds of advancements utility trucks make in the future.