Vehicle Service Pit Fall Protection
Service pits are a common feature within autobody shops and car washes. These pits are essential for oil changes, performing maintenance, or cleaning the underside of a vehicle without lifting the car into the air.
However, these service pits present a fall hazard that is often overlooked.
When no vehicle is covering the pit, any employee or customer could accidentally fall and get seriously injured.
This is a problem our customer had to solve in their shop. In this article, we’ll discuss their situation, their temporary solution, and how they ultimately fixed their issue with the assistance of Simplified Safety.
Open Pits in Car Garages
Benny’s Car Wash is a car wash, obviously, and an oil change business based out of New Orleans, Louisiana.
They’ve had service pits throughout their locations that they’ve utilized in oil changes and for deep cleaning cars. There was one major problem with them and that was how to easily and safely protect them.
Benny’s had been using the yellow metal covers that you can see in some of the photos to create a bridge to cross over the open pits as needed. They would occasionally use additional metal pieces that would rest in the pit to cover them when not in use.
However, this solution was cumbersome and not the safest. This led Benny’s management team to begin searching for a fall protection solution that would best fit their shops service pits.
Service Pit Fall Protection
Benny’s service managers began searching for a solution for their service pit and came across us here at Simplified Safety and our product PitProtect.
Their service manager called in and was connected with one of our fall protection experts, Mike, and they began to discuss the situation and the best path to move forward.
Mike was able to showcase PitProtect and all its features on how it could best solve their issue. For an overall breakdown of how pit covers are the best solution for maintenance pit fall protection, check out our video below.
PitProtect is expandable in both length and width. With its “accordion” style design, it can expand to meet most lengths of pits to provide total protection. PitProtect also expands widthwise and locks into place so that you can be assured it’s well secured.
We mentioned that Benny’s had these yellow plates to act as a bridge to go from one side of the pit to the other. Well, with PitProtect you can do the same thing. They are durable enough to be walked right over so that you can maintain a steady and safe workflow without having to walk around the entire pit.
Installing Service Pit Fall Protection
After hearing and seeing everything that PitProtect had to offer, the service manager went ahead with ordering a handful of PitProtect’s for their location.
PitProtect comes all put together, so the hardest job they had was just picking it up out of the box and placing it into their pits. Once in, they use the adjustable handles on the sides to lock the PitProtect into the right width and then just easily pull or push to cover the length of the pits.
Installing PitProtect is a simple process and gets your people protected in no time!
Benny’s management and service team were instantly excited to see how easy it was to set up and use and are now working on getting all their other locations set up with PitProtect’s.
Protecting Your Vehicle Service Pits
Benny’s is just one of many customers that we’ve helped solve their fall protection needs within their garages.
If you are looking to protect your vehicle service pits with an engineered pit cover, you can purchase one today!
If you have additional questions about PitProtect or about fall protection in general, contact one of our fall protection experts who would love to assist you with your project.
