Manual Handling Gear 101: How Drum Dollies can Benefit Your Business
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A dolly is an essential piece of equipment for moving heavy items in the workplace. It’s both a back-saver and a lifesaver if you work in a warehouse, factory, or any other area. Although most people are familiar with forklifts and trolleys as a convenient means for material handling, using a dolly cart helps you effectively move certain items with no effort or previous knowledge.
What’s the Purpose of a Dolly?
A dolly’s basic function is to help you lift and move heavy objects that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to. It resembles a hand cart in many ways and it’s suitable for moving barrels, furniture, crates, etc. It’s essentially a platform with wheels attached that let you move objects. It typically has four wheels and it comes in a variety of materials – with metal being the strongest and most durable choice.
What Are the Different Kinds of Dollies?
The two main categories that you’ll find today are moving and material-handling dollies. The first type is used instead of hand trucks and pallet jacks for heavy lifting. They offer a better grip and help with cleanroom transportation as well. On the other hand, a material handling dolly is used in warehouses, factories, huge offices, and even households. Some have casters that enable the tilting, pulling, and pushing of goods. This cart dolly is the most popular and it’s available in different sizes.
How Does a Drum Dolly Work?
If your company frequently works with barrels or container drums, you’ve probably heard of a drum dolly before. Companies frequently use container drums to transport hazardous substances. The material around the drum prevents leaks when poisonous liquids are involved.
Due to their form, weight, and construction, these container drums aren’t easy to move around. A drum dolly is a great tool for moving these tricky objects. A four-wheeled drum dolly helps you manoeuvre a large and potentially dangerous container with ease. It includes four rotating wheels joined to a circle of steel that supports drums of varying sizes and shapes.
A drum dolly makes sure that the container doesn’t move. To prevent it from wobbling, it includes an X-shape running across the circular base that offers more stability. If you want to move it over uneven surfaces, this feature also helps to support your container. Due to their sturdy metal construction and the toughness of the four multi-directional wheels linked to the frame, drum dollies have a big lifespan.
Once you load your barrel onto the dolly cart, you can easily move it and turn it around at 360 degrees. If you’re transporting your container on a sloped or uneven surface, make sure to add some additional support to avoid damaging it. With a simple push, your drum dolly will travel from one place to another.
How Much Weight Can a Drum Dolly Carry?
This piece of equipment has a large weight capacity that even reaches 500 kg for certain models. Before you buy a dolly, I advise you to verify the weight of the drums you need to lift and make sure it can support the weight, is the proper size, and satisfies your requirements.
Most drum dollies for sale are built of steel to fit the dimensions of circular drums and transport the weight across a space. They can transport anything from 25 to 210 litres of liquid, depending on the weight. The typical nominal volume of a container drum is 208 litres, so you should consider getting a dolly with a 210-litre capacity to guarantee that it’ll handle the typical weighted drum container.
Purchasing the dolly with the greatest weight restriction is the smartest choice since you could transport both container drums with lower and higher weight limits to their maximum carrying capacity. The drum dolly is made in such a way that it can support the maximum weight of container drums, which often have a maximum weight limit of their own.
What Do You Use a Dolly Drum For?
You now have a solid understanding of what a drum dolly is, how it’s constructed, how it’s used, how it’s designed, and what weight ranges it supports. On a final note, I’ll talk about a few examples of circumstances where you could use one or where you can see one in action.
Of course, whether or not you require this drum-carrying solution will rely on your company’s needs or the sectors in which it operates. Ideally, one of the examples below will help you decide if you need this solution for your business:
-Gas and oil: Due to its capacity to store combustible and hazardous liquids and the rate at which they must be moved, drum containers are often used in these businesses. A drum dolly cart is a safe choice for organizations that need to transfer drum containers holding liquids like oil;
-Food and drink: Drum containers are used in the food and beverage sector to transport large quantities of liquids, such as water, as well as foods, such as dry goods, in bulk. For businesses that move, sell, or acquire huge amounts of food and beverages, the drum dolly is the perfect option;
-Construction: Because drum containers can transport hazardous substances and liquids, the construction sector frequently uses drums to transport construction liquids from one location to another. The construction industry is a great example of where the drum dolly is frequently used.