OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14257836
MITCHELL GRADING INC T/A GARDNER GRADING & TRUCKIN
BAKERSVILLE, NC—
Event description
Employee crushed to death under tractor trailer
Investigation abstract
At approximately 8:15 a.m. on March 19, 1985, Employee #1 and a coworker were in forth by controlling the clutch. Employee #1, meanwhile, crawled under the trail er and rapped on the hook on the inside with a block of wood in an effort to fre e the pin. The pin released while the tractor was in forward gear and the bed mo ved toward the tandem housing. Employee #1, who had positioned himself on the wr ong side of the tandem housing, was crushed between it and the trailer bed. He w as killed. the storage and parking area behind a grading and hauling company, readying a t ractor trailer for a log hauling operation. This required adjustment of the tand em wheel assembly that was attached to the trailer bed. Four pins hold each side of the tandem in place; these are locked and released by a manual control arm l ocated in front of the left wheels, facing the tractor. When Employee #1 release d this control arm, all the pins released except one at the right rear of the be d. Unable to free this pin, Employee #1 instructed the tractor trailer driver to get into the tractor, lock down the rear wheels, and rock the tractor back and
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 36 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 27
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 10
- Environmental factor
- 4
- Task assigned
- 1
Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.