Trailer Restraint and Chock Record

This record covers one trailer, at one dock, for the duration it is being worked. It is not the dock's own equipment check, and it is not where racking, yard or forklift condition belongs.

No standard names trailer restraint specifically. It sits under the general operational control duty to eliminate or reduce a recognised hazard, here a vehicle moving while someone is inside or on it, using the hierarchy of controls before falling back to procedure.

No jurisdiction names trailer restraint as its own instrument. It is read into the general duty to control workplace transport risk, and enforcement follows from what a recognised hazard requires rather than from a dock-specific standard.

The record prompts for a sequence of yes or no answers. The judgement calls sit in how those answers are read back, not in how they are entered.

Because the record is short and binary, findings rarely come from missing fields. They come from the sequence being right on paper and wrong in the order it actually happened.

A cold-store site restrained a trailer, held the driver's keys, and had a picker inside it loading pallets within the correct sequence. Forty minutes later the load was finished, and the loader marked the record complete: forklift withdrawn, restraint released, keys returned, no early departure attempt. Every field read yes in the right places, no in the right places, and the record closed clean.

The keys had been handed back roughly thirty seconds before the forklift driver confirmed clear over the radio, because the loader was already walking toward the cab when the call came through and did not want to make a second trip. The trailer did not move. But the record described a sequence that, on a busier day with a driver less inclined to wait, had already stopped protecting anyone, and nothing in the completed fields would have shown that unless someone asked what order the two things actually happened in.

The record itself is short. What decides whether it protects anyone is whether the release order is actually enforced, whether an early departure attempt gets followed up, and whether a haulier whose drivers keep testing the control gets flagged before it becomes routine.

KnowSafe

Holds the restraint record against the register of docks and hauliers, and flags any record where restraint and key control fields do not move together.

KnowFleet

Connects trailer floor and landing gear findings to the haulier's own vehicle condition history, rather than treating them as one-off dock observations.

KnowLogistics

Feeds trailer arrival and change-over data from the yard log, so a restraint record is expected the moment a trailer is at the dock, not filled in after the fact.

Ella

Watches for early departure attempts and repeated not-checked restraint indicators across hauliers, and raises the pattern before an incident does.

Vehicle restraint

A mechanical or hydraulic device that locks onto the trailer's rear underride bar or wheel, preventing it separating from the dock while a driver could still move it.

Wheel chock

A wedge placed against a wheel to stop a vehicle or an unattached trailer rolling, used with or instead of a restraint depending on the dock's fitted equipment.

Landing gear

The trailer's own support legs, extended once the tractor unit is uncoupled, and load-bearing before anyone works inside an unattached trailer.

Key or document control

Physically holding the driver's ignition key, or the paperwork he needs to leave, for the duration the trailer is being worked, so restraint cannot be defeated by simply driving off.

Early departure attempt

Any instance of a driver attempting to move the vehicle before it has been released, whether stopped by the restraint, by key control, or by intervention.