Lightweight Delivery Trolley – Handle Unclipping Issue Resolved

CWU Health & Safety department has issued an updated letter to branches (LTB626/12) with regard to the Handle Unclipping Issue on the Lightweight Delivery Trolley. This replaces LTB 625/12 which should be discarded.

The safety issue identified should be resolved by following the updated, far safer method contained in the Royal Mail Instruction Sheet "How to Use The Lightweight Delivery Trolley [LWT]".

The new LTB again details the background to the health and safety concerns:

‘A number of CWU Safety Representative had identified problems in relation to difficulties with unclipping of the LWT handle on some Trolleys. An example LWT with the 'stiff to open' problem concerned was examined and tested by Royal Mail Central Engineering at Swindon along with another Trolley not presenting the same problem. The asset number of the sample LWT supplied with the problem was 390 00009465 09 and the asset number of the sample LWT that did not display the 'stiff to open' problem was 390 00016046 10.

An Engineering Review was carried out whereby the component parts - the Handle Outer Mouldings and the Clip Mouldings were examined along with the force required to separate them or unclip them and comparisons made with the original checks undertaken during acceptance testing and the acceptance criteria.

The force required to unclip the example problematic trolley along with a trolley from a later production batch were assessed to determine if the force to unclip still meet the acceptance criteria. The testing determined that the average force required to unclip the problem LWT did not now meet the acceptance criteria.’

The letter to branches goes into further detail, gives advice and refers to the Royal Mail document "How to Use The Lightweight Delivery Trolley [LWT]".

It concludes:

‘This information is being circulated in order to assist ASRs covering Delivery Offices deploying New Delivery Methods in case this problem is experienced.

It has also been recommended that the process of storage and distribution be investigated in order that the oldest LWT units are distributed from storage to DOs first (first in - first out process) as the “new” trolleys supplied to Huddersfield were manufactured nearly three years ago.’

LTB626/12 in full can be downloaded here

The Royal Mail instruction sheet can be downloaded from the E-Library database by using keyword ‘Trolley’.

Source: CWU

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