Why Powered Hand Trucks

Topics

Why Powered Hand Trucks

Our Research

It’s Plain Hard Work

Injury Statistics USA

Safety & Profitability

The LPG/Propane Market

The Supply Chain

So what’s Our Point of Difference

Multi-Role Hand Truck

We’re At the Crossroads ( Overseas Manufacturing, Open Design Environment or Crowd Funding Options)

Technical

Patented Designs

CAD Documents

About me

Foreword

I started making simple prototype hand trucks as a hobby in my workshop in 2014, just for the fun of it. Later I realized that they could be viable if the designs were rugged in design and had the power and performance to back up the design and learning to create good TurboCAD designs along the way. This is not an in-depth article covering every event and experience but just enough to clarify what we’ve done and why we did it. Designing in TurboCAD and we checked our work in AutoCAD. This article has some technical aspects but not so many that will leave the reader guessing!

I am reaching out to other interested parties and hoping to find people to take these ideas to the next level and make a business from it based on the merits of the designs alone. I will always be a technical guy and given the right environment will always thrive on a technical challenge.

Finally we are extremely confident that the technical knowledge that we’ve learned along the way can be utilized to create a new business venture, that at this point in time doesn’t exist and that’s Powered Hand Trucks. Any and all errors in this article are mine and mine alone, please read on as I’m sure you will find this article very interesting reading.

Why Powered Hand Trucks

Hello my name is Darryl Impey and I recently retired from Matt's Transport here in Cairns Australia, to pursue my hobby in hand truck designs and I never been busier and I’m just loving it. Matt's Transport is a small and lean transport company servicing the Cairns region and the initial idea for our prototype designs came from my son Matt. He said to me "Dad wouldn't it be great if we had a powered hand trolley to drive the loads into the truck", later that day during unloading Matt said to me "wouldn't it be awesome if we have brakes on the powered hand truck as well", and that's how it all started, from just one simple idea!

In mid-2014 while assisting my son Matt in his business we stopped at NQX Transport Cairns (a transport company) to pick up three pallets for local delivery. We witnessed the foreman yell to two employees "you guys get the skid up the back, it has to go now", so those two men disappeared then returned about two minutes later carrying this skid (small pallet) between them. Matt said to me "Dad what if we could add tines (like you would find on a forklift) to the prototype” that I'm building and he said "give it a go Dad".

After some trial and error I got the design right and the previous movers (removals) hand truck now became a dual function prototype. So the prototype could now be used as a movers hand truck for refrigerators, white goods and boxes and now skids. It then became apparent to me that the prototype was now capable of working as dual purpose design. Capable of operating in a warehouse and moving household/office furniture whilst reducing the heavy lifting involved.

Further refining the mechanical aspects in my workshop, I now realized that I needed to redesign the prototype using computer aided design CAD. I spent hours each day for months at a time until I learned enough about TurboCAD design. That’s what I really enjoyed the most, I absolutely loved it where I could turn my ideas into viable CAD designs. For me it was always the technical challenge of creating in my workshop a truly unique way of moving goods and then cad modelling a viable design. 

Our Research

Little has change in hand truck designs for 150 years, the basic fundamental mechanical aspects are the same, a structured frame to hold the load, handles for control and wheels to move. That’s essentially all there is in a hand truck. Take a look around your home there’s probably an old hand truck kicking around, it’s basic in design and it gets the job done!

So I started searching the internet in 2015 to learn more about what other companies were designing and what improvements they made. There are numerous niche manufacturers all over the world, some of the best designs come from the UK, USA, Taiwan and China. What became apparent to me was that while all these companies had interesting hand truck designs, none were powered by battery to perform the main task of moving goods from a-b and reducing the operator’s fatigue. No company worldwide is building powered hand trucks based on our research to date, but I’m sure this will change.

The exception are companies designing and manufacturing stair climber hand trucks, they’re the closest match to our hand truck designs. After further research I learned that millions of hand trucks are sold each year worldwide, yes we all know that and the low end quality hand trucks are pretty cheap and sometimes poorly constructed with shoddy welding and wheel bearings that are just down right faulty. Heck you can buy them at the corner hardware store and if they last a year, then most people will just accept that. 

Hand trucks are used throughout the world to move almost every conceivable object or load you could imagine and some hand trucks a more versatile than others. But here’s the interesting part, from the “last mile delivery” point of view almost all deliveries are still conducted by an operator (user) pushing a hand truck! What we learnt was that domestic delivery for propane/lpg cylinder gas here in Australia is identical to the methods used in USA, CANADA, BRITAIN, IRELAND, GERMANY, FRANCE & NEW ZEALAND. In other words; throughout the world residential house propane/lpg cylinders are delivered by a hand pushed trolley.

That’s right pushed hand trucks, can you imagine pushing a hand truck with a 110lb (49.9 kg) load up a 15° incline. That’s definitely hard yakka (work), not to mention a greater incline of say 25° or more and then what about delivering down an incline! It can become very dangerous and injuries caused by the manual use of hand trucks are happening right at this point in time throughout the world.

So I used the knowledge of what others were doing in the market and set out to build a better mouse trap if you like. At this point in time we are happy with our powered hand truck designs but there’s always more to do like using lighter materials (carbon fibre…) , improving the ergonomics of design, using Wi-Fi remote control for those difficult last mile delivery locations and machine uptime versus the idle time (duty cycle).

We did approach hand truck manufacturers in many countries with our designs and for the most part they just ignored us or flatly turned us down, oh well! Our goal here was to work in team environment where those companies and individuals could benefit from our designs, but it didn’t happen so we just decided go it alone. 

It’s Plain Hard Work

Pushing a hand truck uphill to the point of sale can be a real pain for the delivery driver, not only through the physical effort required but the injuries that can and do result from this line of work do cost the employers bottom line. Returning back downhill can be just as difficult for an ageing workforce performing this type of work.

The employer’s responsibility to safety for the delivery driver is critical. Safety is critical to the 'last mile,' even the world's most sophisticated logistics operators are constrained by outdated delivery methods. The next generation technology for supply chain management starts with innovation and a close watch on safety. The safety tools needed by the new delivery workforce cannot be ignored. Thomas R Cutler Feb 07, 2017 LastMile Delivery of Food eCommerce? Safety Delivery Tools Needed for Uber, Lyft, and Delivery Drivers

Injury Statistics USA

·        The median number of lost work days is seven

·        22.8% of the injuries will result in more than 31 lost work days

·        The direct cost of lost productivity will be $47,000

·        Equipment damage adds another $6,400 in repair costs

·        An OSHA fine will be a minimum of $3,500

·        If a fatality results, costs will exceed $1,000,000

Thomas R Cutler www.automation.com. Feb 23, 2017 Avoiding the Danger: Technology-Driven Innovations Improve Safety and Productivity

Safety & Profitability

“Obviously there is no greater concern than the safety, health, and lives of workers. Profits, while very important, are secondary to lives. The notions of safety and profitability are not mutually exclusive. Avoiding costly worker's compensation costs, wrongful death and injury lawsuits and reducing a wide variety of injury-related costs allow organisations to utilize resources to improve safety, productivity, product quality and overall business competitiveness”. Thomas R Cutler Oct 01, 2016 Fork Truck Free and New Materials Handling

Injuries are on the rise. The National Safety Council (NSC) USA reports that a disabling injury occurs every 1.3 seconds in the U.S. (more than 63,000 every day), and the Social Security Administration predicts that 3 out of 10 workers entering the workforce today will acquire some type of disability before they retire. Thomas R Cutler The Cost of Back Injuries Avoided with an Electric Hand Truck

The LPG/Propane Market

In 2015 there were more than 30,000,000 propane/lpg cylinder deliveries throughout India and the market is still growing. Almost all of those deliveries were completed by an operator pushing a hand truck filled with propane/lpg, Asia and Africa are growth areas for household gas where it’s used predominantly for heating and cooking.

In 2016 we got inside help, advice and learned the reasons why these specialized hand trucks where needed in the first place from an industry representative here in Australia. His interest in the hand truck designs was “how can we reduce the operator’s fatigue” and “is there a hand truck that could lower operator’s risk of injury“.

So in March 03 2017 we created a world first by designing “SparkSafe” a propane/lpg delivery hand truck designed to lower the injury risk for delivery guy. SparkSafe Is a 24 volt powered hand truck designed to IP66 technical standards for the delivery of Propane/LPG cylinders safely to the point of sale even over rough terrain. SparkSafe is a light weight ergonomically designed hand truck that is simple to use and designed to lower business risk and increase employee health and safety. The SparkSafe hand truck is designed with either wheels or tires or as a rubber tracked model capable of driving over sand, snow, mud and rocks and we’re confident that you could even drive SparkSafe up or down a set of outdoor steps. 

The Supply Chain

E-commerce fulfilment has proven to be more challenging than most people in the food industry realized. Meeting this challenge will drive a lot of innovation in supply chain technology according to Elliot Maras, the well-respected managing editor for Food Logistics.

While the challenges of these lastmile, quasiroute delivery supply chain modalities take shape it is ironic that during June, National Safety Month, the very tools used to protect beverage route delivery from injury are nowhere on the scene of lastmile grocery delivery. Lyft and Uber drivers are using antiquated and inefficient carts, hand trucks, and no one is talking about the impending workers' comp claims that will ensue. If treated as independent contractors, just wait for the class action lawsuits? injuries that could have been predicted and avoided with proper equipment.

The 'lastmile' delivery injuries were documented and quite specific: Injuries to the back, neck, and shoulders account for about 2/3 of manual material handling claims The most commonly cited cause of injury was handling a container (25%) Among WMSD claims where the injury type was specified, 55% were attributed to lifting 17% were attributed to holding, carrying, turning and wielding 14% were attributed to pushing and pulling "Lifting is by far the biggest issue when it comes to WMSDs or 'sprains and strains' in the workplace.

There are two lifting problem areas. Heavy lifting is the obvious risk and awkward lifts bending over, reaching out, or reaching up to lift objects are the second biggest problem, even if this is less obvious," noted Rick Goggins, an ergonomist with Washington State Department of Labor and Industries (DOSH). Thomas R Cutler June 16, 2016 LastMile Delivery of Food eCommerce; Safety Delivery Tools Needed for Uber, Lyft, and Deliv Drivers

So what’s Our Point of Difference? 

So what makes our designs so different, our Multi-Role hand truck is designed to be fitted with rota casters right at the point of rotation or as close as possible, thereby reducing the effort required by the operator to rotate the hand truck. The point of rotation is the small red circle just to the lower left of the green shaded area.

Based on our calculations in an excel spreadsheet we’ve reduced the effort to rotate our hand truck designs by 56% when compared to a standard pushed hand truck and that was in early 2017.

Since designing the Multi-Role hand truck in late 2017 we are confident that we’ve reduced the effort to rotate by another 5%. 

Multi-Role Hand Truck

A true powered multi-role hand truck, safely reduce the delivery drivers fatigue and lower their risk of injury!

·        Self-stabilizing up to 38°

·        24 volt high power system

·        Faster delivery times

·        Ergonomic flat pack design

·        Easily climb 30° inclines

·        Electronic braking control

·        Optional SparkSafe design

·        Wi-Fi and sensor remote control

·        Forward or reverse by a simple thumb control joystick

Would you rather push the red hand truck up a 25°+ incline or drive the Multi-Role hand truck up an incline 25°+?

Left a pushed hand truck, Multi-Role to the right

We’re At the Crossroads?

Do we consider?

Overseas manufacturing

Provide the plans to an Open Design environment

Pursue crowd funding options

Briefly;

Overseas manufacturers offer a discrete advantage but this needs to be measured against their technical abilities with the required tooling and their preparedness to communicate on a technical level. Trying to find that company is the goal here!

Providing the plans and taking then to an open design forum sounds appealing where likeminded people can develop these designs into a robust model and build a unique business from the ground up. From a negative point of view for us anyway have we now lost control!

Crowd funding is also appealing in that we keep the design plans in house and have complete control over the business direction, if the crowd funding is successful. A unique business can be built around the manufacturer, distributor, retailer and provide jobs for service people throughout the world.

Each of these options have strong points as well as weaknesses and it’s a tough decision for us to make, can you offer some constructive point of view as how best for us to proceed? 

Technical

The initial challenge of finding the right combination of technical parts was somewhat daunting, deciding on an optimum hand truck ground speed was our first step. Even deciding on maximum speed from industry operators for consensus was tough. Sourcing the parts required was another challenge as there are so many companies competing for sales, and sorting through the right combination of technical information challenge in its own right. For what it’s worth we tried and trialled six different dc motor combinations from standard dc motors to explosion proof motors for the propane/lpg designs alone and controlling heat build-up inside the motor housing along the way.

Further trialling six different and diverse speed controllers and associated throttle assemblies, finding the right combination of gearing and final drive components to match the rated dc motor power was always fraught with either too much power and or a lack of smooth control or just too slow to start and jerky in motion. Reducing the total design weight to essential aspects along with suitable structural support for the axles and size was also challenging. Finding the right balance of software programming variables for easy and consistent operator control was time consuming but in the end successful. Matching all these above technical elements with a combination of suitable tire and rim sizes was the final bit of the puzzle. Adding a rubber track to all design models was a cool.

Further gains can be made by using re-chargeable lithium ion batteries in place of the standard sealed lead acid batteries SLA this will reduce the down time between re-charging and improve the duty cycle.

Patented Designs

We have patented all our hand truck designs through the United States Patent Office USPTO.

CAD Documents

We have all construction, technical plans and assembly drawings covering

·        Mechanical

·        Fabrication

·        Electrical wiring

·        Electronics and specifications

·        Specialized parts used

·        Software application and programming specifications

CAD formats for AutoCAD, TurboCAD, Solidworks ( coming) and numerous file interchange formats. March 24, 2018

New designs and more to come...

About me

With over 40 years of experience working with mechanical, ac/dc electrical systems and studying electronics; covering defence (RAN), mining (haul trucks and plant machinery), smash repairs (car & truck), coupled with a Dip. Bus IT (programming). I specialise in high quality 3D modelling and patent drawings on a personal and confidential basis. Also providing high quality accurate drawings that illustrate your invention in a clear and concise manner covering mechanical and electrical devices or tool functions, construction, maintenance and assembly drawings for technical use.