Konecranes patents system to protect truck drivers under cranes

Konecranes has been granted a patent on a “Container Handling System” consisting of a rail-mounted or rubber-tyred gantry crane yard block with a loading/unloading zone where the truck cab is protected from a falling load by a protective structure that covers the cabin of a truck or transport vehicle while allowing a gantry crane to load or unload a container from its trailer.

The patent, published under the reference US20250263253A1, aims to provide a better solution for protecting the driver of a “transport vehicle” in the loading/unloading zone of an automated gantry crane system. The inventors are Vile Mannari, Ilkka Leppanen and Tero Jaakkola.

The patent notes that “due to safety requirements, drivers of the transport vehicles are not allowed to stay inside the cabins of the transport vehicles during loading/unloading operations”. They are usually required to exit the cabin and wait in a safe zone “some distance away”. This safety measure usually requires a pressure mat or another type of actuator to confirm that the driver has left the cabin and is in the safe zone.

To provide a better safety solution and reduce the time lost to this process Konecranes has come up with a system where the cabin of the truck is protected by a physical structure with a roof, allowing the driver to stay in the cabin in the exchange zone. The patent discusses different materials and design possibilities for the structure, including structures with different dimensions for terminal tractor and road truck exchange zones to account for different ­vehicle sizes.

This story was originally published by World Cargo News. Read the full story at World Cargo News →