SAFETY FIRST!
Keeping the products in your warehouse safe is a top priority in the cold storage industry, and so is employee safety. Interstate Warehousing is proud to have a strong safety record, and it continues to improve.
One of the highlights of the last year involves Interstate Warehousing’s Denver facility. IWI Denver received the prestigious Iceberg Award from Kroger. This is an annual award given to Kroger’s distribution centers for not having an OSHA recordable injury for an entire year. The Denver facility has 150 employees that work more than 327,000 hours without any injuries. Since the program began in 2008, only 16 Iceberg awards have been given out. Kroger utilizes 34 distribution centers around the country, and IWI Denver was one of just five who received the award in 2013.
Company-wide, Interstate Warehousing continues to build on its already solid safety record. Compared to the previous year, IWI had 6 fewer injuries across the company, while adding 214,000 hours worked to the schedule in 2013. IWI’s incident rate of 3.28 is significantly better than the industry average of 5.8 as provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Internally, Interstate Warehousing rewards our own facilities for reaching their safety goals with our safety star program. Gold stars are the highest level that can be achieved, indicating that a facility has beat their safety goal (based on previous incident and injury rates and trends at their specific warehouse) by 30% or more. Silver stars are also given to facilities that have achieved their safety goal.
Three facilities (Grand Rapids, Joliet and Denver) received gold stars for safety in 2013, while one (Cincinnati) received a silver star. IWI Grand Rapids achieved their gold star without having a recordable injury in 2013.
