The United States Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration

has cited Central Transport, LLC for 16 safety and health violations. These violations include

five repeat, one willful, and two serious safety violations. They come in response to a March

2014 inspection of Central Transport’s trucking terminal in Hillside, Ill. These violations carry

proposed penalties of $145,420.

“Central Transport has been repeatedly cited for unsafe conditions and equipment,” said

Angeline Loftus, OSHA’s area director for the Chicago North Office in Des Plaines. “Companies

that repeatedly violate basic safety standards consistently put their employees at risk of serious

injury and death.”

OSHA issued violations for failing to remove forklifts from service which needed repair, failure

to have platform guardrails in place on platforms, which exposed workers to falls of more than

four feet, and maintain terminal dock and bay floors clean and dry. Additionally, there were

citations for a failure to train workers on chemical hazards before assigning them to work with

the substances, a lack of eye-drenching facilities for areas where corrosive chemicals were in use

and failure to maintain the yard and terminal roadway free of potholes and hazards.

This inspection shows how in depth OSHA investigations truly are. Investigators will examine

every facet of your safety and health procedures. So if you have not recently reviewed your

policies and procedures to ensure all hazards are accounted for and all relevant OSHA Standards

are reconciled, it might be time to review them. If you are concerned something needs to be

corrected, it is never a bad idea to hire a third party occupational safety and health auditing firm

to run a full third party audit. In the event you are ever audited, it will pay for itself 10 fold.

If you have any questions about third party safety audits, please contact us. If you have anything

to add about third party safety audits, please leave a comment.