Buyer Beware!!
WARNING: Too Good To Be True
Foreign yard ramps flood U.S. market
When you see yard ramp pricing that seems Too Good To Be True, we urge you to proceed with extreme caution. The ramps will fail you and cost you more in the long run (and likely in the short term as well). Here’s why:
- DESIGN: These ramps are designed to maximize manufacturer and dealer profits, while utilizing cheap design features and sacrificing safety.
- MATERIALS: They utilize inferior foreign steel product or lowest grade U.S.-sourced raw material.
- LABOR: “U.S.” versions are not constructed by industry-certified workers and welders.
- RESULT: Buyer suffers high cost of repairs.
- RESULT: Buyer suffers lack of efficiency due to loss of use.
- RESULT: Buyer suffers cost of workers’ comp claims.
- RESULT: Buyer suffers loss of employee due to injury or death.
- RESULT: We all suffer the decimation of U.S. steel manufacturing.
See Why is this happening, below.
Dangerous design and inferior materials
Reputable yard ramp experts agree: these ramps are not safe. They typically have dangerously steep inclines, slippery deck material, and hinge points capable of severing fingers and toes.
(A) Independent legs assemblies lack side-to-side or forward-and-back support, rendering them vulnerable to bending and breaking.
(B) Tubular designed curbs with excessive number of welds will bend, stress, and fail. Pop a couple of welds and this thing collapses.
(C) Expanded metal grating covering solid sheets of steel collect rain, sleet snow, leaves, and dirt, creating a dangerously slick surface. In winter weather, this will become an ice rink.
Running your fork tine into the expanded steel will shred the decking and severely compromise the ramp's safety and usability.
(D) The hinged flaps at the bottom apron are unsafe by design. Held up by single chains, when they accidentally drop they will damage one or more of the following: the flap, the surface, and the foot.
These ramps stack into cargo containers like folding chairs. Mass packaging was the engineering goal here, not safety or utility.
Bad construction & high maintenance costs
Paying less now for that “deal” will cost you more, and sooner than later. The poor construction gives those ramps a shorter lifespan. They raise the risk of injury and death.
Injury means workman’s comp, loss of production, retraining, and exposure to OSHA inspections, which could lead to extensive fines and the shuttering of your business.
Inferior foreign product attacking U.S. steel industry.
These inferior ramps are coming largely from China (and, to a lesser degree, from India and South Korea).
Much of this market saturation originated in the Chinese government’s decision to stop offering cheap loans to developers in 2020, resulting in a wave of bankruptcies and some 10 million apartments sold by these developers remaining incomplete, their homeowners unable to take possession.
As the demand for building materials immediately dropped, steel prices also dropped sharply.
As per Chinese policy to “establish the new before dismantling the old,” products like yard ramps continue production and, with a diminished domestic market, the export market has increased, creating and exacerbating this situation.
The domestic economic downturn has since slowed in China, making the recovery erratic, with supply outpacing demand in many sectors.
China’s strategy is to export containers full of poorly designed and poorly constructed ramps into the United States or to buy U.S. steel fabrication factories, close down their U.S. product lines, and begin manufacturing their poorly made products for distribution as if they were U.S.-made products.
This deck doesn’t provide adequate traction. Rain, snow, sleet, leaves, and dirt cannot pass through the ramp. In the winter weather, this will become an ice rink. In the rain, forklift tires will hydroplane.
There are only two reasons to own a yard ramp:
- GREATER EFFICIENCY.
- GREATER SAFETY.
If you can’t have both, you shouldn’t have a ramp.
Contact us for an honest discussion about your needs.
We look forward to earning your business.
