Inspection Detail

Inspection: 316439876 - Bimbo Bakeries Usa, Inc.

Inspection Information - Office: High Hazard Unit - North

Investigation Summary

On July 30, 2012, Employee #1, a 69-year-old male truck driver with Bimbo Bakeries Usa Inc., was working at Bimbo Bakeries' Galt Sales Depot located in Galt, California. This location was a warehouse-transfer facility where finished product from the employer's Elk Grove manufacturing facility was brought in by tractor trailer trucks on large, rolling metal racks loaded with plastic trays of product and wooden pallets stacked with plastic racks of product. These full racks and pallets were off-loaded by the delivery drivers by either rolling them directly off the truck onto the loading dock (the metal racks) or using an electric pallet jack (for the wooden pallets). The drivers then load up empty racks and pallets at the facility on the trailer and drive them back to the manufacturing facility. Product delivered to the location is then later transferred by sales drivers to delivery vans and trucks and delivered to customer retail locations by them. A short time after arriving at the incident location to begin his shift, a coworker found Employee #1 in a truck trailer with a large ninety-one-inches tall, forty-nine-inches wide and thirty-one-inches deep metal rolling rack estimated to weigh be between 800 to 1,100 pounds when loaded and weighed approximately two hundred and sixty pounds when empty. The coworker unsuccessfully attempted to lift the rack off of Employee #1. To render help, the coworker summoned Emergency Medical Services. When the Cosumnes Fire Department personnel arrived, they first had to remove the product trays from the rack before they could lift the rack off of Employee #1 and begin assessment of the situation. Emergency Medical Services found Employee # 1 to be already dead once trays and rack were cleared away. There were no witnesses on site at the time of the incident. The employer did not use any electronic surveillance equipment at the site. The primary cause of the death was listed by the coroner as mechanical asphyxiation attributed to the weight of the rack and product. With no witnesses, no video, no way to accurately tell how much the loaded rack weighed due to limitations in the employer's shipping information, nothing fixed on the floor of the trailer that would catch the wheels, and a disturbed accident scene, OSHA was not able to determine the cause metal rack tip-over. Bimbo Bakeries USA, Inc. manufactures, distributes and markets breads, cakes, cookies and other baked goods. Note in the original write-up the dimensions of the metal rack were given as large (91" tall, 49" wide, 31' deep) this was edited due to the unlikely nature that the metal rolling rack was 31-feet deep.

Keywords: ASPHYXIATED, PINNED, CRUSHED, TRUCK, TRACTOR TRAILER, OVERTURN, TRUCK DRIVER