Samantha Taylor:
Welcome to the Amigo CartCast, the podcast where we roll through the ins and outs of material handling with Amigo carts. I’m your host, Samantha Taylor, here with my co-host Scott Chappell, and we’re on a mission to find a better way for material handling.

Scott Chappell:
Thank you, Samantha. Each episode will explore the innovative features, success stories, and the endless possibilities that Amigo material handling carts bring to the table. Let’s roll into a world of efficiency, innovation, and endless possibilities. This is the Amigo CartCast.

Samantha Taylor:
Welcome to another episode of the Amigo CartCast. Today we are going to continue a little bit of the conversation we had last time, so we’re piggybacking a little bit. We had a great conversation on our last episode around the trends of buyers and e-commerce. So I have Scott Chappell here with me today, and once we talked about that conversation of the increase in fulfillment centers and micro-fulfillment centers, it brought up another topic around safety.

Scott Chappell:
Makes sense. Smaller area. You got to be careful.

Samantha Taylor:
It got us thinking about how our product can not only help improve efficiency, but also safety inside your facility, whether it be, of course, a warehouse, a manufacturing setting, fulfillment center, these new micro-fulfillment centers—whatever the application is. But it’s a huge concern. There are upwards of 62,000 injuries per year related to material handling equipment.

Scott Chappell:
That’s a lot.

Samantha Taylor:
It is a lot. And it’s kind of scary when you think about it, because you want to ensure that your employees are safe, that when they go to work, they’re able to do their job not only efficiently, but that they’re not going to hurt themselves. Some equipment, of course, does require additional training, OSHA certification.

Scott Chappell:
Well, the other side of it is all of these facilities we’re talking about have their own safety department. So what’s kind of unique about it is that you might have five different facilities with five different safety instructions or guidelines. And what’s kind of nice about our product line is we are able to maybe create safety features when people ask for it.

For example, we recently just added a safety presence mat on our… on our products. And what does that do? Not to be too product-y. We’ll say it, but what does that do? Is that a word? Well, we’ll have to ask Walker, our producer. Yeah. But, so, for example, we were doing a demo recently where somebody said, “Hey, I see that this product runs when you’re not standing on it.”

Scott Chappell:
And we said, “Yeah, it does.” They said, “We don’t want that. We want when the worker’s off, it no longer runs.” So we found a presence mat company here in the States that’s created a mat. So once you’re on it, the product runs like it’s supposed to. Once you step off it, it is not moving anywhere at all. So that is just one example of a safety feature.

Samantha Taylor:
Seems to make sense.

Scott Chappell:
It does. It does. Not everybody asks for it though, Samantha, but for the people that do, we are proud to be able to accommodate that.

Samantha Taylor:
Absolutely.

Scott Chappell:
So some of the other features that we have, that’s very popular with bigger equipment in the marketplace, are strobe lights. So they’re obviously flashing, they’re up taller. That way if you’re down the aisle, you can see somebody coming around the corner. We also have blue lights that we’ve kind of piggybacked off the fork truck industry. A lot of times they have them going forward and backwards.

So what does a blue light do if you don’t know? A blue light is about 4 or 5, could be six feet ahead of you. So as you’re coming around a corner, before the person that’s walking down the aisle, they see the light. If they can’t hear the product, let’s say, they see the light and know that somebody is coming that way.

Other safety features that are kind of built in standard for our products are our speeds, right? Our speed and our weight. Our products range between 180 and about 275 pounds, and they go 4 to 6 miles an hour. In the scheme of things, that’s pretty gosh darn safe, rather than maybe a bigger product that weighs 5,000 pounds and can go 6 to 8 miles an hour.

So that’s just kind of something that’s built into what we have. And plus finally, the size of our products. When you talked about the microbrewery or the… excuse me.

Samantha Taylor:
You’re still thinking about beer.

Scott Chappell:
When you talked about the micro fulfillment center earlier? Obviously it’s a smaller, congested area. Probably the last thing you want to do is have large products. So we just kind of fit normally in there because our footprint is smaller.

Samantha Taylor:
You know, one of the questions that I frequently get asked when we’re working with individuals is, “Are you going to come do training with me? Are you going to come and show me how to do this, certify me, do all of these things?” Because I think that’s what they’re used to. They’re used to having fork truck training or other training to make sure their users know what they’re doing and that they’re safe.

And my favorite thing is, I mean, of course we’ll walk them through it. We have some great videos to show them the safety and training of our product. But I love to tell them that the features and functions of it are the same as what we use in our grocery stores. So the enclosure, the throttle, everything that makes it go, the electric brake, everything about it is going to be very similar to what we use in our grocery stores that anybody can jump on without instruction.

So our products have kind of… we want to make sure that that’s always front of mind, that the end user is going to be protected while they are using it.

Scott Chappell:
You know what? It’s funny you say that. That is a fabulous comment because, I don’t know if people know this. Maybe it’s your first time you’re listening. But, Amigo, besides doing material handling products, we are in a lot of the larger grocery store chains in the country. One thing I tell folks when we do demonstrations is that basically, these are our standard products today, basically on steroids.

So they’ve got bigger tires, they’ve got bigger batteries, they’ve got bigger weight capacities. They haul bigger loads. But the common theme, Samantha, which you touched on, is they all have the same similar safety features.

Samantha Taylor:
So in a recent episode too, we talked about Catch Me If We Can. We had a lot of trade shows. We still have a lot of trade shows on the book. One of them that we recently did was actually a safety show. So we have a lot of great stories from that. But what I want to know, Scott, I want to hear from you on the road, in the field.

What is your favorite safety-related story and how we’ve been able to improve these lives through mobility and efficiency with our products?

Scott Chappell:
So, I don’t think I have one specific story, but what I have is kind of an overall feeling. And normally when we do our Amigo road shows, where we drive up, we unload our products, we show everybody. A lot of the time, it’s the first time we show people. They have no idea what we’re bringing out, honestly.

So we bring the products out, we go in or the people come out into the parking lot. And there’s normally management, there’s normally maintenance, there’s normally shipping, and then there’s safety. And all I can say is that when safety sees our product for the first time, they look at it, they touch it, feel it, they’ll even drive it.

And then they have just general questions like how fast does it stop? Does it have an electric brake on a ramp? Do you have features or different options like lights? Do you have a presence switch so that when somebody steps off it, it doesn’t keep rolling? And I guess the only way I want to answer that question is that to date, we have not lost an opportunity because we haven’t been able to meet the safety requirements.

Samantha Taylor:
That’s phenomenal.

Scott Chappell:
Well, yeah, I mean, it’s not like we’re all that, but we’re pretty good. And the other side to that is, honestly, folks, you can go to ten facilities or ten safety people and have ten requests. So at this point, we’ve been able to kind of accommodate whatever the request is. And so with that being said, I think the unique thing about these products, which we always talk about—unique, I mean, it’s a term I always use—is that when it comes to safety, we just need to know what you’re looking for in your specific situation.

And we will do our best to accommodate that. Now on one other part of that is, there’s a lot of facilities we go into and the speeds, right? Equipment speeds are 4 to 6 miles an hour. Sometimes they’re faster. That’s our sweet spot—4 to 6. And that’s a question we always ask: how fast can things go in here?

And then they let us know because they do have set speed limits. So, our products are designed with that in mind as well. But I want to tell you, to wrap up that kind of story, we accommodate safety as much as we can, and we’ve been out a lot. And so far, knock on wood, we’ve been able to address any safety issues up to this point.

Samantha Taylor:
Didn’t you recently have a demo too where you had a, what is the term, a production engineer?

Scott Chappell:
Manufacturing engineer.

Samantha Taylor:
A manufacturing engineer, where their whole job is to determine how to run more efficiently?

Scott Chappell:
Correct.

Samantha Taylor:
And did they get safety involved?

Scott Chappell:
We just did. It’s funny you bring that up. This is kind of a story. We just did a demonstration. We were honestly, this is honest stuff, folks. We were in the parking lot with four manufacturing engineers showing our product, and one of the manufacturing engineers looked over at the front entrance and he says, “Oh, that’s Sandy in safety.”

I’ll see if I can get her over here. So he tried to wave her over, and she was on the phone doing whatever she was doing. Obviously, in that instance, safety needs to see our products, and they need to see how they operate and kind of give their blessing. And we were kind of holding our breath. We haven’t done the demo yet, but we’re holding our breath that we’re able to meet those requirements or at least find out what those requirements are so we can meet those.

But safety is a big, big part of this whole thing. And we have to play well.

Samantha Taylor:
As it should be. I love that it’s on the front of everybody’s mind that they want to make sure that they’re safe.

Scott Chappell:
Exactly.

Samantha Taylor:
Yes.

Scott Chappell:
You don’t come to work thinking you’re going to get injured. Nobody does.

Samantha Taylor:
I hope not.

Scott Chappell:
I don’t either.

Samantha Taylor:
Well, thank you, Scott, for sharing, and I really appreciate it. I think that is a great summary of just ensuring that not only are you keeping your employees safe, but just how our products—the Amigo material handling products—can help improve efficiencies and safety within your warehouse setting, warehouse fulfillment, distribution, whatever it might be.

Scott Chappell:
Well, and you know what, Samantha? Just one other small, small point. A real quick point is that it’s so easy for us because we’re salespeople, and what do salespeople do? They talk about product, right? I think the byproducts of product are all these other things, which would be safety, right? So the product does this, but is it safe doing that?

And I’m pretty proud to say that we’ve been able to accommodate so far. And we’d love to hear more safety suggestions because if that’s the case, then we’re seeing more people.

Samantha Taylor:
Yeah. So if we have a safety person listening, feel free to write in

Scott Chappell:
If we were a radio station, they could call in.

Samantha Taylor:
They could call in or text. And until next time, keep it rolling. And that wraps up another episode of the Amigo CartCast. We hope you enjoyed this exploration into finding a better way for material handling with Amigo Carts. Be sure to subscribe as well as go to myamigo.com/podcast to see pictures and videos mentioned in today’s episode.

Scott Chappell:
Thank you for tuning in and until next time, keep rolling with Amigo.

Samantha Taylor:
Until next time.

Scott Chappell:
Keep it rolling.

Samantha Taylor:
Keep it rolling.