Your Guide to Crossovers: Types and Advantages

Crossovers are a very useful piece of industrial infrastructure used across all manner of industrial sites, plants and factories. These come in the shape of specially designed ladders and platforms that see multiple uses. They could be used for a multitude of purposes like moving across conveyer belts, going across pipelines, reaching hard to access controls and stopping tripping incidents in hazardous zones. Such crossovers can also be used as a great vantage point for supervisors to get a good view of the operations.

Types of Crossovers

  • Aluminum Crossover Ladders– These are known for their maneuverability and are ideally suited for functions like crossing over hazard prone areas like conveyer belts. Portable aluminum crossover ladders come equipped with non-marring rubber legs and the permanent ones are simply mounted on their legs.
  • Mini Crossover Ladders– These are best suited to enable access across low trip hazardous areas including electrical conduits and water lines.
  • Stainless Steel Crossover Ladders– These types of ladders are also bespoke products that are best suited for heavy duty applications where strength, stability and durability are of the essence.
  • Vertical Crossover Ladders– These are suited for obtaining permanent access over a crossover point. The ground legs would typically include floor mounting pads with the units being anchored to the floor.

metal crossover stairs

Advantages of Using Crossovers

  • Enhances productivity of workers by providing them with an effective way of accessing the difficult to reach workplaces.
  • Crossovers help create safe walkways for workers thereby saving them from injury and forced layoffs.
  • When you can’t reach certain kinds of equipment to wear the workers are situated, you can make it possible for the latter to reach the equipment, thanks to crossovers.
  • Crossovers prevent workers from tripping while negotiating changes in elevation. This makes them ideal in environments where obstacles exist as is common in the case of air ducts, pipelines and HVAC systems.
  • Crossovers see use across major industries like heavy industry, material handling, maintenance and energy.
  • Crossovers made from marine grade anodized aluminum happen to be rust free and therefore prove to be a great long-term investment.
  • Crossovers see versatile uses and can be deployed as stairs, ladders, stepladders, platforms, walkways and so on.

Why Use Crossover Ladders

Crossover ladders were essentially meant to ensure that foot travel was possible around conveyer belts. These were constructed in different sizes to negotiate obstacles and hazards of different dimensions. Placing them at the appropriate locations led to a great enhancement in workplace safety. With time crossover ladders proved their efficacy across industrial worksites.

For example, crossover ladders provide great shelving access in warehouses. Again, crossovers can be used even across conveyors carting warehouse inventory from one point to another. They also help workers using motorized transport like forklifts and power pallet trucks in a better fashion as crossovers free up valuable space on the floor of the warehouse. Yet again crossovers can help isolate dangerous zones in a warehouse- places that store hazardous chemicals and other like substances for instance.

In today’s times when the safety of industrial workers overrides any other consideration it makes sense to deploy crossovers that are OSHA compliant. Not only are these good for worker safety, but they also prevent businesses from being penalized on account of lax safety standards. As a matter of fact, the use of crossover ladders by itself ensures that workplaces will be far safer places than before.

With a host of top-notch manufacturers using the latest improvements in technology to design and fabricate all manner of crossovers, the options available to business owners are many. Not only are today’s crossovers better designed and longer lasting, but they are also quite economical in the long run. No matter how complex one’s exact requirement of a crossover may be at a particular worksite, crossover manufacturers are up to the task. They can easily customize a crossover to suit one’s exact requirements.

If one were to visit any major industrial site, one would surely enough come across a variety of crossover ladders in use. The sheer genius of the simplicity of design of this unparalleled piece of industrial infrastructure has ensured that crossovers are an integral part of any major industrial activity. Its ability to ensure ease of work, tremendous flexibility and above all enhancing the safety of workers has meant that the demand for these products is always enormous.

Any new and major industrial project is sure to see a large demand for diverse types of crossovers. It is just as well that the manufacturers of these very handy pieces of industrial infrastructure are able to step up to the plate and deliver. Going forward one can continue to see crossovers play an extremely important role in making big and small industrial sites more efficient as well as much safer for workers.

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