When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf shore on Aug 29, 2005, spreading devastation from New Orleans to Mobile Bay, AL, a newly constructed Millard Refrigerated Services cold storage facility withstood the onslaught.
The force of Katrina's winds set records, but the Millard facility -- part of its nationwide chain of cold storage DCs -- was ready for it with reinforced wall and ceiling construction bolstered by other heavy-duty features, including doors from TKO Dock Doors. (The force of the storm surge pushed this 100 ft barge on shore.)
Located just 100 ft from the edge of a wharf on Mobile Bay, the facility handles massive quantities of product, which passes through 8 x 12 ft ground-level doors to ships moored at the dock. Without proper support, the panels of these large doors could sail away in a severe storm, leaving the inside of the facility exposed.
Since hurricanes frequently hit this region, Millard contacted TKO Dock Doors®. In addition to the wharf doors, the facility also includes a line of dock doors on the east side, a couple of railroad doorways, and several ground-level service doors at various locations around the building. (Truck traffic is served by this wall of TKO CruiserWeight dock doors.)
TKO Doors are known for their ability to knockout out of their guide tracks when hit by a forklift or other vehicles, saving facilities thousands of dollars in repair costs and many hours of downtime. The standard TKO door and track design gives these doors their knockout capability. A patented spring-loaded ¾ in. diameter steel plunger glides within the grooved heavy-duty UHMW polyethylene door track. When the door is hit, the plunger slides while it retracts, allowing the door to knock out of the track, absorbing the force of the blow and avoiding breaking the panel. A quick pull sets the door back into place.
However, in this case Millard, who has been using TKO doors since 1998, was looking for a door that could not be blown in. TKO specified its heavy-duty CruiserWeight® knockout door for the Mobile location. In high wind conditions, considerable stress bears down on the panels, transmitting force to the fasteners that hold the door guides and to the guide track.
TKO's substantial CruiserWeight is strengthened with the TKO Windload Package, a tested and now proven design that allows the door to resist winds up to 120 mph. Normally each door panel has a spring-loaded plunger on either side. With the windload package, the top two panels have rigid plungers on each side for extra strength. The spring-loaded plungers are on the bottom three panels where most of the door impacts occur. TKO attaches slide locks to each side of the three lower panels. (Six slide locks secure each TKO dock door, as shown here.)
To further brace the door a ¾ in. steel plate covers the hinges. The locks and guide mechanism are attached to that plate. The standard TKO 22 ft x 6 in. window is replaced by a 4 in. diameter porthole window, which has been tested to withstand impact from projectiles.
The panels, as well, are very rugged. TKO constructs the CruiserWeight panels with 1/8 in. thick fiberglass FRP facing on the outside and 1/8 in. thick polyethylene facing on the inside. Though the original intention on all brands of impact dock doors is to have a crash-resistant inside panel, TKO offers an outside panel that can withstand the impact from a truck as it backs up, or being clipped by a forklift mast as it emerges from the trailer onto the dock. Therefore the panel can stand up to whatever the storm throws at it. The facing attaches to a composite fiberglass tubular frame. Standard versions have a double-hinged system for durability and strength.
All of this adds up to a door that will protect the product stored inside the facility, despite the abuse of a storm such as Katrina. The TKO CruiserWeight will not only remain standing but can maintain a seal to hold temperature within the dock area for a long period of time. Once the operation is back in business, the door can more than handle the everyday pounding of forklifts.
