Quality Custom Distribution Services, Inc.: OSHA inspections and violations

Incident on Jul 11, 2021: Employee punctures lung, injures head in fall from lift gate

At 2:23 a.m. on July 11, 2021, an employee was working as a truck driver for a logistics delivery and consulting service for restaurants. The employee was making a delivery to a client. The employee was pulling products in trays onto the truck liftgate of a trailer when he fell backwards approximately 4 feet onto the ground. The employee had been using a metal hook to pull a tray when he lost his grip due to wearing wet gloves. The employee was working alone at the time. He called his employer and they called for paramedics. The employee was transported to the hospital, where he was admitted with a punctured lung and head injury.

Incident on Dec 3, 2013: Pallet falls off storage rack, fracturing worker's ankle

At about 8:15 a.m. on December 3, 2013, an employee was working for Quality Cust om Distribution Services Inc., in La Puente, CA. The employer had been in the bu siness of food storage and distribution services for several years, and it had a bout 245 employees on its payroll. The employee had been working for the firm ap proximately 13 years as a picker and laborer. At the time of the incident, she w as cleaning the floor of an aisle in a warehouse. She was in the second row from the south wall of the warehouse. At the same time, a forklift operator on the o pposite side of a storage rack from her was trying to place a loaded pallet on t he top shelf of the storage rack with his fork lift. This pallet pushed an ident ical stacked pallet in front of it off the rack. The pallet, loaded with boxes, fell approximately 7.6 meters (25 feet) to the floor of the warehouse. On the wa y down, it partially hit the employee. She sustained a fractured right ankle and some fractured vertebrae. She was transported by paramedics to the Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center. She was hospitalized there about 11 days for treatmen t. The employer reported the accident to Cal/OSHA within the timeframe required by regulation. The Cal/OSHA West Covina office initiated an inspection of the wo rkplace on January 9, 2014, with the employer's management official at the site. The forklift operator could not be interviewed during the inspection, as he had already quit his job for some unreported reason. The employee stated during the interview that she was not aware of the task being performed by the forklift op erator at the time of the incident. The investigation revealed no safety violati on directly relating to this incident. The employer was cited for not providing the training records for the forklift operator upon request, however.