A dockworker said that Seaforth straddle carriers hadn't been properly maintained. A Health and Safety Executive is investigating the accident.
A Liverpool worker was seriously hurt after a 40ft container carrier he was driving fell over.
The 29-year-old worker, named locally as Andrew Jones, received head and arm injuries in the fall at Seaforth docks, and was left trapped in the cab of his “straddle carrier”, a kind of mobile crane.
Emergency workers managed to remove him from the wrecked machine within half an hour of the accident, just after 9am yesterday, at the Peel-owned Royal Seaforth Container Terminal.
A dock worker, who asked not to be named, told The Daily Post that health and safety was already a concern at the site, and Peel had only recently taken to maintaining the carriers, which were previously maintained by sub-contractors.
He said: “These straddle carriers have to be maintained every 2,000 hours of their working life. They are taken in for one and a half weeks of maintenance where they are basically stripped down and rebuilt. For years, that has been carried out by companies under contract like Carrylift Ltd and Briggs Equipment. But, in March, Peel took maintenance in-house and now we have this.”
Peel last night confirmed they took the maintenance of straddle carriers back in-house at the end of February.