Sometimes when you place an order with your Chicago courier service you can encounter terminology that you are unfamiliar with. This can also happen when it comes time to examine your billing statement and you find yourself face to face with a charge that you don't understand. One of these charges or terms that you may find yourself seeing is a liftgate. A liftgate is required on certain cargo loads, and this is something that you cannot avoid with any shipments where the packages are over 100 pounds.
The liftgate is a piece of machinery which lowers the cargo from the truck to the ground, a drop of several feet. This is something that is not a problem when dealing with smaller packages, but for everything over 100 lbs, worker safety demands that a liftgate accompany every shipment that contains cargo of this size. This is why the exact weight of a shipment must also be determined before it is loaded if it is approaching this size of package or cargo.
Specialized situations can eliminate the need for a liftgate, and if your facilities on the pickup and delivery ends of a transaction are equipped as such, then you can certainly discuss your set-up with the courier company. Essentially, this means that both facilities must be equipped with loading docks. This eliminated the need to actually get the packages or pallets to ground level, as they can simply be moved into the facility via the loading dock using a fork life or other piece of equipment located at the facility itself rather than having to carry an external piece of equipment with the truck itself like a liftgate.
When you arrange for pickup of your shipment with your courier service in Chicago, they will discuss the need for a liftgate with you. Be sure to inform any courier service that you do business with up front if you are working out of facilities that are equipped with loading docks, as this will greatly simplify everything. This is also why loading docks are actually a cost saving measure, because the cost of having to pay for an extra piece of equipment to be sent on every delivery run definitely adds up after a while, as does the added time required to load the cargo onto the ground and then transport it into the facility, whereas a loading dock simply allows the cargo to be easily slid out and placed in the warehouse itself.