Introduction
A foundational step in the planning and construction of a landscape supply yard revolves around finding ideal entry and exit points. These locations are vital to the safety and efficiency of your yard as traffic management is a key factor in your yard’s future success. What’s more, your entry and exit points are crucial to integrating your business with public infrastructure. Where vehicles enter and exit is a touchpoint to the outside world and will be their first impression of your business; make a good first impression! Let’s explore how to design ideal entry and exit points for your situation.

Designing Entry and Exit Points
Naturally, moving existing entry and exit points is far from ideal, if even possible. Thus, the designing/pre-planning for these stress points of traffic is essential. Here are some things to consider at the start:
Determining Optimal Locations for Traffic Flow
Considering factors like current infrastructure, topography, and orientation of your yard, you can begin to plan your lanes of traffic. Imagine your yard fully equipped and how traffic can find a flow through the yard getting vehicles in and out smoothly. Create plans for efficient placements of vital retail locations, offices, and where bins will be. Paths need to be clear of obstacles and have enough space to accommodate any vehicle that might happen through the yard along with dedicated places to turn around.
Aligning Entry and Exit Points with Operational Layout
The entry and exit points are vital to this question of traffic flow through your yard. Have these locations in mind as you plan to see the full vision of the flow in/out, back onto the public roads. Minimizing congestion here is key; consider how vehicles can quickly flow to their destination within your yard, whether at bins or at the retail location, to maximize efficiency.

Integrating Bin Locations
Bins play a large role in landscape supply yards as both customers, employees, and suppliers need to access them regularly. Planning areas for bins in your traffic plan is huge for getting proper flow through your yard.
Positioning Bins for Optimal Accessibility
Naturally, your bins need to be easy to access by larger vehicles to facilitate greater efficiency in the yard, but not in locations that cause danger to customers in retail. Take the time to mark off each area in planning; designate zones for bins/loading and pedestrians to keep them separate. With dedicated lanes, you can create smoother flow through the yard.
Coordination with Entry and Exit Points to Enhance Efficiency
Bin locations must be coordinated to entry and exit points as well. Consider suppliers needing to quickly access bins to dump material before exiting while not disturbing the flow of traffic within your yard. Can customers/employees access the bins on the other end to fulfill orders and get the material to its location efficiently? These are problems that should be thought through in planning for the best results.

Safety and Compliance
Entry and exit points alongside your general traffic flow play large roles in the overall safety of your yard. With such a close mix of large vehicles and small pedestrian vehicles, safety is of the utmost importance.
Safety Measures for Entry and Exit Usage
There are multiple measures you can take around entry and exit points to enhance safety. For one, clear sight lines make for better informed decision-making for people entering and exiting your lot. Along with this, having your entry/exit points well lit further ensures people can fully see any hazards that may stand in their way. Having vehicle buffer zones and dedicated zones for traffic versus pedestrians is huge for maintaining safety. Having CCTV is great for monitoring traffic and reviewing incidents.
Compliance with Local Traffic Regulations
Your entry and exit integration with local traffic is a huge factor that needs to be considered. Coordinate with the community to change traffic slightly if needed by potentially adding a light or extra signage. From your yard’s perspective, continue to have communication with the local community about the flow of traffic. Efficiency of transition from the public roads into your yard is huge for your success in the community and in business.

Maximizing Operational Efficiency
Alongside safety and community integration, entry and exit points have a large impact on operational efficiency, something that should be optimized without sacrificing any of the aforementioned ideals. Here are somethings to consider:
Streamlining Access to Bins
Bins are a large part of the landscape supply yard business as many bulk materials flow through them. Thus, there needs to be streamline ways for vehicles of many sizes to reach them. Utilize your lanes of traffic within the yard along with traffic signs to help safely, but efficiently guide suppliers, employees, and consumers alike to your bins and out of your yard.
Enhancing Quick Load and Dispatch at Exit Points
Quick load and dispatch can be enhanced through practices like buffer zones and smartly placed turnaround areas to allow larger vehicles to quickly get in and out of your yard without blocking the general flow of traffic in the yard or on the public road.

Conclusion
Planning the entry and exit points of your landscape supply yard alongside the general traffic flow inside your property is a complex question. While complicated to create, the best results will easily come from a comprehensive plan that considers safety, efficiency, and overall smooth flow through your yard. For a more detailed look at this multi-fascinated question of entry and exit points in your yard alongside multiple other aspects of landscape supply operations, check out DeFeo Materials free online course! The people at DeFeo Materials built their landscape supply operation from the ground up and are offering their experiences/advice for any person who has an interest. Sign up for free today to see how you can reach success in your own landscape supply yard operation.
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