The rise of jobs in logistics and advanced manufacturing in North Carolina has also changed workplace safety trends. For the first time in years, there’s a new leading cause of death for people on the job: Being struck by tools, vehicles, equipment and other workplace hazards.
The trend has caught the attention of state Labor Commissioner Luke Farley, who has launched a new initiative to crack down on unsafe warehouses and factories, where workers face too much risk of being hit by forklifts, falling boxes or other hazards.
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Farley plans to spend the coming months educating business leaders about safer ways to operate, developing new compliance inspection guidance and consulting on ways to reduce workplace risks. After this year, Farley said, his inspectors will be criss-crossing the state ready to ramp up enforcement and hand out fines to businesses that haven’t done what’s needed to keep their workers safe.
“We're really trying to raise awareness, but after that, it's time for us to step in and bring those numbers down,” Farley told WRAL in an interview. “Citations and penalties that go along with that.”
Farley discussed his initiative this week at a warehouse in Mebane run by electronic component manufacturer company ABB. The company recently put $700,000 toward changing how it stores and retrieves heavy boxes of materials, company representatives said. They say improvements to the warehouse’s layout and new technology have boosted their workers’ efficiency while also cutting down on the chance for accidents, a win-win.
Newly narrowed aisles allow more materials to be stored readily accessible to workstations in the plant, and magnets under the floor help guide forklifts so that the drivers don’t accidentally bump the shelves in those narrow spaces and send them tumbling. Each of the dozens of shelves can hold two tons of pallets and boxes. The forklifts are also equipped with automated sensors that can pump the brakes, plus software that provides real-time safety alerts.
“We were able to double our storing capacity in far less space, and with safety-built-in equipment,” Salvador Sanchez, an ABB manager, said. “This is not just a better layout. This is a safer and smarter way to manage our warehouse.”
In recent years, warehouses and advanced manufacturing facilities have seen a boom across North Carolina. Amazon’s massive shipping hub in Garner handles hundreds of thousands of packages daily. Big-box and grocery stores rely on wide-ranging logistics help, too, and many factories exist in a middle point of the supply chain, taking in and shipping out various components.
And while workplace fatalities have been on the decline in North Carolina in general, Farley said, there has been a recent spike in the number of people killed after being struck by forklifts or falling equipment. Those types of accidents now make up nearly half of the state’s workplace fatalities, he said, as well as a substantial amount of non-fatal injuries.
“Behind these statistics is a family changed forever,” Farley said. “A mother, a father, a son, a daughter, who unexpectedly will not be coming home that day. But these incidents are preventable.”
In the 2023 fiscal year 17 North Carolinians died in such accidents. That figure rose to 20 deaths in 2024 and rose again to 25 deaths in 2025, state data shows — a nearly 50% increase in the past two years
“Seeing that two years in a row, told me and my team that that wasn't merely a blip on the radar, but a dangerous trend that needed to be addressed,” Farley said.