We're proud to stock a wide range of Werner ladders, from step ladders to fibreglass ladders and telescopic combination ladders, as well as a selection of accessories designed to make life in the trades easier.  Werner is a very hands-on company, involved in grass roots and college level sports in the USA.  They even sponsor the Naismith Women's and Men's College Coach of the Year awards for basketball.  It's no surprise then, that they're also behind specialist ladders for basketball players.

You might wonder why a basketball player needs a special ladder, after all, they're incredibly tall to start with so have the advantage of height that the rest of us don't.  Werner have made the official ladder of March Madness (the Illinois State basketball tournaments) since 2008, and the special ladder they have made is to carry out a tradition started in 1947 – the cutting down of the nets by the winning team.

This started when coach Everett Case, having won four titles as coach in the 1920s and 1930s, took his team to win the Southern State Championship and cut down the net as a trophy.  The tradition has persisted and spread across the USA but even with the height advantage of being a top basketball player, they still need help reaching the hoop to cut the nets down.

Werner made a ladder specifically designed for this task.  At 9 feet the ladder isn't a height that they normally produce, and it has an extra wide platform at the top, unlike anything else in their range.  Extra deep treads comfortably accommodate the large feet of basketball players, so they can be extra safe when climbing up to cut the net down.  It may be the end of the season, but there's no need to risk injury by climbing a ladder with standard treads which may not be deep enough to provide a comfortable climbing experience by those with larger than average feet.

Safety is of the utmost importance here because everyone who climbs the ladder will be using scissors (typically, each team member cuts a portion of the net, with the final cut reserved for the head coach).  Maintaining three points of contact with the ladder means that the deep treads are needed to compensate for the sharp item being carried up – if someone were to slip on a narrow tread while holding scissors the results could be catastrophic.

We thought we'd seen it all, but it just goes to show that even though the ladder has a pretty standard design at heart, it can be adapted and built for any type of user, whether that's specifically for people with large feet, for electricians who need a lot of tools on the job or for those working on building exteriors where only a combination ladder will do.