Portwest PPE Buying Checklist: 6 Steps for Ordering Safety Gear That Actually Gets Worn

If you've been handed the job of ordering PPE for your company—and you're not a trained safety professional—I have good news: you don't need a degree in industrial hygiene to do it well. I've been doing it for five years, and I'm just the office administrator.

Here's my situation: I manage PPE ordering for about 60 employees across three locations. That's roughly $45,000 a year in safety gear spread across eight vendors. I report to both operations and finance, which means I hear it from both sides: operations wants gear people will actually wear, finance wants invoices that make sense. Both are right, and both are part of the same job.

This is the checklist I follow every quarter. It has six steps, and I'll walk you through exactly what I do in each one. If you've just inherited the safety ordering duty at your own company, steal it—it'll save you from the same mistakes I made in year one.

Step 1: Walk the floor before you open a catalog

You cannot spec safety gear from a spreadsheet. I learned that the hard way when I ordered 30 pairs of "standard" latex gloves—well, "standard" to me, which was the problem. Our maintenance crew actually needed nitrile. The latex pairs sat in the storage closet for a year.

Before you order anything:

• Walk each work area and write down the hazards: chemicals, sharp edges, welding sparks, falling objects, extreme temperatures.
• Ask supervisors what their people complain about. If your crew hates the current gloves, they will "forget" to wear them.
• Pull your incident reports from the last 12 months. If you don't have them, ask your insurance provider for a loss run—it shows you what's actually going wrong.

This walkthrough takes about 45 minutes, and it informs every decision after it. Skip it, and you're just guessing with company money.

Step 2: Get your classes and ratings straight

Here's a question I get constantly from colleagues who've been handed the same job: what is a fire extinguisher class? It's a fair question—and once you understand the answer, the logic applies to every piece of PPE you'll be buying.

Portable fire extinguishers are classified by the type of fire they're designed to put out (these classes come from NFPA 10, the standard for portable extinguishers, which OSHA references in workplace safety requirements):

• Class A – ordinary combustibles like wood, paper, and cloth
• Class B – flammable liquids like gasoline, oil, and solvents
• Class C – energized electrical equipment
• Class D – combustible metals
• Class K – cooking oils and fats

Using the wrong class of extinguisher isn't just ineffective—it can spread the fire or create a shock hazard. The same matching principle applies to PPE. High-vis clothing carries an ANSI/ISEA 107 class rating. Safety glasses carry an ANSI Z87.1 mark. Boots are rated under ASTM F2413. If the spec sheet doesn't state the standard it meets, you're not buying safety gear; you're buying a costume.

Step 3: Sizing is the step everybody skips

This one cost me real money before I got it right.

Take coveralls. I order a lot of Portwest Iona coveralls, item number C814—a reliable Type 5/6 disposable coverall for crews dealing with dust and light chemical splash. But "I'll just get a large" is not a sizing strategy. A Portwest Iona coverall size XL C814 has specific chest and height ranges on the size chart, and they don't line up neatly with what the same employee wears in a t-shirt.

Here's what I do now:

• Measure the person, not the brand. Chest, waist, inseam, height, glove size, shoe size—all of it.
• Order a sample of the size you think you need before placing a bulk order. A single sample costs a few dollars. A pallet of unusable coveralls costs a lot more.
• Ask your supplier about size exchanges before you commit. Some won't accept returns on disposable PPE. That's a red flag if you're ordering for more than one site.

It took me three years and four different coverall brands to understand that a size chart is a starting point, not a promise. And one more thing: unisex sizing doesn't work for everyone. If your crew includes women, plan for fitted options. Gear that doesn't fit gets taken off, and that's worse than not ordering it at all.

Step 4: Buy footwear on the rating, not the logo

Boots are the most emotional PPE decision you'll make, because everyone has an opinion. Some of my guys are convinced that more cushioning equals more safety; others just want something that doesn't look like a work site. I hear a lot of questions about On Cloud work boots and Vans work boots, mostly from employees who love the comfort and the look of those brands. The question isn't whether the brand is good—it's whether the specific pair carries the rating your site requires. If the box doesn't say ASTM F2413 (or your country's equivalent) for impact and compression, it's a boot with a logo, not a safety boot.

Here's the boot checklist I hand out when anyone asks:

• Steel or composite toe—required for most industrial sites
• Puncture-resistant sole—if there are nails, wire, or scrap metal on the floor
• Slip rating—check the wet-surface test data, not the marketing
• Electrical hazard rating—if your crew works anywhere near live circuits
• Waterproof—if anyone spends the day outside, this is non-negotiable

One thing that surprised me over the years: the most expensive boot is not automatically the safest. The price tag doesn't guarantee a rating; the spec sheet does. I've seen reasonably priced boots with the right ASTM markings outperform much pricier options that looked rugged but carried no rating at all. The conventional wisdom says premium pricing equals premium safety. My experience with 100+ orders suggests that's just not how it works.

Step 5: Confirm the total cost before you commit

I've learned to ask "what's NOT included?" before I ask "what's the price?" That one question has saved me more money than any discount code ever has.

Shipping, handling, minimum order quantities, restocking fees, and split-shipment charges are all real. A quote with a beautiful unit price can still be the most expensive option once the extras land. The vendor who lists all fees upfront—even if the total looks higher—usually costs less in the end.

Per FTC advertising guidance, product claims have to be truthful and substantiated. If a supplier says a glove "meets ANSI cut level 5" or a vest "meets ANSI 107," ask for the test report or the certificate. If they can't produce it, treat the claim as marketing, not fact.

And here's the invoicing rule I follow after getting burned in year one: verify the vendor can produce a proper commercial invoice before you place the order. I once found a great price on a bulk rainwear order—about $350 cheaper than our regular supplier. When the boxes arrived, I got a handwritten receipt with no line items. Finance rejected the expense. I ate $1,200 out of the department budget. It took me a few years to fully understand that vendor relationships matter more than marginal savings—a vendor who answers the phone, sends accurate invoices, and accepts size exchanges is worth more than the slightly cheaper option that vanishes when you need help.

Step 6: Build a reorder rhythm, not a fire drill

Once the system works, don't wait until you're out of stock. Safety gear gets used, worn down, and used up. Plan for that. I learned this during our 2024 expansion, when we onboarded 15 new people in one month and I hadn't projected glove and coverall usage. We ran out of medium gloves for six weeks.

• Run a quarterly PPE audit. Walk the floor, look for damaged gear, and note what's actually being used.
• Replace disposable products on a schedule, not on demand.
• Keep a simple spreadsheet log: what you ordered, when, from whom, at what price.

That log turns you from a reactive buyer into someone who knows what a fair price looks like. It also makes your finance team very happy, and that's worth more than any bargain in this job.

Three mistakes you can skip

1. Ordering brands instead of specs. The name on the label doesn't matter if the rating doesn't match the hazard.

2. Treating "one size fits all" as a real size. It isn't. Ill-fitting PPE is more likely to be left off, and that's a bigger safety gap than not ordering it at all.

3. Ignoring class designations. That "what is a fire extinguisher class?" question isn't trivia—it's the difference between being ready and being out of options in an emergency. The same applies to every class and rating on the products you're ordering.

That's the whole checklist. Six steps, one quarterly audit, and the discipline to write things down. If you do that, you'll have a PPE program that actually gets used and a paper trail that keeps finance off your back. Take it from someone who learned the hard way.