Forklift Safety: Tips for Hiring Safe Drivers Thumbnail

Forklift Safety: Tips for Hiring Safe Drivers

June 14 marked National Forklift Safety Day and we’re finishing our June 2017 with one more look at a very important forklift safety factor.  The driver. More specifically, new drivers, and what you should look for in a new forklift driver. It stands to reason that not everyone who might apply to be a forklift driver will have actual...
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Crash Course for Outdoor Forklifts Thumbnail

Crash Course for Outdoor Forklifts

  Most forklifts are used indoors, or a combination of indoors and outdoors.  Some, forklifts, however, spend their work lives outdoors and they need some special considerations. Let’s start with the lot you’re working in and around.  Paving matters.  Ideally, a blacktop or concrete is preferred over a dirt lot that can be...
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Part 5: Forklift Driver Training Thumbnail

Part 5: Forklift Driver Training

If you’re keeping track, when this training session started I knew next to nothing about forklifts and now that we’re entering Part Five of the on-line portion I know about the Stability Triangle and I know what types of behaviors and situations will get myself or my co-workers hurt.  All important stuff as far as I can tell.  I’m feeling...
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Part 2:  Forklift Driver Training Thumbnail

Part 2: Forklift Driver Training

After acing the first part of the on-line forklift training class in about 20 minutes, I was prepared to move on to the next section: Stability and Capacity. You’ll recall the first part was an overview and a really surface look at the parts of the forklift, and after getting a little cocky and missing the first sample question I moved on and...
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Forklift Pedestrian Safety Thumbnail

Forklift Pedestrian Safety

We discuss safety a lot here, because it’s important. Your forklift, like much of your machinery, is perfectly safe when operated within the guidelines but accidents do happen. People get hurt, even killed, in and around forklifts. As we’ve established, the forklift operator has responsibilities to keep him/herself and co-workers safe; stay...
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Forklift Driving Lessons Thumbnail

Forklift Driving Lessons

Four tires, a seat and a steering wheel, how much different could driving a forklift be from driving a car? It’s different. We’re about to send a newbie through fork lift operator training, a process we’ll document here, so we’ll get an insider’s view of just what the training is all about and how difficult it is. This is someone with...
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Buckle Up – Forklift Seabelts Thumbnail

Buckle Up – Forklift Seabelts

Believe it or not, seatbelts are only recently mandatory safety equipment on a forklift.  While, technically, OSHA doesn’t directly mention seatbelts by name they’re firm enough about the wording that we know they’re very serious about the seatbelts.  You should be, too. Here’s the thing: while a forklift rarely travels at a high enough...
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Forklift Propane Safety Thumbnail

Forklift Propane Safety

More than half a million forklifts in the US operate on propane gas. That’s a lot of gas, and a lot of potentially dangerous situations if the propane is not handled properly. Here’s what you need to know about propane: Propane, by itself (like natural gas that we use to heat our homes) is odorless.  Propane’s distinct odor is added to...
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Forklift Abuse Thumbnail

Forklift Abuse

A few entries ago, we mentioned something that started a conversation.  We stated that typically, most of the damage to a forklift is caused by (insert drum roll here) employee abuse. That raised some eyebrows among our customers. To be clear, usually damage to a forklift is not caused by mindful reckless conduct (although that does happen)....
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Top 5 Forklift Accessories Thumbnail

Top 5 Forklift Accessories

Don Haas takes us on a tour, showing off the top 5 accessories that you will find on material handling equipment.  If your equipment doesn't have these items or they aren't working correctly, we would be happy to...
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