Why Forklift Safety Is Important
Forklifts can be a great asset to businesses as they make moving large items of stock easier and more efficient. While they can be a great help to any business, they can also be a significant detriment if not used properly. Forklifts are powerful machines and if not maintained and used properly, they can cause serious damage to both employees and product. While forklifts can fault and cause issues themselves, most issues are caused by inexperienced operators. It is of the utmost importance for any business to ensure that their forklifts are used safely as if they are not, incidents can occur that may result in product damage or human injury, two results that can be very costly and detrimental to a business. In this article, we examine what practices you should be following to ensure that forklift safety is maximised.
Forklift Certification
The first and most essential step to ensuring the safe use of a forklift is to ensure that any operators are forklift certified. While almost any adult would likely be able to drive a forklift, few would be able to do it safely. Keeping operators forklift certified is important as the course covers best practices and provides insights on how to operate forklifts safety. By having all operators forklift certified, it minimises the risks of incidents occurring while simultaneously ensuring that the company is doing its due diligence to minimise those risks.
Forklift Servicing
While forklift certification helps to minimise human error in respect to forklift operation, regular servicing helps to minimise any mechanical errors that may come from a forklift. The industry standard for forklift servicing states that it should be completed every 6 months or every 250 hours, whichever comes first. In this service, oil filters and air filters are typically changed over, coolant and oil levels are checked, safety checks are completed, and batteries/chargers are also examined. This regular servicing helps to reduce the risk of any forklift issues occurring by ensuring that all areas are examined every 6 months for any signs of issues.
Daily Forklift Checks
While servicing only typically occurs every 6 months, it is still important that daily checks are completed on forklifts to ensure that they are safe to operate each day. These daily checks, like the one found here, ensure that the tynes, chains, fluid levels, lights, buzzers and more are all checked daily. If this is done every day, then it will allow you to stay on top of any issues and be aware of them as soon as they start to occur. It is always better to ensure these checks are done so that any issues can be made discovered earlier rather than later, otherwise it can be more costly to attend to issues once they have worsened.
Like any piece of machinery, forklifts are designed to assist your business but can also be a liability if not used correctly. By ensuring that all operators are forklift certified, are regularly trained, the forklift is regularly serviced and is checked daily for issues, you can maximise the safe use of the forklift and minimise the risks associated with its operation.