Many Hands Make Light Work: A Construction Blog

If you own or manage a business where people use forklifts on a regular basis, you want to take precautions to reduce the chances of the forklifts tipping over. To keep your work site as safe as possible, check out these tips. They are designed to help your operators avoid unnecessary tipping.

1. Make Sure Operators Have the Right Training

Using a forklift may look easy, but as anyone who has tried it knows, it's a lot harder than it looks. To safeguard yourself and the equipment, make sure that anyone using a forklift at your facility has the right training in place. You may want to have additional workers sign up for forklift training so that you always have a trained operator on site, even if your regular operator is ill.

2. Don't Overload Forklifts

All forklifts have a weight limit. Advise your workers not to exceed this limit. You may want to buy stickers to put directly on the tines or safety signs to hang on the walls of your facility. That way you can ensure that your crew knows what to do.

3. Keep Awkward Loads Low

When someone is moving an oddly shaped load with a forklift, that increases the chances of the forklift tipping. To avoid that, make sure that your workers take a low and slow approach. To that end, they should have the tines as low as possible for safe movement, and they may also want to tip the tines back slightly to prevent the load from falling off.

4. Take Corners Slowly

Regardless of what type of load your workers are moving, they should always navigate turns slowly. Turning puts a lot of pressure on one side of the forklift, and that can lead to tipping if you go around corners to fast.

If you need to speed up turns for any reason, you may want to substitute a skid steer with a forklift attachment rather than using a traditional forklift. The tracks on most skidsteers make them harder to tip.

5. Hang Warning Signs Over Bumps and Near Doorways

Unfortunately, forklift operators may accidentally run into obstacles or accidentally back out of a service door. To reduce the incidences of this happening, make sure that you have a clear path for the forklift to operate.

If there are bumps in the way, label them clearly with wall signs and special floor paint to make them noticeable. In the case of loading doors, also use signs as well as warning lights that indicate when these doorways are open.