Secure Your Operation Through Smart Policies - Guaranteeing Forklift Safety

Posted on: 2 July 2017

Maintaining a smooth warehouse operation is an essential part of any business that deals with a large amount of inventory. However, in your rush to guarantee speed and performance, it's essential that you don't sacrifice safety. Not only will doing so put your employees at risk, but it might also turn out to create a much slower process than if you had been safe in the first place.

Below, you'll find a guide to some steps you should follow to guarantee safe forklift operations in your facility. Keeping these tips in mind should guarantee that you can avoid the worst consequences of workplace slowdowns and should put you in a position to maximize your efficiency for years to come.

Proper Clothing

In some cases, safety culture starts before you even step on to the machinery. This is certainly true in the case of forklift operations, as secure clothing and proper visibility can go a long way toward making sure that unfortunate accidents don't occur.

The clothes you wear on a forklift should be clean and tight without restricting your movement. Make sure that you always wear a hard hat and safety glasses to shield yourself from the danger of any tumbling inventory, and commit to keeping on your safety vest so other people in the facility have an additional chance to spot an obstacle.

Moderate Speed

The story of the tortoise in the hare is deeply embedded in popular culture, but it has a moral that's important to return to on a regular basis. Maximum speed is rarely a smart safety decision, and taking off out of the gate without control can leave you struggling to recover later.

Always obey any posted speed limits and yield properly to traffic signals. Even if you're not on the road, you're still in control of a vehicle. It's important that you do everything you can to give that vehicle the proper respect.

Capacity Checking

Your forklift is a strong and resilient piece of equipment, but it comes with limitations. Some loads are simply too large to be moved by a single lift. Others may weigh you down and result in unexpectedly quick power consumption. Before you take a heavy load from a shelf or from the floor, make sure that it's comfortably inside the load limitations that your forklift manufacturer recommends. Following expert advice can allow you to avoid unfortunate breakdowns and increasingly difficult struggles.

Contact a company like Independent Lift Truck Of Alaska for more information and assistance. 

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