Affordable Heavy Equipment Maintenance

If you own a warehouse, chances are good that you have a number of forklifts to help your employees access and store the pallets of goods. Even though forklifts drive slowly and are a common tool in the warehouse industry, it's still very important that you are sure that everyone working around the forklifts remains safe. Here are some tips for being sure that this happens.

1. Create Planned Paths and Maintain Them

Create planned paths that your forklifts have to take in order to get to the farther areas of the warehouse from the loading dock. You want to make these planned paths for two reasons. The first reason is that it makes it easy to keep the paths that the forklift drives on well-maintained and free of any extra boxes or obstacles. You don't have to completely clear all of the aisles in your warehouse, only the aisles that are part of the planned paths. The second reason why you want to create and maintain planned paths is to let people know which aisles they should avoid if at all possible and, if not possible, which aisles they should be careful in. This will help you increase the overall awareness of your employees of the forklifts and generally reduce the chances that anyone is going to be injured during their day.

You can mark the paths by using reflective tape or paint to draw arrows on the floors of the aisles that you want the forklift operators to use.

2. Train Operators to Check for Symmetry Before Picking Up a Load

Next, you want to train operators to be able to check to be sure that the load is symmetrical in both objects and weight before picking it up. This will help you reduce the chances that one side of a load will be much heavier than the other side of the load and flip the forklift over.

3. Keep the Loads Short

If possible, keep the loads as short as possible and make sure that forklift operators know to carry the loads as close to the ground as possible. This will allow you to reduce the chances that a load will obstruct the vision of a forklift operator. If you absolutely need to transport a load that is going to be too high for a forklift operator to clearly see, team the operator up with another person who will be able to remove any obstacles and direct the forklift operator along the marked paths.

For more information, talk to a company that specializes in warehouse material handling supplies, such as Independent Lift Truck Of Alaska.