Foo - Forklift license

I'll be pursuing my forklift license at work soon, hopefully. I was wondering if anybody here has been through the training. What is it like? What do you actually do?

I did it a few years ago at a steel company. Lots of stuff like learning the names of the parts, weight limits, general stuff. Then we had to drive thru an obstacle course forwards, then backwards. Lots of rules, like no women sitting on your face while driving. Common sense stuff!

You'll pretty much pass as long as your not drunk or stoned.

I work with a 10 year old who drives one. It can't be that hard.

It's not hard to do but it is very dangerous if you don't treat it with respect. Oregon passed a law a few years ago prohibiting folks younger than eighteen from operating a forklift. They did so in response to an unusually high rate of injuries and deaths in that age group. There will be some things covered in the class that seem like simple, common sense but an untrained person may not understand why. For example:

Operating the controls while standing next to the machine is not a good thing. When you are seated, you have some protection from falling objects. If you move the wrong lever, or the right lever in the wrong direction, you can drop the load faster than you can get out of the way... it's nice to have a cage between your head and that refrigerator.

Never reach through the lift to adjust or move the load. If it drops due to a malfunction or in response to moving a lever, it will cut your arm off before you know what happened. Shut it down and walk around the front to handle the load.

Never drive into a strange truck unless you know for sure that it is strong enough to carry the weight of the forklift and the load.

Be very cautious when driving near the edge of the dock. You will not escape unhurt if you fall 5 feet while seated on a forklift.

Always look up at the top of the load before moving any of the controls. This is the equivalent of looking both ways before crossing the street. If you knock part of the load off the lift on a low ceiling beam, you will probably not hear, feel or see it until it lands.

Never treat a fork lift like a go-cart or ATV.

Just pay attention in the class and take it seriously. Go slow at first and you'll do just fine.

Burnouts good

Wheelies bad.

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h250/ritehsedad/dummen02.jpg

Fork you!

Heh, I never got around to it, just started driving. AFAIK, they just have you drive around some cones, lift a couple things up, etc...

Well, I've done a little bit of forklift driving. THis was a three wheeled Hyster, one wheel in the back. I lifted an 800 pound heat sealing machine and brought it all around the building, through some rather narrow hallways. But I never really lifted it past 4ft. I've seen some of the guys lift 1 ton up onto the mezzanine, that's 18ft, that's also quite scary!

You must watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdjt6Bl5qdY

It is an award winning safety video spoof, Forklift Driver Klaus - The First Day on The Job

It starts out a bit slow, but if you watch the whole things I guarantee that you won't regret it. Funniest video I had seen in a long while.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c6/Forklift-driver-klaus.png/250px-Forklift-driver-klaus.png


Forklift Driver Klaus - The First Day on the Job (in German, Staplerfahrer Klaus – Der erste Arbeitstag) is a short film from 2000 about the first day of Klaus' work as a forklift driver. The film is a parody of work safety films from the 1980s. The film was written and directed by Stefan Prehn and Jörg Wagner. Konstantin Graudus plays the role of Klaus, and Egon Hoegen is the narrator. It adds to the air of authenticity that the narrator's voice is well known from road safety films.

The film quickly became famous, much thanks to its splatter film violence, which fans regard as comical due to its extreme nature. As well as receiving several awards, it was made available on DVD by Anolis Entertainment in 2003.

Nothing like jockeying full pallets of record albums in and out of third tier racks... that's full mast ;)

The place next door, Spectex, does slitting. Where I work, almost every male drives a forklift. That includes every engineer and sales guy. The only one who doesn't drive a forklift is myself, and I think the president of the company.

You'll pretty much pass as long as your not drunk or stoned.

That's about right. Our training was a four hour class-room session with a brief test just hard enough to make sure you were kind of paying attention, followed by four hours of supervised driving.

It was probably slightly more involved than most forklift operator courses just because we build the darn things, and if we don't follow the rules, who will?

As long as you're doing the US training, you'd better watch the German training video (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Sdjt6Bl5qdY), too.

* WARNING - the video is very graphic (and funny in an disturbingly morbid sort of way)

I drive a forklift every single day at work. Don't jump off of a moving forklift (in front of a safety inspector) and NEVER park a forklift on an automatic dockplate. Forks can do a lot of damage to asphalt when they roll off a dock.

That's about right. Our training was a four hour class-room session with a brief test just hard enough to make sure you were kind of paying attention, followed by four hours of supervised driving.

It was probably slightly more involved than most forklift operator courses just because we build the darn things, and if we don't follow the rules, who will?

As long as you're doing the US training, you'd better watch the German training video (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Sdjt6Bl5qdY), too.

* WARNING - the video is very graphic (and funny in an disturbingly morbid sort of way)So glad you posted that video...that was the very first thing I thought of when I saw this post but I didn't feel like searching around for it.

Freakin' hilarious, though.

I've noticed that the more bored you get, the less sense safety rules make. It's better to find another way to stay busy.