Forklift Workers Face Risk in Fast-Paced Warehouses

By Dan Calabrese, Special to Transport Topics

This story appears in the Aug. 4 print edition of Transport Topics.

As the economy continues its recovery and demand for the delivery of goods increases, forklift operators and other distribution center workers are feeling pressured to handle their tasks as quickly as possible — which could mean safety is being sacrificed for expediency, logistics managers said.

David Hamilton, CEO of Impact Logistics in Memphis, Tennessee, said safety guidelines may be clearly stated, but a company’s “hurry-up” culture presents a subtle incentive for employees not to follow them.

“There are certain protocols everyone has to follow,” Hamilton said. “You don’t drive a pallet forward, for example. It’s always backwards. But those kinds of things are shortcuts that can cause you issues.”

RELATED: Manufacturers add technology to improve forklift safety

Forklift safety statistics in recent years have ticked back up, in at least a short-term reversal of what had been a downward trend.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fatal forklift accidents were at a recent high of 78 in 2007, after which the numbers dropped in each of the following years — to 68 in 2008, 58 in 2009 and 54 in 2010.

In 2011, however, that number jumped back up to 68, and in 2012 (the most recent year for which figures are available), BLS reported the same number.

For Hamilton, safety starts at the top.

“That’s a culture that begins with me being the owner of the company,” Hamilton said. “It’s a trickle-down. If I wasn’t concerned about safety, no one else would be concerned about safety. Our challenge is, from me to our site directors, to lead on the floor on every shift. They need to be preaching the same thing I am.”

Companies can decrease safety concerns by putting a heavy emphasis on training, especially for new and temporary workers.

Wayne Wilde, field technical sales officer for forklift manufacturer UniCarriers Americas in Marengo, Illinois, said these workers can present a serious training issue.

“In order to ensure that this ever-changing labor force is trained, companies are having to use either outside venders, or extra internal man-hours for training operators,” Wilde said.

“The other challenge is having material-handling procedures or policies as a base for training. A lot of smaller to midsize companies depend on word of mouth for training too much,” he said. “This causes gaps in the training from how to operate a forklift, or the correct way to handle materials.”

Rick Kidder, service training manager at forklift maker Toyota Material Handling USA, agreed.

“Each year, more than 94,000 forklift injuries are reported in the United States. [The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration] estimates that 25% of the forklift accidents are due to a lack of operator training. The best approach to preventing lift-truck accidents is one that combines proper operator training, equipment maintenance and every person, business and organization involved in material-handling tasks strictly adhering to safety regulations.”

Jay Costello, director of training for equipment manufacturer Hyster Co., said the company focuses its forklift safety efforts in three primary areas — training, making sure operators understand the application in which they are working and proper maintenance.

“Operator training is critical to overall lift-truck safety as 70% of all industrial accidents are operator-induced, according to the National Safety Council,” Costello said. “OSHA estimates that effective training may reduce the accident rate by 25% to 30%, and that after training of lift-truck operators, there is a 61% improvement in operator performance scores,” he added.

Costello said he focuses forklift training on five major areas:

•Several operating conditions associated with all or most forklifts, including fuel and battery handling.

•Focused areas associated with the operation of specific types of trucks.

•General workplace hazards, such as lighting and surface conditions.

•Particular workplace hazards, such as ramps, docks and narrow aisles.

•Factors that affect the stability of a forklift, such as load, speed, tire pressure and driving behaviors.

Safety also can be improved with frequent equipment inspections. OSHA mandates pre-shift daily checks of all operational forklifts, including a visual and an operational inspection. The visual, or “pre-start,” inspection involves checking items such as tires and batteries. The operational inspection involves testing horns, lift/lower systems, steering, braking and other key functions.

Additionally, Wilde said OSHA is putting a renewed emphasis on seat belt usage, and manufacturers are responding.

“The industry as a whole continues to add features to all its models in the area of safety or risk reduction,” Wilde said. “These include orange seat belts as a standard option, and interlock systems so the seat belt needs to be closed for the forklift operator. These are today options for most manufacturers but, with increased requests, these may start being the standard.”

In a recent article on his safety blog, Chuck Paulausky, owner of the consulting firm CP Safety & Environmental, discussed the most common type of forklift fatality, a worker being crushed when a forklift tips over. When that happens, a seat belt can be the difference between life and death, he said.

“The safest place for the driver to be is strapped into the seat with a seat belt,” Paulausky wrote. “According to OSHA, its enforcement policy on the use of seat belts on powered industrial trucks is that employers are obligated to require operators of powered industrial trucks which are equipped with operator restraint devices or seat belts to use the devices.”

But Paulausky pointed out what he considers a serious omission in OSHA requirements: “History continues to list forklift overturn fatalities at the top of the list. Many of these are due to lack of, or not wearing, seat belts. For some reason, OSHA doesn’t specifically require them if they weren’t part of the original equipment, but does require their use if they are there.” 

The condition of the facility can also affect safety.

Robert Braswell, technical director for American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council, urged companies to also take a good look at their facilities to identify possible forklift safety issues and to help in decisions about equipment and accessories.

“You’ve got to consider the facility limitations — how wide you are, what type of storage facility it is,” Braswell said. “Building and ventilation issues are a concern. If you’re doing a fuel you can’t really run inside, you might want to consider electric. If you’re inside, you probably want a solid tire. If you’re outside, you probably want a pneumatic tire.”

Braswell also urged companies developing specifications for forklifts to look at fire extinguishers, backup alarms, warning strobe lights, stability controllers, anti-rollover systems and mirrors that are specially designed to help with environmental hazards and visibility issues.

Costello said Hyster encourages facility operators to look for ways to enhance the safety of the environment.

“Again, because 70% of accidents are operator-induced, the onus remains with the operator of the lift truck to be cognizant of intersections and other route or traffic areas where pedestrians are likely,” Costello said. “Pedestrian signs in the workplace should provide warning in areas where lift trucks may present a hazard. The use of warning systems also can enhance the visibility of lift-truck equipment throughout a facility.”

Additionally, safety creates a financial impact in terms of lost-time days. But Impact Logistics’ Hamilton said the effect is not significant enough to the company’s bottom line to lead managers to make it a top priority. So the company made it a bigger factor in the employee bonus structure, to make sure monetary incentives reflected management’s view of safety as a priority.

“We in the last two years added to our management structure lost-time days and things like that because it was truly financial,” Hamilton said. “It’s not all [profit and loss] like it would be if we paid a lot of overtime, so it’s part of what we have to do to make it part of  our bonus structure.”

The Industrial Truck Association hosted Forklift Safety Day on June 14 and invited equipment manufacturers and users throughout the industry to submit insight on issues pertaining to safety.

Forklift maker Crown Equipment Corp. submitted a report from customer Kevin Shayer, general manager of distribution and warehousing for Clemens Food Group in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, on how productivity pressure had presented safety challenges.

“We knew the key factor to any continuous improvement process was information; specifically, convenient access to information that provides visibility into our operations and across three locations,” Shayer said. “We quickly realized we needed some sort of forklift operator and fleet management system that would help us collect and analyze relevant information that we could then use to identify opportunities to reduce costs and improve productivity.”

According to Shayer, Clemens implemented a Crown-designed system called InfoLink, which allows forklift operators to access crucial safety data from newly designed dashboards and make quick decisions related to safety.

OSHA’s involvement in the event included a list of key hazards associated with forklift trucks, the top one being falling-load accidents, which OSHA says are more likely to occur with a sit-down, counterbalanced high-lift rider truck than a motorized hand truck because the former can lift a load higher.