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Mounting and Dismounting Forklifts

You might wonder why anyone would write a forklift safety article on something as basic as mounting and dismounting forklifts.

The reason is that many ankle, foot, and knee injuries often occur when climbing in and out of forklifts.  Other common injuries include strained backs and shoulders and unprotected heads often strike overhead guards.

Here are some guidelines to ensure safe mounting and dismounting:

• Never use the controls or steering wheel as hand holds for entry/exit.
• Face the machine when mounting/dismounting.
• Never jump off as this can cause ankle and foot injuries
• Avoid wearing loose clothing which can catch on the controls.
• Watch where you are stepping and don’t step on objects or into holes.
• Wear good quality work boots.
• Use 3 points of contact when mounting/dismounting a forklift.  Hand grabs are there for a reason.
• Ensure steps have effective anti-slip surfaces.
• Ensure grab handles are secure and in good condition.
• Before dismounting check over your left shoulder to make sure you don’t step into the path of an oncoming truck.

We cover safe mounting and dismounting as part of our forklift training courses.  For more information on courses and durations please visit our website www.stackerstraining.co.uk or call us on 0800 024 8084.

The RTITB (Road Transport Industry Training Board) have written a recent article entitled “Getting On Board with Lift Truck Safety”.  Click on the link below for the full article:

https://www.rtitb.co.uk/news/getting-on-board-with-lift-truck-safety

As well as more information on best practices, this article highlights the importance of skilled, trained Supervisors who should be on the front-line to identify when operators are not following processes.  This is something that we will cover on our new one day “Forklift Appreciation Course” for Supervisors/Managers.  For more information on these courses, please call us on 0800 024 8084 or e-mail info@stackerstraining.co.uk