Forklift Safety Training

The Department of Labor reports that two-thirds of the forklifts in the U.S. are involved in an accident during their life span. Each year in the U.S., forklift-related incidents kill nearly 100 workers and injure another 20,000 making safety manuals a valuable tool in keeping employees safe. The three causes responsible for these incidents are:

• Poor forklift training
• Failure to follow safe operating procedures
• Lack of safety rule enforcement

In addition, OSHA identifies the most common causes of forklift fatalities as:

• Forklifts overturning (22%)
• Workers being struck by forklifts (20%)
• Victims crushed by forklifts (16%)
• Falls from forklifts (9%)

OSHA Forklift Safety Requirements

To protect employers and employees from the danger of operating forklifts, OSHA created safety training requirements (CFR 1910.178) requiring employers to certify forklift operators, and train those who work around forklifts on hazards and best practices.

The regulations also require forklift operators to be recertified every three years. The OSHA regulations do not require that training or certification be done by a government agency or a certified third party vendor, but rather allows companies to use their own personnel to conduct the training by creating an OSHA-complaint program.

A Simple Forklift Safety Solution

Meeting the OSHA forklift regulations can be tedious, requiring you either to develop a training program yourself or to outsource with expensive safety consultants.

There is a better solution

Safety Services Company has developed a “Do-It-Yourself” training program that is both simple to administer and meets all your OSHA forklift requirements. Our training program is a simple three-step solution that brings all your employees into compliance.

Classroom/online training

The first step of our program is a self-paced electronic training session. This allows employees to complete a computer based training program at their own speed, and then take an automatically graded test. If computers are not available materials are printable for a traditional classroom or onsite training seminar.

Field training

The second step of training is in the field. During this portion of the training, your appointed trainer shows trainees how to apply the information they learned in the classroom, familiarizes them with the forklifts they will be using on their job, and the specifics of their workplace environment.

Evaluation

The third and final step in the training is evaluation. In this phase, the trainer either evaluates the trainee’s knowledge and ability to operate a forklift safely, and signs off on certification, or retouches on topics that need more work.