Atlas Blog

According to the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), a standard forklift capacity plate is a nameplate that contains the capacity of the lift truck, where the capacity is defined as “the manufacturer’s guideline for how much weight a forklift can safely lift.”¹ The nameplate contains a host of information besides the forklift’s capacity data.

Operating forklifts have costs associated with them. While you might not think it worth your time to track these costs, this is never beneficial. First off, knowing the average forklift cost per hour is a good indicator to use to determine when to replace them with new lift trucks. Second, these costs will help you identify potential problems with particular lifts. For instance, you could have one forklift that is constantly breaking down even though it is a year or two old.

Order pickers are a type of lift truck that are used in warehouses to fulfill customers’ orders for products. Rather than use a forklift to pull the entire pallet of goods off of shelves, the order picker raises and lowers employees to the appropriate height to manually pull the desired quantity.

The typical warehouse is a dynamic operation. Its staff performs certain tasks over any given period of time, but each shift may not consist of the same series of duties. Goods are moved in and out of picking areas, stock must be maintained to meet demand, and lift truck parts must be inventoried and tracked when repairs and replacements are needed.However, there is much more to managing productivity than looking at just a few numbers.

There are several different factors which will alter or reduce the fork truck lifting capacity, even if no after-market alterations are made to the lift truck. It is important to educate yourself, lift truck operators, and maintenance personnel about how these changes occur and what they need to be checking for to ensure continued safe operations, to help reduce the risks of accidents and potential personal injuries.