If you’ve ever been where loads of unskilled fork-truck drivers are whizzing around then you’ll know how deadly they can be. If this German video nasty doesn’t frighten you then you must have balls of steel. I kid you not, this is a genuine part of European safety training instruction; I saw this when working as an air freight handler in the Netherlands.
Here are some of the darkly humorous things I remember from when I worked in airport freight handling:
One forklift driver went into a lorry trailer with the wrong type of forklift and raised his forks so high that the trailer he was in gained a new sun-roof;
Another driver used a twelve ton forklift (big heavy-duty one) to take an eleven ton crate off a side loader. The lorry driver told the forklift driver his forks were all the way under the crate. When the forklift driver reversed and the crate was no longer supported by the trailer bed, his forklift dropped forward putting its back wheels in the air. More people used their phones to take pictures than went out to help him;
Impatient lorry drivers have caused their share of accidents too. It’s not uncommon for truckers to rush off with a fork-truck and driver still inside their trailer; and,
Not all lorry drivers use their hand-breaks whilst they’re being unloaded, I’ve seen forklifts fall through loading bays as the lorry gradually moves from under the ramps that allow the forklift to drive in and out of the lorry’s trailer.
To celebrate all the pitfalls of forklift driving, I thought I’d give you a short health and safety video to watch. This is the same as the one I was shown in the Netherlands. It’s in German with Czech sub-titles and comes courtesy of YouTube. Sit-back and enjoy this dark comedy thriller…
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