I have my fork and telehandler licence but I’m closer to management than a driver, I just want to be able to hop on the move one out of the way and not look like an idiot when I ask my guys to do something with it.

So big emergency, we have to move a couple telehandlers out of where another team had buried them and get them on a truck asap. It’s tucked so tightly in a spot with its boom up and stuff everywhere around it. I’m not very familiar with it but I crab walk it out of its hole, around a bunch of other crap and finally out onto the street. I’m now comfortable and start rolling down the road at speed towards the truck when a guy I. A pickup passes me and just points up with one hand.

Slam on brakes. Look up

There’s a line (probably internet/phone) running across the road and my forks are above them. I back up… Lower the mast and forks… And drove it to the tech and got out of there

Thank you Angel Man. I would have looked a complete fool had I knocked out internet to our own buildings, and it could have been power lines!

I know you never drive with forks up, they were just up when I got in the vehicle and the 15 minutes of Tetris they had to stay up… Then I basically forgot.

Don’t do what Donny Don’t does!

I was getting off to adust my forks and avoid dropping my skid. My boss told me, ‘Should be fine like that.’ I listened to him, lift the skid, and it IMMEDIATELY tipped over. Your boss isn’t driving. You are.

Not me but a coworker. Worked for a food importer and distributor back in the early 90’s and had never heard of needing any kind of certification to operate a forklift. Coworker who gave me a ride and got me stoned on the way to work every morning has a minor accident while on the tow motor. He is embarrassed and panics. Rather than stopping and taking a deep breath he tries to straighten out the error before the boss finds out and ends up puncturing the drywall above the office with the forks. It was 35 years ago, I still remember thinking how easily those forks could go through me

Uneven load shifted as I was about halfway out. Too afraid to try to shift the forks over to try and balance it as it was up about 8m up. The most experienced operator passed by 10 seconds later and said yeah hold up and pushed the load towards the center. After it was safely on the ground, he asked if I got scared. Told him I needed to check my pants. He laughed and said," good! You’ll always remember and it will never happen to you again."

I watched this safety video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJYOkZz6Dck

Not verifying the load capacity of a customers vehicle.

My past job made the customer sign off the paperwork before we loaded them up and this guy did sign off on the paperwork that his truck could take the load. So, I wasn’t technically liable. I was newly certified and was the only driver around that day. We were a small shop that only took a few deliveries a week, and customers wanting samples back after delivery was even rarer (destructive testing is fun!).

Since I was new to this, I didn’t intuitively know the difference between a flatbed and a normal passenger pickup. So yeah. In my ignorance and with this guy’s sign-off in hand, I try to load his ~1000lb pallet of bigass metal test samples into his. Personal. Pickup.

The truck just kept squatting and squatting, even though I still had weight on the forks… until it finally made a horrific creaking noise. I immediately unloaded the pallet and went to apologize. The guy was mortified but he kept it cool and called his actual delivery guy to come with a flatbed the next day. I did that one too, thankfully his delivery guy just cracked up when I explained what happened (even gave me some quick advice too!). They kept doing business with us, at least, but his reaction in that moment is still seared into my mind.

Backed a forklift into an AC window unit of an office my first day on the job. I was fired by the end of the day and that’s the last time I ever drove a forklift.

I wasn’t watching where I was going and walked forehead first into the carpet boom of the forklift I had parked. Shouldn’t have parked it with the boom that high, and should have been watching where I was going. Not my proudest moment.

You should try the quarter trick. Lay a quarter on the ground, tilt the forks forward, back up dragging the tip of the fork across the quarter and the quarter will flip up and land on the same fork. It’s odd but it works.

Moving pallets of copier paper. Sometimes I’d miss the pallet and spear a box with a forklift tine. Those ended up being sold byloose reams minus the mangled ream.

I was outside on concrete with grass on the side of it and forgot to put the hand brake in. I step off, just to see the truck roll into the grass with the back wheel. Luckily the concrete the truck was on was high enough to stop the truck when one wheel was on the grass.

The truck was stuck now. Driving forward didn’t work, pulling did not work. In the end we pushed a piece of pipe under it with hammers on both sides and that was enough to lift the back of the truck high enough that I could drive it forward again.

Still sucked though. I never forgot the hand brake again. Also did not get fired, that is never really an option for employers here.

So I learned a physics lesson on a forklift. I backed up beside a pallet on the ground and looked back there to line myself up. What I didn’t see was the wooden 2x4 hanging off of the pallet directly in the path of the forklift driving in reverse. So I ran over the board and loony tunes style, the board flew up through the cabin smacking me dead on the side of the face.

Breaking traction when driving through a puddle.

I assumed they are super heavy and would stick to the ground, nope.

The tyres are essentially treadless drift-tyres, and any water on a polished concrete surface will allow some sliding.

This was without load and no crash ensued, just a momentary boost in adrenaline as 1.5 tons is moving a different direction as expected.

Example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_z-QjthkWg

I got forklift certified at an office supply store that sold furniture. A coworker was spotting for me and wasn’t paying attention, and I bumped a heavy pallet of unwrapped boxed dressers stacked two high.

Unfortunately, two or three of them fell into the photocopy area where customers go. Thankfully nobody was in the area at the time, but it destroyed one of the photocopiers and a huge sign overhead.

The really spooky part was I posted about it on Facebook with a photo and the company in question actually contacted me through Facebook and asked me to remove it even though I didn’t mention them by name and my profile was friends only. This was about 15 years ago.

I was picking up a pallet of test seeds and driving them across the field with them in front of the forklift.

I didn’t check my load, hit a bump, and before I could break, ran over half the bags spilling it everywhere.

I am embarrassed to this day.