Forklift Safety Guide - Creative Safety Supply April 2014 | Page 9

Forklift Safety: A Lifesaving Guide FORKLIFT MAINTENANCE All employers must be diligent about maintaining high levels of safety in the workplace. This goes for everything from training, to operations, to maintenance, and forklift safety kits. The operator is also responsible for managing his or her equipment and to never operate machinery that is defective in any way. The first step in avoiding dangerous situations is proper inspection of the equipment whenever it is used. Some forklifts are used constantly in 24 hour operations, others are only used sporadically. In both cases inspections need to be done at reasonable intervals. Those that are used occasionally should be inspected before each use and those that are used constantly should be inspected at the start of each shift. Forklift Inspection The following checklist will help you make sure your forklift will be operated in a safe environment. Lowering common risk factors is the most important aspect of keeping forklifts safe for all the people involved in its operations. The combination of using common sense, coupled with caution will assure top level safety.