A 2004 report from the National Safety Council showed that 1910.178 of the OSHA law pertaining to powered industrial trucks was eighth in OSHA's top 10 most-cited standards. You are at risk of an OSHA inspection no matter what size your company is. Many employers feel that if they have fewer than 10 employees, they are exempt from an OSHA inspection. This is not true! While smaller companies may not see OSHA on as regular a basis as bigger companies, you still are responsible for providing a safe working environment for your employees. Training your operators, enforcing all safety rules, and maintaining your forklifts in safe operating condition are part of those responsibilities.

While this report didn't mention what the exact fines were, most of the fines we hear about when a customer inquires about our Operator Safety Training Programs result from lack of operator training. Upon further discussion with our customers, we found that an accident and a disgruntled employee were the reason OSHA visited their company.

The training tip for the day is how to inspect your battery hold-downs, or hood latches, and make sure they are in good working order. The hood latches on a sit-down counterbalanced forklift serve a very important purpose that quite often gets overlooked during the daily forklift inspection. These latches hold down the engine hood or battery lid. In the event of a rollover, the engine hood or battery cover has to be held in place because the operator's seat is fastened to it. When operators fill out their daily inspection forms, they most likely will release these latches in order to check the fluid level in the engine or battery. When the latches have been released, the hood can be opened, but when the hood is closed, the latches do not always go back to their original latching position and the hood can open and close freely with no restraints in place. If a fork truck were to tip over and nothing was in place to hold the battery or hood down, operators could face serious injury by being crushed to death, even if they were wearing seatbelts. So, during inspection, operators need to make sure the hood locks in its closed position. You should not be able to re-open the hood without releasing the latches manually. If for any reason the latches do not perform in this manner, the operator should have a qualified forklift technician inspect the latching mechanism before putting the truck back into service.

As an employer you should be enforcing the use of seatbelts and training your operators to report any problems or safety devices that are not working on the fork truck.

The classes are scheduled for:

• Wednesday, June 22, in Syracuse
• Thursday, June 30, in Albany.

For more information, please call Safety Training Manager Dave Bennett at (315) 437-2881 ext. 146.

Thompson & Johnson has a plentiful supply of pre-owned equipment to help you save acquisition expenses in the right application. Our used machines may be purchased "as is" right through to "certified used," depending on your usage and budget.

Please call your local Thompson & Johnson representative to explore our offerings that may help save you money on your next forklift purchase.