Archive for the Forklift Safety Category
Driving down workplace costs is a principal goal of nearly every business across all industries. But at a more granular level this is a goal that most businesses need strong partners to accomplish. Don’t let other manufacturers tell you differently. Toyota forklifts help reduce overall workplace costs by focusing in two key areas, operator costs and damage costs. Together, these two costs make up nearly 70% of an average forklift’s annual operating cost. As a cost reduction partner, Toyota’s unique system of active stability or SAS focuses entirely on making operators more productive while protecting the operator, the forklift, the materials handled, and the facility. The dynamic system is exclusive to Toyota forklifts and is comprised of six primary functions, speed reduction when cornering, swing lock cylinder, mast front tilt angle control, mast rear tilt speed control, fork leveling control, and active steering synchronizer. Together, these functions support driving down overall workplace costs. Forklifts must maintain minimal surface coverage in order to fit and operate in today’s increasingly compressed racking layouts. As extremely dense products themselves, forklifts can become unstable during certain operations, which risks serious accidents and damage to the forklift, loads, and the facility.
Without SAS, maintaining lateral stability while turning at speed can be a real challenge for forklift operators and facility layout. While operating the Toyota three-wheel electric forklift or the stand-up rider, SAS maintains stability by utilizing the speed reduction function when cornering. If the turning speed is too high, SAS will automatically slow the forklift down. When operating a four-wheel forklift, the swing lock cylinder will automatically lock the rear axle should the system sense instability while turning. The swing lock cylinder momentarily adjusts the forklift’s center of gravity, which helps reduce sideways tip overs. Product damage can also be a significant cost factor and has serious consequences for a business. Without SAS, uncontrolled backward mass tilt can lead to product being dropped on top of the forklift, striking the overhead guard or anything else nearby. Similarly, uncontrolled forward mast tilting can lead to dropped goods and forward tip over of the forklift. Any of these scenarios are almost certain to cause extensive product damage, facility damage, and forklift damage. While unstacking a load, SAS supports rear tilt speed control when it senses the load is at a certain height. The manual reverse tilt control speed is overridden by SAS to slow down, so the load moves surely and steadily into the right position to be lowered.
When stacking a load, SAS again senses load height and mast position to automatically adjust the tilt angle to protect the forklift operator, the product being stacked, and the racking system. When stacking or unstacking pallets, especially in higher racking applications, a difficult action and non-efficient behavior is constantly adjusting the mast angle to allow the forks to easily slide in and out of a palette. SAS supports automatic fork leveling which automatically tilts the mast to the position where the forks are at 90 degrees and perfectly horizontal to a level surface. When consistently stacking and unstacking pallets over an eight-hour shift, the fork leveling button can save days over the course of a year, as well as protect against damaged goods and damaged racking. The final SAS function, the active steering synchronizer, gives operators confidence that the steering wheel and the truck wheels are properly aligned. This helps operators work both ergonomically and efficiently. All SAS functions work together to drive down operator costs and drive up operator productivity all the while helping the forklift avoid accidents due to instability or dropped loads.
Many times, SAS is misrepresented by other manufacturers as a system that simply moves costs from one cost center to another in the form of replacement sensors, parts and maintenance. Fortunately for Toyota and for the hundreds of thousands of Toyota forklifts with SAS operating around the world, nothing is further from the truth. Studies have shown that on average, SAS costs $17 per year to maintain. With a principal investment that small, SAS delivers immeasurable returns. To learn more about Toyota’s system of active stability and the part it can play to drive down your overall workplace costs, visit Lift Truck Supply, Inc.
For more information contact us at:
Lift Truck Supply
T:1.800.873.1828
E: marketing@lifttrucksupplyinc.com
F: Contact Page
Be sure to share with #ForkliftHeadquarters
Jul17
Forklifts are operating in every major retailer and distribution center in America. Where there are forklifts there are products, standing obstacles such as racking, and pedestrians. What does this mean for you? It means liability and obligation of prevention. One of the quickest and most usable ways to prevent forklift accidents are Forklift Camera Systems. Lift Truck Supply’s online parts store offers several different types of easily-installed camera systems.
- Reduce Forklift Damage – Added visibility means fewer dents, scratches, or fork damage due to ill spaced turns, tail swings, reversals, and drop-offs.
- Reduce Product Damage – Minimize costly product loss with full views around your lift. By utilizing side, back up, and fork positioned cameras your operator will be more able to prevent bumps and drops of product pallets or racking falls. You will also see fewer chargebacks from your vendor due to less product damage during loading.
- Extended Protection – Extends the life of your lift and workforce by reducing accidents that could be catastrophic to personnel and the lift.
- Fork Views – Adds ability to view fork to pallet placement.
- Maximizes Work Hours – Speeds up processing and fulfillment times due to workers higher level of accuracy and reduction of product loss.
- Ergonomics – Reduce worker strain and repetitive stress by virtually eliminating the need to twist and bend the neck/body to check major blind spots.
- Pedestrians – Help prevent pedestrian injury by extending your operators visibility.
- Monitoring – Recordable Camera Systems will help monitor operator speeds and allow you to play back video of an accident. Some systems also come with alert monitors.
- Insurance Purposes – Systems may help lower insurance premiums. *see your insurance provider to find out if they offer this concession.
- OSHA – Helps to bring Lift into OSHA compliance. While OSHA does not have a specific rule maintaining that a forklift must be equipt with a camera system it does have a General Duty Clause (see below) that says an employer can avoid violating this clause by installing visual safety devices. If not you could be subject to a $12,934 OSHA penalty per violation. That is a steep penalty to pay for not thinking ahead.
OSHA Act, 29 U.S.C. § 654 (a)(1), also known as the General Duty Clause, to furnish employment and a place of employment, free from recognized hazards that are causing or a likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees, where employees are exposed to hazards, including but not limited to, struck by, caught-in-between and crushing by the forklift. B56.1-2009 shows that industry recognizes this hazard and that equipping trucks with sound-producing and visual devices are feasible means to abate this hazard. An employer whose workplace presents this hazard and has not taken feasible steps to mitigate this hazard may be in violation of the General Duty Clause.
Your worker and customer safety is a critical part of your forklift program. By adding Forklift Camera Systems to your fleet, you are helping your company avoid becoming an accident statistic or OSHA violator. Upgrade your visual forklift safety today by visiting our online parts store.
For more information contact us at:
Lift Truck Supply
T:1.800.873.1828
E: marketing@lifttrucksupplyinc.com
F: Contact Page
Be sure to share with #ForkliftHeadquarters #ForkliftCamera #Forklift #BackUpCamera #ForkliftSafety #Safety
Jun12
ITA’s Forklift Safety day! It is a yearly reminder that you should be thinking about how to keep your lift operators and bystanders safe. Here at Lift Truck Supply want to give you some handy tips, tricks, and products to keep your workplace safe and OSHA violation free!
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Mar06
Safety should be your number one priority every time you step into your workplace. Ask yourself, “How am I going to avoid or deter accidents today?” Risk management should be the first and last thing you think about every day before OSHA enters the picture. If you fail to do so; you leave your company open for accidents, fatalities, OSHA fines, lawsuits, company-ending settlement payouts.
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Feb27
“Better safe than sorry!”; is an old addage that just about everyone has heard before. Guess what? That tired old saying still rings true today. As managers, foremen, shop superiors, or owners we know that safety is our number one priority for a few great reasons.
Ask yourself, “How am I going to avoid or deter accidents today?”. Risk management should be the first and last thing you think about every day. By setting up the right safety accessories before an accident happens, you will have one less item on your daily to-do list. The right safety item in the right spot will also help you avoid business threatening OSHA violations, costly legal fees, and vast insurance payouts. Most importantly we should provide safety accessories because our workers deserve a protected and unassailable workplace and we deserve peace of mind knowing we provided it.
OSHA accident search results show over 186 accidents involving powered industrial vehicles in 2017; 35 of those are fatalities. One way to help avoid becoming a statistic is to improve your industrial fleet and warehouse’s safety accessories.
Lift Truck Supply offers several different options to keep your work environment safe. Read below to find out about some of our best-selling options.
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Jan08
Forklifts are operating in every major retailer and distribution center in America. Where there are forklifts there are pedestrians. What does this mean for you? It means liability and obligation of prevention. One of the quickest and most noticeable pedestrian warnings are forklift safety lights. Lift Truck Supply’s online parts store offers eight different types of easily-installed safety lights.
“20% of all forklift fatalities from 1980 to 1994 involved a worker stricken by a lift truck.”- The National Traumatic Occupational Fatalities (NTOF)
Nov28
Announcer: Having a warehouse full of forklifts means a lot of responsibility. After all, someone has to keep track of where the forklifts are, who is using them, how they’re being used, and whether or not the forklifts are being properly maintained. It can be a full-time job, but it doesn’t have to be. Toyota’s robust forklift management system T-Matics COMMAND works to eliminate the burden of managing forklifts, so you can focus on the most important thing, your business.
Who is using your forklifts? With T-Matics COMMAND, you can stop the unauthorized use of forklifts by those not trained or licensed, or who should not operate them. That’s because forklifts with T-Matics COMMAND only operate with a swipe of a tamper-free badge. No forklift using T-Matics COMMAND can ever be used without permission.
Want to make required forklift inspections and recordkeeping fast and easy? T-Matics COMMAND makes sure they’re done, and removes the recordkeeping burden. Use T-Matics COMMAND to leverage daily electronic vehicle safety checklists, make paper checklists a thing of the past, improve overall safety practices and operator responsibility with regular forklift inspections, and simplify the mandated storage of daily checklists. Should T-Matics COMMAND sense a safety issue during a check, the forklift is rendered inoperable until the issue is addressed.
Are you maintaining your fleet like you should? Never miss planned maintenance with T-Matics COMMAND. The convenient preventative maintenance function provides a complete checklist and ongoing scheduling.
What are your operators doing? T-Matics COMMAND provides granular views and tracking of time and motion to help maximize productivity. Then there are impacts. T-Matics COMMAND tracks forklift impacts. The dynamic impact sensor automatically calibrates to your specific application to eliminate false alarms.
When you implement T-Matics COMMAND, you’ll have a level of insight you’ve never had before. Know your operators and forklifts make important informed decisions, positively affect your bottom line and overall up-time. Visit toyotaforklift.com/t-matics, or talk to your local forklift dealer about how you can implement T-Matics COMMAND to increase your productivity and profitability.
For more information about T-Matics Command and how it can be an asset to your business:
Contact Lift Truck Supply
T:1.800.873.1828
E: marketing@lifttrucksupplyinc.com
F: Contact Page
Nov28
Announcer: Productivity is at the core of every Toyota forklift, and since a comfortable operator is a productive operator, we focus on industry leading ergonomic designs. Getting on and off your Toyota forklift is easy with low step heights and dual assist grips on nearly every new Toyota forklift model.
Once you’re on your forklift, you’ll find that the steering wheel size and large operator cabin are just right to help you work as efficiently as possible. No more cramping to turn around and look behind you, and no more straining to make those tight turns. And eight hour shifts sitting on your forklift can cause stress and fatigue for your back and legs if the seat you’re sitting on isn’t comfortable. Toyota’s full suspension seats help eliminate that stress and fatigue by moving as you move.
The ergonomically friendly features of Toyota forklifts are designed for practical reasons too. Finger injuries sometimes occurred with reverse travel, so Toyota developed the rear assist grip with horn, available on nearly every forklift model. With your hands inside the forklift and on the rear assist grip, you won’t have to worry about where your hands are if you get too close to a racking unit. And the rear assist grip horn makes alerting other operators and pedestrians easy when traveling in reverse.
There are many standard features on every Toyota forklift that make operating everyday comfortable, but there are special order options too. Would a clipboard and pen cup make keeping track of orders easier? Is your work environment so cold that a heated cabin is necessary? These features and many more, are available as special orders and options.
Talk to your local Toyota forklift dealer and schedule a test drive to see for yourself just how comfortable Toyota forklifts can be. To find your local Toyota forklift dealer or for more information on Toyota’s full line of warehouse, internal combustion, pallet jacks and electric forklift models, visit ToyotaForklift.com.
For more information about material handling options and how they can revolutionize your business:
Contact Lift Truck Supply
T:1.800.873.1828
E: marketing@lifttrucksupplyinc.com
F: Contact Page
Oct24
Ever wonder how your newly purchased lift went from looking showroom quality to dumpster chic in a matter of months? Ever had an unexplainable forklift accident happen? Ever wonder if your forklift operator was actually following safe practices when the “unavoidable” accident happened? Now, thanks to technology from the automotive industry; the days of just wondering how that massive product spill happened are gone. Utilizing some of the same auto industry concepts, there are now specialized forklift camera systems that are ready to record and report at the turn of a key.
The camera system Lift Truck Supply recommends is the Safe-View Wireless Camera System. The Safe-View Wireless Camera System is an excellent tool to not only give the operator a variety of different views around the lift truck but, record the lift’s operation as well. The Safe-View is easy to install and operate with the capability to connect up to four cameras. You can monitor up to a 360 degree view around the forklift while giving your operator extended real-time visibility where it was previously limited.
The Safe-View System comes available with either a seven inch or a nine inch crystal clear display that shows up to four camera views simultaneously and records onto an SD card. The system is equipped with automatic monitor-to-wireless camera pairing capability that cancels out other camera interference. The Wireless Camera alleviates many wire mounting problems that other systems face. Some of the additional camera features include night vision technology that allows you to see clearly in low light or dark conditions, water and impact resistant housing, and can be mounted anywhere on the forklift via magnetic mounting brackets. These features greatly increase the ease of installation over other camera systems available. The purchasable basic system includes the 7” or 9” LCD Display, Rechargeable Battery Pack, and one Wireless Camera.
Forklift Safe-View Wireless Camera System Safe-View Features and Benefits:
- 7” or 9” LCD Monitor with 120 degree view angle camera
- Exceptionally clear picture
- Digital wireless system with built-in transmitters in the camera and display
- Automatic pairing capability with no interference from any other cameras
- Night Vision technology so you can see clearly in low light conditions
- Recording capability with the use of an SD card
- 7” or 9” display accommodates up to 4 cameras
- Built with water and impact resistant housing
- Can be mounted anywhere on the forklift
- Easy installation and operation
- Camera view can be rotated in 90 degree intervals on each monitor
The Safe-View also has various feature-adding upgrades available. You may purchase up to 3 additional Wireless Cameras to add a customized view of your lift truck. The Magnetic Mount Camera Bracket is equipped with an impact bumper that can easily be installed on the mast to protect the camera for front view applications. The optional Key Fob System acts as a switch between the battery and the camera which allows the forklift battery to stay on without the cameras constantly drawing power. The Cable Reel allows a camera to be to the mast and automatically coils or uncoils the camera cord as the forks are lifted up or down. These add-ons can greatly customize your individual camera system needs and get you the proper view on your lift.
If you have been looking for a solution to your lift monitoring, blind spot, and back up camera needs then you need to look no further. A Safe-View Wireless Camera System will help your operator to have better visibility during operation and help your warehouse manager to have better visibility on your assets. There is no reason to say no to adding camera systems to your fleet today. Follow the links to our site or contact us at Lift Truck Supply, so you can learn more or we can help you customize your order today.
Aug17