Exhibition of Forklift Safety a Huge Success

For the second year in a row, the Fork Lift Truck Association (FLTA) sponsored an event that brought together forklift operators, managers, and supervisors to demonstrate their forklift training and their driving skills as they relate to safety. The second annual FLTA Safety Challenge was a huge success by any measure.

Conducted as part of the observance of National Fork Truck Safety Week throughout the UK, the Safety Challenge put more than 1,000 participants through a series of challenges to measure their skills and knowledge of safety procedures. Among the participants were company CEOs, managing supervisors, regular forklift operators, and even pedestrians.

According to a report from Materials World Handling Magazine, some of the participating companies even went so far as to require all of their workers to participate as a means of benchmarking their skills. By doing so, these companies hope to improve next year’s performance through targeted forklift training.

At the conclusion of the Safety Challenge, the FLTA was proud to award certificates to all participants that achieved proficiency of 85% or better. Officials said they were ‘overwhelmed’ by both the total number of participants and the number of certificates they were able to award. Some of the participants even achieved perfect scores.

The FLTA included a quiz as one of the challenges this year. The data from those quizzes will be used to identify gaps in safety knowledge in order to develop programmes to make forklift operators and pedestrians safer. In fact, the entire effort is about improving forklift safety.

Better Forklift Training

We hope that all of this eventually translates into better forklift training for new and veteran operators across the UK. Training tends to be inconsistent due to the fact that there are no current regulations mandating certification for forklift operators. However, events like the FLTA Safety Challenge make it possible for the industry to police itself without the need for government regulation.

If your company utilises forklift operators who have not had any formal training or certification, we would like to offer you our services. As a leading training provider in the UK, the HGV Training Centre offers forklift training for individual and company drivers. When individuals complete our training, they are fully equipped to operate a forklift safely in just about any environment.

Our training consists of time in the classroom and behind the wheel. We teach operators how to load and unload cargo, transport cargo safely, manoeuver in and around tight spaces, drive safely in the midst of pedestrians and master smooth operational control. We are fully aware of how dangerous a forklift can be if not used properly; we strive to instil that same knowledge in our students.

For safe operation on the warehouse floor or in the shipping yard, there’s no substitute for comprehensive forklift training. We are here to provide the training at your request. If you would like more information about any of our commercial training programs, please call us at your earliest convenience.