MINDLESS MUSINGS

It’s easy to forget you are driving a lethal weapon when you are operating a forklift. Things have a way of getting really hectic and you get caught up in the chaos. There are so many things you need to think about at once: You need to be wary of the load you are carrying and make sure it does not tip. You are usually driving in reverse while you have a load on the front, so you need to watch out for obstacles and pedestrians behind you while keeping an eye on the front.

The particular job I was doing had two main objectives:

1) Unload the trucks that came around the back of the warehouse and put the freight in their corresponding run bays.

2) Keep the belt running. This meant placing pallets for the boys to unload near the belt and removing the empty ones.

So many times whilst doing this job I seem to have been on auto-pilot with my mind racing trying to keep up with the tasks I was doing and needed to do. I know there was so many times where I was racing around without looking carefully enough to ensure I avoided any collisions. I would get frustrated and just drive as fast as I could between tasks. No speed restricting governors back then. There were plenty of times I was not looking in the direction the forklift was travelling for any number of reasons.

For some bizarre reason there was a walkway running right through the middle of a path I needed to traverse very often in order to do my job. This was where I needed to move back and forth as I stacked empty pallets and removed them along with adding the new full pallets for unloading by the boys. Many times in my frantic efforts I would be reversing and not looking back. There but by the grace of God I never hit anyone or anything.

There was one incident that sticks in my memory. One evening while stacking empties I reversed back and turned just in time to see Dave, our OH&S manager, before I levelled him. It was by sheer luck that I happened to turn at the exact moment that Dave stepped in the path of the forklift. Fortunately, I managed to hit the anchors to avoid a very one-sided collision. I could have easily killed or maimed him.

The irony is dumbfounding. I nearly creamed our OH&S guy while he was walking on a so called safe walkway that he himself would have approved. This walkway was an accident waiting to happen. It was extremely foolish having it there. It was obviously conceived during a quiet time during the day. The AM and PM operations had different set-ups and operations.

When things got hectic this walkway ran right through a busy thoroughfare for forklifts. I just happened to be the guy who nearly cleaned someone up and forced them to re-route the walkway. It’s good to make a difference.

I remember the look on his face. He glared at me as if I was some kind of criminal. I fully accept my blame for not looking in the direction the forklift was travelling. However he seemed reluctant to carry his fault for walking into the path of a reversing forklift. He also seemed to neglect the fact that he was the genius who decided to run the walkway through this busy section of the warehouse.

In the end I am just relieved that there wasn’t a serious accident that evening. It is near misses like these that force you to slow down and take a lot more care while operating a forklift. It is difficult to remain vigilant at all times, but we must strive for slow and steady rather than fast and furious operation. We all want to go home at the end of a shift without tragedy occurring.