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Best Practices for Loading & Unloading Pallet Conveyors with Forklifts

May 20, 2025

forklift unloading pallets from the end of conveyor line

Loading and unloading pallet conveyors with forklifts is an everyday, all-day task.

Done right, it’s fast and efficient. Done wrong, product damage, collisions, injuries, and workflow bottlenecks happen. I’ve seen it in dozens of warehouses, even in highly automated operations, and most of them tend to bridge the shipping dock and the end conveyor lines with forklifts (these days, AGVs and AMRs often do this work). Pallets are large, heavy and in motion when they’re transported on conveyors. That combination of size, pressure and movement can result in damage or injuries when not properly controlled.

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Posted in Conveyor Optimization|

Vertical Package Transport: Incline Conveyors vs. Reciprocating Lifts vs. Spiral Conveyors

February 2, 2023

vertical spiral conveyors vs. automated package lifts

High-velocity order picking operations frequently need to transport cartons vertically–on and off mezzanines or pick modules, into workstations, onto work platforms, over traffic aisles or to merge with overhead conveyor lines. You can accomplish this with incline conveyors, vertical package lifts, spiral conveyors, automated package lifts and manual methods. Each method has its limitations and its advantages.

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Posted in Automation, Labor & Efficiency|

Warehouse Safety: Pedestrians, Workstations and Forklifts

November 10, 2022

Forklift aisle between warehouse work areas.

Above: work areas facing away from an active traffic aisle with pallet stacks that impede visibility for both pedestrians and forklifts. 

Forklift accidents make OSHA’s top-10 list every year without fail because forklifts are ubiquitous in American industry and interact with hundreds of thousands of people every day. One of the key places to prioritize safety is for pedestrians—the people on foot who work near and walk around forklifts on a daily basis.

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Posted in Forklift - Pedestrian Safety|

How to Prevent Forklifts from Striking Doors & Overhead Obstructions

September 14, 2021

This door frame was struck by a forklift and suffered significant damage.

In warehouses where forklifts drive beneath doors, ducts, conveyors, electrical equipment or other overhead obstructions, costly and dangerous accidents can happen. What are some ways to make these pass-throughs safer?

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Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|

Integrating Conveyors and Industrial Lifts

March 2, 2021

scissor lift for pallet handling in a conveyor line.
Above: scissor lift/rotator at the end of pallet conveyor line

Conveyors and scissor lifts are frequently integrated due to the fact that it’s such an efficient way to manipulate loads along a conveyor line. Loads can be lifted, raised or rotated on a lift table for a variety of activities. When you need to actively work on a conveyed item, it’s ideal. Here’s how to go about it.

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Posted in Lifting & Lift Systems|

A Step-by-Step Safety Process for Forklifts and Pedestrians

October 2, 2018

forklifts and pedestrians near a dock door

When it comes to protecting pedestrians from forklift accidents, focus on processes—the ways you segment, train, manage and work on a daily basis. Preventable accidents happen when a process is absent. When it comes to forklifts and pedestrians, accidents are far too common and frequently serious.

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Posted in Forklift - Pedestrian Safety|

Prevent Forklifts from Cutting Corners

April 24, 2014

forklift aisle with striping

forklift aisle with guardrail corners

It’s always dangerous when forklifts and people inhabit the same work areas.

You’ve probably heard the statistics when it comes to the forklift and its safety, but one of the most disturbing is the injury rate compared to incident rate. Forklifts cause just 1% of industrial accidents, but are responsible for a staggering 10% of all injuries in the space. So what can you do to help keep people and industrial traffic separated?

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Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|

Ways to Enhance Training to Protect Pedestrians from Forklifts

October 23, 2012

manager in a warehouse forklift area between rack aisles

According to OSHA, training is the key to forklift safety, and there is fundamental agreement on that. Training can and does make a serious dent in the high injury rates suffered due to industrial traffic. Training must happen, and it must be repeated. But that begs this question: Why has training failed to move the needle when it comes to serious forklift related injuries? The numbers seem to have stabilized at an average of 100 deaths per year, and have stayed consistently at that level for years.

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Posted in Forklift - Pedestrian Safety|

11% of Forklifts are Involved in Accidents Annually. What Can You Do?

January 14, 2011

hurtling forklift

There isn’t much other way to say it: If you have a forklift, it is almost surely the most dangerous piece of equipment under your roof. If you have many forklifts, that danger us multiplied.

How dangerous? According to OSHA estimates, there are 61,800 minor injuries, 34,900 serious injuries and 85 forklift related deaths in the United States every year. Since there are almost 900,000 forklifts operating at any given point in the United States, this is something that every operation needs to consider when your forklifts start moving on a busy day. 11% of them stand a good chance of being in an accident or collision every single year. Those aren’t great odds, considering that a forklift in a given warehouse is heavy, moving, and in a noisy and often visually crowded environment.

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Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|

Evaluation: Pallet Rack Storage Density, Access, Safety and Costs

April 24, 2025

High bay selective rack pallet storage.

Just how many pallets can you store in a 100′ x 100′ area? It can range from not that many–X with selective racks that let you pick or place any pallet at any time–or “Y” using incredibly dense, using pallet flow or drive-in systems that restrict how and when you can access pallets. The balance between storage density and selectivity is always critical, but there are other factors in play: cost, efficiency and safety.

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Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|

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