If your business has spent a bunch of money on forklifts for your everyday operations, wouldn’t you want them to last as long as possible? You wouldn’t want to have spent all this money and then have them start breaking down on you in a short amount of time. Forklift preventative maintenance should be a regular routine for your business. This article is going to go over how to perform forklift maintenance and the importance of it!

Forklift Maintenance

Maintaining a forklift is as important as going through forklift training to safely operate one. Forklifts are like any other type of vehicle, in order to perform properly and last, they are going to need to be maintained regularly.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are over 7,000 related injuries with forklifts. With proper forklift maintenance, we can help prevent these injuries from ever happening.

Here are a couple of reasons why preventative forklift maintenance is so important for you and your business.

Failures

Forklifts carry and move extremely heavy loads. This puts a tremendous amount of wear and tear on them, which can cause loads to fall or electrical failures.

Cycling

Performing regular maintenance can help you identify early on when its time to replace a forklift. This can help prevent injury from using a malfunctioning forklift.

Injuries

Routine maintenance can help prevent employee injuries from happening by identifying malfunctions with a forklift before it happens.

Efficiency

Keeping your forklifts in good condition will help the batteries stay charged and last longer. A forklift that isn’t maintained is going to be harder to operate and make tasks harder and slower to perform. By keeping everything running perfectly, you’re going to help with employee work-flow and efficiency.

Cost

It’s going to be less expensive to maintain a forklift rather than paying to repair a forklift after it has broken down.  These are a few different reasons why it’s so important for companies to perform preventive maintenance on their forklifts. Now let’s talk about the maintenance itself.

Preventive Forklift Maintenance

OSHA requires that forklifts be examined every day before being used. Having a thorough checklist for employees to follow is the best way to ensure the maintenance is always properly done. Using an OSHA forklift maintenance checklist is a great way of following the best standards.

You should also have a maintenance schedule along with the routine. Having a schedule set in place will ensure the maintenance is always getting done to each forklift. The best way to do this is by following the manufacturer’s recommended schedule for the forklift.

Cleaning your forklifts on a schedule can help prevent issues from arising as well. Keeping your forklifts clean can prevent combustible materials from building up. This could damage the forklift overtime.

Even with a regular schedule of maintenance in place, a forklift can still occasionally have small issues arise. You want to fix these issues right away – you wouldn’t want to keep using a loose brake that needs replacing, this could lead to injuries and accidents.

Forklifts

Now that you know the importance of keeping your forklifts in good condition, its time to start implementing a forklift maintenance checklist on a set schedule.

If you have questions or concerns about forklifts or their preventative maintenance, send us a message or give us a call.