I would like to see if there some engineers on the forum that could provide some more information on this. Over the years I have run into a few simple formulas for calculating the lift truck capacity but have discounted them because it seemed to me that it must be more complicated than that. In the past when I had to press my dealer to give me a capacity for a non-standard sized load, he would kick it back to the manufacturer.

This is an important issue because it is sort of the ghost in the closet of forklift training in that we explain center of gravity and the load capacity of the truck relative to the placard but don't explain how to calculate a load size other than the one on the placard. I have never gotten an answer in the past that I felt confident in.