John,

It all depends on which 'people' you are quoting who should have a complete understanding of this concept.

I am not quite sure of the educational levels of the operators you are training in Australia however, many of the operators that I train here in Canada are doing this work for one main reason...they could not tolerate sitting in class all day when they were attending school. Several of them have not even completed high school (secondary), let alone pass their math classes.

When I ask how much is 5000-600=, some cannot even provide the correct answer. This does not apply to all my students, but a fair number of them.

When attempting to deliver this information in the lowest common denominator, the K.I.S.S. principle is mandatory. Adding, multiplying and dividing goes beyond the intelligence level of many. They need a relatively quick and easy means of approximating the weight of a load based upon different load centers. If an instructor is only going to confuse the **** out of them, than what's the point of teaching these materials. As instructors, we are there to teach them forklift dynamics, not math. And I can only vouch for my students, that 7 of 10 would fail to comprehend your formula, thereby, not putting these calcualtions to work when an oversized load is being acquired.

State all the laws and principles you want, and I fully wholeheartedly am a zero tolerance guy when it comes to forklift safety, but try teaching the 'book' to a bunch of guys working in some dumpy warehouse in eastern Kentucky. Chances are, they will pick the load up regardless, and when the rear end starts to lift, then they will put the load down.

I am not in arguement with you at all. I am simply stating that if this forklift safety stuff becomes too complex for them, they will just continue to do their own thing, their way, and the time spent educating thse operators would be for not.

Now, if these 'people' you talk about are on the management level, that is a different story. Management generally possesses a better comprehension for these matters, and math, but how many times do you end up training the operators, and a shirt/suit/tie is nowhere to be found?

So as I said earlier...5000x24/36=HUH?