So, something that has been bothering me for a little while now.

Across several of my company's sites it has been necessary to change the size of the forks for smaller ones on some of our counterbalance machines. Namely the 10 and 12 tonne ones. We use these to shift shipping containers mostly, quayside and yard work, you get the picture.

Now the forklift supplier we use, when they fit the shorter forks, they also change the rating plate and give the machine a reduced capacity.

Now the question:
Just because the forks are smaller, why is it necessary to reduce the capacity? The machine isnt lighter, the load centres arent changing, the loads themselves are the same.

Now i get that if we are fiting an attachment i.e a rotator or something, then we have to adjust accordingly, and we have to take the strength of the forks into account, but i dont fully appreciate the relationship between fork size/length and machine apacity.

thoughts?