Danny Maron, owner/trainer of Ideal Forklift Training in Canada's national capital, is an independent consultant, providing the education lift truck operators require, to businesses and government, to minimise the chance of incidents in the workplace. Before founding Ideal in 2000, Danny was a trainer at Canada's largest forklift dealer.
It's showtime folks ... and I'd like to start with a quick video, so please click
here.
This video sets the scene for a discussion on the sit-down forklift. It is riveting and gets to the point rather quickly. We see that Nick is an inexperienced operator, which can be judged by the manner in which he is hauling his load. He even admits that he was given 'hands-on' training, but no formal education. Nick makes a dangerous judgement call ... and the rest is history.
Tragic it is, but not to all my students. The young females are overtaken with emotion, the older students are quiet and sombre, and others tend to laugh, especially when he discusses the requirement to use a catheter and bowel stimulator for the rest of his young life. Few, it seems, realise that the same thing could happen to them.
I suppose they have a lot of confidence in my training ability to guide them and make sure the same does not happen to them. However, I cannot baby-sit them each and every time they operate the forklift. They, as adults, have to be disciplined to ensure that the same type of incident does not befall them.
But what is the moral to this story? As a professional forklift safety trainer, it is clearly evident. The problem is a lack of government intervention to ensure that workers from all cities, states or provinces and countries are trained in a proper, professional fashion. Laws are passed, but not necessarily enforced.
I do not live in an industrial city, nor is the city I dwell in the bastion of commercialism. However, we do have our share of forklifts. And here in Canada, as is the case elsewhere, forklift safety training is the law.
So how come when I prospect for new business, business owners tell me that they are just a small company and I should go down the street to another company that has many forklifts? Are they exempt from providing their staff with training just because they are a small business? I don't think so. I haven't read anything that stipulates a minimum size for any training requirements.
Or maybe the company is way too busy to afford the time to have their staff trained, although their staff is operating forklifts without being deemed competent to do so? Or, it is summer time, and everyone is on holidays. I suppose they are only human and want their summer vacations as well.
Where is the logic in all of this? I slow down dramatically in summer since all the training is put on hold until autumn. But companies do not shut down for the summer, and they do conduct business. So, why does training take a holiday? Who is out enforcing the laws when
everybody is on holidays? Does safety training take holidays as well? Does death take a holiday?
There have been three or four forklift-related deaths in Canada since May, all because the operators were pinned underneath the forklifts. At least two of these incidents were due to jumping out of a tipping forklift. I guess these incidents only take place from September through to June, and not in July or August.
I suppose if businesses are lax when it comes to summer training, and the officers are on holidays, maybe it will be fine when I cruise 50 km/h (30 mph) over the speed limit, on the highways on my weekend trip to Toronto. I guess the police are on summer holidays as well, and because it is the summer, we motorists can sidestep the law as well. Yeah, right! That'll be the day, oops, the summer!