Was working with a guy taking turns driving one of those large, extendable forklifts.

We were lifting multi-ton concrete blocks into place on a makeshift wall being used for a large ice salt depot for front loaders.

I was standing up on the wall, helping the other guy guide the blocks onto each other. He set one of the blocks on the others and we both noticed that it was slightly uneven, the guide groves weren’t perfectly matching up, so the block was crooked.

No problem, he backed up a few feet, and then slowly and gently guided one of the forks against the crooked block, trying to push it on one side to straighten it out.

Neither of us noticed that the crooked block was wedged against one of the other blocks on the back side.

He keeps pressing with the fork, slowly pushing harder until, bang!! a sound like a gunshot goes off. I flinch and jump backwards, not sure what just happened. The other guy yells, “Get Down!! Cover your head!!”

I throw myself against the interior wall of the depot, grab onto my hardhat tightly and crunch down in a ball, glancing around trying to see what just happened.

A second or two later I hear a faint but heavy, “thud.” The pressure from the fork shoving that concrete block while it was wedged against the other blocks had caused a chunk of concrete about the size of a bowling ball to break off and explode into into the air, probably 80+ feet.

The thud was it hitting the ground about 50 feet away. It made a nice little crater in the dirt. Would have certainly killed me if it had come down right on my head. Definitely got some pucker factor from that one.

I was working at a chemical plant, and had my tow motor license for about a week. We had these garage doors that stayed closed most of the time to keep everything compartmentalized in case of a fire. I was driving along with a pallet on the forks, and some asshole spilled water and didn’t put up the wet floor sign or even attempt to clean it up.

I hit the brakes, went sideways, and absolutely destroyed the bottom 3 panels on this garage door. The bags on the skid I was carrying ripped open and made a huge mess, but thankfully what I was carrying didn’t react to water. My manager went back and looked at the tape recording and found the guy who did it. Then he made him clean up the mess I made, and fired him when he was done. The whole thing was scary as hell.

I watched this safety video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJYOkZz6Dck

Not verifying the load capacity of a customers vehicle.

My past job made the customer sign off the paperwork before we loaded them up and this guy did sign off on the paperwork that his truck could take the load. So, I wasn’t technically liable. I was newly certified and was the only driver around that day. We were a small shop that only took a few deliveries a week, and customers wanting samples back after delivery was even rarer (destructive testing is fun!).

Since I was new to this, I didn’t intuitively know the difference between a flatbed and a normal passenger pickup. So yeah. In my ignorance and with this guy’s sign-off in hand, I try to load his ~1000lb pallet of bigass metal test samples into his. Personal. Pickup.

The truck just kept squatting and squatting, even though I still had weight on the forks… until it finally made a horrific creaking noise. I immediately unloaded the pallet and went to apologize. The guy was mortified but he kept it cool and called his actual delivery guy to come with a flatbed the next day. I did that one too, thankfully his delivery guy just cracked up when I explained what happened (even gave me some quick advice too!). They kept doing business with us, at least, but his reaction in that moment is still seared into my mind.

Once I forgot to drop my forks when I went to go into a truck, so I have the bay door 2 new ventilation holes.

Although I did come in one morning to see the mezzanine drooping dramatically on one side, apparently somebody on 3rd shift ROYALY fucked up. Lucky it wasn’t structurally compromised to the point where it couldn’t be fixed. He, uh, that guy got fired.

Forked a lift

Reverse parked it 2cm too far to the left causing a corner protector to scrape along the side with a very loud screech. Everyone looked because of the noise and I still feel bad to this day. To be fair the corner protector did the job, so in the end not a problem.

So here I was loading stuff onto a pallet. I was on foot next to my Forklift. Around the corner comes another forklift going way too fast and backwards with a double-high load. It runs right up onto my right foot and had it gone much further would have broken my leg. What happened instead was the steel-toe metal part of the boot crumpled over my big toe and other toes. It shattered the big one in several places and broke two others as well. They had to cut the boot off of me… This happened on New Year’s Eve about 10 years ago. It took almost 6 months to walk normally again and a lot of physical therapy.

I got forklift certified at an office supply store that sold furniture. A coworker was spotting for me and wasn’t paying attention, and I bumped a heavy pallet of unwrapped boxed dressers stacked two high.

Unfortunately, two or three of them fell into the photocopy area where customers go. Thankfully nobody was in the area at the time, but it destroyed one of the photocopiers and a huge sign overhead.

The really spooky part was I posted about it on Facebook with a photo and the company in question actually contacted me through Facebook and asked me to remove it even though I didn’t mention them by name and my profile was friends only. This was about 15 years ago.

I forgot I had an interview and stayed out drinking all night. went to the interview blind drunk and there was a practical test at the end.

Ended up getting the job so I clearly didn’t smell like a brewery.

So I learned a physics lesson on a forklift. I backed up beside a pallet on the ground and looked back there to line myself up. What I didn’t see was the wooden 2x4 hanging off of the pallet directly in the path of the forklift driving in reverse. So I ran over the board and loony tunes style, the board flew up through the cabin smacking me dead on the side of the face.

I was outside on concrete with grass on the side of it and forgot to put the hand brake in. I step off, just to see the truck roll into the grass with the back wheel. Luckily the concrete the truck was on was high enough to stop the truck when one wheel was on the grass.

The truck was stuck now. Driving forward didn’t work, pulling did not work. In the end we pushed a piece of pipe under it with hammers on both sides and that was enough to lift the back of the truck high enough that I could drive it forward again.

Still sucked though. I never forgot the hand brake again. Also did not get fired, that is never really an option for employers here.

My first real job out of high school, my “forklift certification” was the only other guy in the warehouse basically telling me not to crash into things. A few months in, I casually ripped around a corner, no clue why I ended up stopping. But when I did, one of the structural columns was between the forks, definitely would have destroyed it or the forklift if I hadn’t stopped

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