What is a good place to get certified to operate a forklift?

 

Your employer is usually required to OSHA certify you if your job entails much forklift driving at all. I have never seen a stand alone course for certification offered anywhere, I got mine as part of the heavy machinery operators course with my employer.

 

+1. I got mine when I went to work where I had to run one pretty much all the time.

 

i got mine by my employer. some tech schools run classess though.

 

I got mine through my employer also. A local college also has a course from time to time.

 

I also got my forklift certification from my employer.

Ask your employer for information about their 'Training and Safety' department.

 

heh, I am trying to find a program that we can use at work here.

 

I guess I got mine from my dad when I was 6. They put wood blocks on the pedals so I could reach them, and let me drive around the plant while he was working (no daycare in those days). Eventually, I got good enough at it that other employees started having me move stuff around the plant. Obviously the folks at OSHA were either drunk or dead, as it never came up.

Drove fork again when I was in college at a paint store, but only part time, so noone ever gave me any hassle about certification. They might have wanted to check the boss' sanity, considering we were storing paint in an old grain loading dock that had wood floors. Every once in a while I'd be moving a pallette (or two) of paint, and the floor in certain places would begin to give way. You learn a pretty high degree of finesse pretty quickly under those conditions. I only broke through the floor once, but was still able to back out of it, and didn't drop the load........sheer luck.

 

Operating one is a piece of cake, I just figure that we outta be certifying people who operate the forklift just as a CYA.

 

I worked with a guy back in the 70s that had a forklift certification and had never, ever drove a forklift!! In fact, I taught him how!
Pretty amazing, even back then, to get just a class room certification!

I got one through an employer a few years back that involved class room instruction and skills test.

 

I'm in the process of starting a forklift certification company here, as I'm a certified trainer. If your company will fly me out there, I can certify everyone who already has forklift experience, and train those who don't...

I had thought of calling my program "Forklift University" but I found that's already taken...bummer, I was gonna call it "Fork U" for short...

I would imagine you could find someone local who could train your people, just Google "Forklift Training" or Forklift Certification" in the Twin Cities area.

Good plan to get everyone certified though...it's an OSHA requirement that everyone who operates a forklift needs to be certified on it, and the certification is good for 3 years and not transferable from one company to another. In other words, if you get a new employee who says he was certified on his last job, that's all well and good but he'll have to recert on your equipment (quick and easy though...)

I would even look into having one of your own people certified as a trainer, so that you have someone onsite who can certify new people and recertify current employees, then you don't have to shell out the bucks to have someone come in especialy to do that everytime there's a need.

Here's a couple of pics I use in my training of what not to do...:





As I understand it, in the second pic, the guy was loading a truck with bombs and went back for one more. The truck driver thought he was fully loaded and pulled away from the loading dock in the meantime, and the forklift operator, who couldn't see around the bomb very well and was looking for the truck to gauge his location relative to the edge of the loading dock simply overshot. He supposedly climbed off the forklift and walked to his car and drove home, never to return to the job...

 

In the old days, I had seen things done with a forklift that would result in IMMEDIATE termination of employment today. Back then it was just the way things were done, the OSHA certification program has most likely saved a few lives!......In the old days the training was simple,........"See that skinny pedal on the right?, keep it pushed down to the floorboards for the whole shift!" We used to routinely push start 85,000lbs loaded semi's that would not start with our Hyster 230s, and no one gave it a second thought.

 

When I was safety director, we purchased a ready-made course (booklets, video, certificates, wallet cards) from JJ Keller. They have a construction forklift course and a warehouse course.

 

I operated a forklift (a stand-up model Raymond) for six years at my old job in town. To get certified, we had two hours of classroom training that consisted of watching a film, and taking a test that we had to score at least 85% on., then taking a driving test that involved taking product from a rack and returning it, driving forward and backward on a pre-determined course within a given time frame, and a visual inspection of a lift that the plant maintenance guys had rigged with some "defects" that would render the lift not fit to operate. And after passing all that, we were still on a probationary license for six weeks, and any accident or "incident" (which never was really clarified and was sometimes invoked for pure spite) meant that your license was pulled and you had to go through the whole process all over again.

Looking back, I can kind of see why the place ended up closing...

 

There are self certification courses available. I would guess there are some on the web, but I Don't know how to find one on the web other than a search. If your company is large or has a service company like Administaff doing payroll, they will have these courses.

It is pretty much a "Read the course, do a written test and then have someone give you a driving test. If you already are experienced, you can easily pass the course.

Good Luck,

Jim Henderson