Posted By Darren Bates Hi, Can anyone enlighten me on the current legislation for rider operated pallet trucks. Do employees need a licence for this type of equipment?? Many thanks, Darren

Posted By Amanda Thorpe just to say that we investigated this very subject a while ago. There appears to be loads of guidance on forklift/counter balance trucks but for electrically powered pallet trucks (whether walk behind or ride on)is almost non existent. We have three groups of pallet trucks - manual, electric walk behind and electric ride on. For the walk behind trucks what we did was take our risk assessment of the task, the guidance in L117 and other 'warehousing' guidance documents and with the company who do our forklift truck driver training/assessment forumulate a largely bespoke inhouse training course for our needs. This training outlines the legal requirements, incorporates a quite extensive practical, a multiple choice question paper and a scary video. This training is scheduled to last about 5hrs but in reality it does depend on existing level of competency of the trainee. For the ride on electric pallet trucks we've specified that only holders of a forklift truck certificate (delivered by an approved provider and refreshed every three years) can use the ride on machines. We took that decision because of the results of our risk assessment. ps. The advice I got from the HSE helpline was to base the training requirement on our risk assessment which was an okay (sort of ) response but not actually the one I was looking for!