I have been in my new post for 6 weeks and previously being in logistics for a number of years with a small yard. In my new post, the site has a hugh yard and I have a massive amount of forklift travelling. My concerns are the forklifts can carry 1 ton produce wooden boxes, (which they carry up to 3) and travel in reverse a great distance, which seems unsafe as well as to much twisting of the body. I am up against lean manufacturing concepts which I understand, there is no way of reducing the travelling as I have already looked into this, so any advice would be great, thanks

Travel in reverse if vison is obscured is part of training, things that you could look at would be to carry two boxes to give greater vision if possible this would mean a third more trips. would traveling forwards with greater visabiliity and better body posture actually return better productivity ? it would certainly help with your concerns over unsafe loads & operator twisting , You could also use a banks person and travel forward, niether of these sit well with the lean process, as said in previous post some good infomation in the L117 & L136 workplace transport both free to download fro the HSE site.

Forgot to add that we limit our FLT operatives to moving 1 pallet / crate / bale at a time and to never stack, as there is a risk of the 2nd / 3rd load sliding / toppling off (as it's just resting on the bottom load). If you have to stack ensure boxes are tied / banded together to form 1 load to ensure stability.

Assuning you've done all the usual, trained drivers, correct FLTs, boxes in good condition etc. the hazard here is actually pretty simple - boxes bouncing/sliding off whilst the driver is looking backwards rather than 'forwards' at the load. Whilst this may well damage company property it's not going to hurt the driver so I assume it's pedestrians, wagon drivers etc. that need to be protected? Keep them out of the area/yard where movements more than one high are taking place. We ran a very simple, at least in theory, system at a potato wholesalers some years ago where we said we'll do everything we can to prevent boxes, stacked 3 high falling off but we'll go one step further. If a fork lift driver saw anyone on foot in the area he was instructed to stop and not resume his journey until they were gone. Took a while but eventually other departments stopped wandering around the yard/loading areas, they were being hit where it hurt - productivity.