Dear All,

Just a note to draw your attention to an incident that I've been investigating with respect to the above truck. Its a small FLT where you can swap the batteries in and out in order to still use the truck whilst the second battery is charging. Personally, I've not worked with these before and I've only been with the company for around 3 months.

The other week, we had a report that the battery had tipped off of the FLT forks when it was being picked up after charging. The battery is lead acid, 48V/500Ah and weighs 720kg. Speaking with the person who had the incident, the battery has an attachment which sits underneath it and you place the forks of an FLT together to go in the attachment in order to lift it up. I got him to demonstrate this and the forks only went in around half-way under the battery, leaving it at a natural tipping point position! Then another operator passed whilst we were checking this out and remarked that it had always been like that and that you had to be very careful when swapping batteries. Why it hadn't been previously reported, I cannot say!

We got Linde in to look and see that we were doing the battery lifting OK and that no damage had occured to the attachment, and they somewhat sheepishly admitted that this was a known problem! They have subsequently introduced an attachment (apparently magnetic) with which to strap the top of the battery case (it has a couple of holes to which something could be fastened) to the FLT mast in order to secure it during lifting and swapping in and out of the truck. I've yet to see this and make a judgement on it, but I thought it pertinent to advise my fellow professionals via this forum to have a look at their FLT fleets to see if they have any of these on site, or indeed, any similar vehicles where similar problems could exist.

When I have an update on problem resolution, I'll post it here.

Just a quick note to let anyone interested know that the solution is going to stop using the fork attachment that goes under the battery and use a battery pallet, so that the battery is mounted off of the floor, enabling the forks to go all of the way under. Two magnetic strips will be added to the forks for good measure.