It Happened to Me: I Got Certified to Drive a Forklift
When the New York Road Runners warehouse sent out a message to all staff that they were offering forklift certification, I immediately sent an email to my team. “Should I get certified and write about it?” I asked. “YES” came the response, just as quickly.
Last Wednesday I reported to the warehouse, located in the Bronx, for a day of training. The warehouse is where NYRR stores everything that goes into setting up a race, from the finish line to the signage to the swag. Most items are bundled together onto pallets. The warehouse staff uses forklifts to move these pallets within the warehouse and to load them for transport to races, and uses them on site at events as well. Everyone who drives a forklift in the warehouse and at NYRR events must be certified by the Occupational Health and Safety Association (OSHA), and the warehouse provides the training to all employees across all departments once a year.
Most of the dozen employees with whom I trained last week were part of our Events Development and Production (ED&P) team, because their jobs often require them to use forklifts during event set-up and breakdown on site. My presence, as the lone member of the Marketing team, was the subject of a few questions from other trainees—“Are you a plant?” my friend Heather Laurel, who works on the ED&P team and as an NYRR coach (and who kindly took all the photos and video for this article), asked jokingly.
Training began with a video and a PowerPoint presentation about forklift safety. Steve Guadalupe and Pedro Concepcion, both assistant managers in the warehouse and our instructors for the day, led us through this classroom work. Pedro and Steve, as well as James Warren, NYRR’s Director of Warehouse Operations, and Max Christensen, the Senior Manager of Warehouse Operations have met OSHA standards for training personnel on materials-handling equipment (MHE), a category that includes forklifts.
There are many ways one can be injured by a forklift, and we learned about all of them. (Hot tip: Do not jump out of a tipping forklift.) We learned where all the controls are located, and what functions they serve. We learned the importance of honking as you approach intersections and every time you put the lift in reverse, that the speed limit in the warehouse is five miles per hour, and that you never turn a forklift around on a ramp.
Then we took a quiz. To pass, per OSHA standards, we had to answer seven out of 10 questions correctly. All of us passed! Out of the classroom, on to the forklifts. James and Max joined us here to make sure that we followed safety protocol, as we had just been taught by Steve and Pedro.
We went out to the warehouse, properly attired in hard hats and safety vests, to sit in the vehicles and experiment with the controls. We put them in neutral, reverse, and drive and moved the forks up and down, back and forth, and left to right. We were also reminded of the importance of using the seatbelts, and ordered not to take the forklift out of neutral without doing so. We practiced the hand signals forklift drivers use.
Pizza break! The warehouse staff was kind enough to order us some real Bronx pizza for lunch, and it was delicious.
After lunch, it was time to work. We were split into two teams, each with its own forklift, and dispatched to opposite sides of the warehouse. One team, working in the loading dock, had to pick a pallet up off the floor, load it onto a truck, then unload the pallet next to it from the truck and place that on the floor.
The other task was to take one lap of the warehouse in drive, maneuver the forklift within a narrow aisle, pick up a pallet off a high shelf, drive a lap of the warehouse with the pallet while in reverse, then put the pallet back on the shelf. Each person worked with a ground guide who would give them instructions as he or she drove, steered, and aimed the forks.
The teams then switched places so everyone completed both tasks, both as driver and ground guide. The NYRR warehouse emphasizes ground guide training just as much as machinery handling.
Driving a forklift is not at all like driving a car. It has a very tight turning radius, so you must have a light touch on the steering wheel. This can make getting into and out of tight spaces tricky when you are learning. A turn in reverse requires a wide berth; a turn in drive will be very tight—I likened it to running on the tangents during a race. Parallel parking is tricky in the best circumstances; with heavy machinery and delicate steering, it was hard to get my bearings at times. But the more I did it, the more intuitive I found it. Even my construction vehicle-obsessed 2-year-old was impressed when he saw my videos.
I was reprimanded once by Max and James for not lowering the forks after taking my pallet off the truck. This is dangerous because it blocks your line of sight. Our instructors said that our first action after picking up a pallet from a truck or high shelf and backing out with it should be to lower the forks so the pallet is below eye level.
Ultimately everyone on both teams completed both tasks, and the warehouse staff told us they would contact us about our certification status. We were invited to come up to the warehouse on Wednesdays and practice our new skills, which is something I plan to take them up on! All of us trainees will be asked to practice further before we are used on site.
My job on NYRR’s digital content team will not often require me to exercise my new forklift skills, but I feel confident that I could now help our events and warehouse staffs out during a busy time like the TCS New York City Marathon, or just to get practice and work in a new capacity. Our warehouse staff, Pedro, Steve, Max and James, are top-notch instructors and supervisors, and I appreciate their taking the time to train us. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity at NYRR to learn how to drive a forklift and to become certified.