Thu. May 28th, 2026

Category: Lifting Equipment & Material Handling

Lifting Equipment & Material Handling

The more the equipment is pushed to its limit, the greater the gap becomes between the rated value and the field value. For example, a loading bay designed to handle one single flow has to handle three. A goods lift, which is only meant to service the internal mezzanine, has to handle external deliveries and so on. More often than not, these types of mezzanine goods lifts have the safe working load posted, but the load / lift requirements have superseded the need for a risk assessment.

LOLER, aka the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998, mandates the use of fully examined lifting equipment at work. Once the equipment has met the requirements, the equipment is then subject to a PEEP every six to twelve months, depending on the risk. There has to be a risk assessment for every equipment to justify the use of the equipment. It is a regulation; therefore, the requirements can be ignored only for a brief period. This is common for smaller sites.

Choosing the right equipment for a material handling application is a matter of three simple criteria: the size and weight of the loads, the number of trips, and the nature of the space. A counterbalance forklift is the best choice for a large warehouse, but the wrong choice for a space with narrow aisles, low vertical clearance, and/or a slab which is not designed for heavy loads. Reach trucks, order pickers, powered pallet trucks, and pedestrian stackers are examples of equipment designed for applications which are not suited for conventional forklifts. Specifying the wrong equipment will result in high running costs and will lead to a safety issue.

Loading bay equipment also fails to receive adequate attention. Dock levelers, wheel guides and vehicle restraints work together at the boundary of the external road transport system and your internal transport system. A loading bay designed without these considerations works with the expectation that the driver will position the vehicle exactly to the millimeter, every time, under tight time pressure. It doesn’t work.