Pickup day looks easy from the office. It's a loaded skid and a yard-side truck. But the crew knows that about one in fifteen IBC pickups surfaces something — a split pallet, a leaking ball-valve, a cage that's lost a weld — that will cost somebody a knuckle or a shirt if they don't catch it on walk-up.
This is the checklist taped to the inside of every truck-side clipboard. Half of it is in the operator handbook. The other half is from incident reports we'd rather not repeat.
Before the forks touch
- Walk the approach. Any oil spots, wet cardboard, or ice between the truck and the load you can see from ten feet out.
- Look under the pallet. Split stringer boards and broken blocks are the single most common cause of a tote tipping.
- Read the data plate. Not just for the customer. Serial number and batch date.
- Look at the dust line. If the dust on the cage is uneven, the tote was recently moved or disturbed. Ask why.
- Smell. Do not put your nose on the lid. Just notice, from four feet away, whether you smell anything. If yes, photograph and ask.
- Valve check. Is the outlet valve closed and capped? No, you don't trust the cap.
- Lid check. The 6-inch fill cap must be hand-tight. Any looseness means the tote was opened recently.
- Cage inspection. Put your gloved hand on the top rail and shake — one inch of flex is fine, three inches is not.
At engagement
- Center the forks. The tote's center of gravity is almost exactly at the geometric middle, which is nice.
- Fork-in no more than 42 inches. Over-fork will score the HDPE wall against the cage welds.
- Lift one inch. Hold. Look at the tote. Then lift to travel height.
- Never travel with the mast elevated more than eight inches above the truck deck.
- Turn wheels before you turn the load, not at the same time.
- Back off slowly. The load wants to tilt toward the mast. Let it.
The most common injury on pickup day is a pinched hand from trying to stabilize a swinging tote. The rule we rewrote in 2017, after one such incident in Monaca: once the tote is on the forks, your hands go on the handrail of the truck, not on the tote. If the tote is swinging enough that you want to grab it, set it down and restart.