Forklift maintenance checklist
- Checks a month
- 264
- Computed on this page from the inputs below
- Hours a month
- 26.4
- Computed on this page from the inputs below
- What the checks cost a month
- $950.40
- Computed on this page from the inputs below
- Over a year
- $11,404.80
- Computed on this page from the inputs below
Every figure printed on this site is arithmetic on the worked example we publish: 180 assets, 240 work orders a month, 35% of them raised as breakdowns, a breakdown job at 3.4 hours against 1.1 hours planned, a loaded technician cost of $48 an hour. Change any of those on the worksheet and the numbers change with them. Nothing here is a market statistic and nothing is quoted from a third party.
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The figures start from one worked example (264). Put in your own asset count, task hours and loaded rate and the answer moves as you type; nothing is saved and nothing leaves the page.
Download the Forklift maintenance checklist worked example (CSV)
A forklift maintenance checklist is one of the few maintenance documents that is not optional: OSHA 1910.178(q)(7) requires a powered industrial truck to be examined before it is placed in service, and where trucks run round the clock that means before each shift rather than once a day. This worksheet prices what that costs across a fleet, which is worth knowing for two reasons: it is a real number in a budget, and it is the number that tells you whether a paper check sheet is worth replacing with something that records itself.
Count checks per shift, not per day
Six trucks on two shifts across 22 operating days is 264 checks a month, not 132. This is the single commonest way the cost of compliance is underestimated on a site.
Time an actual check
Six minutes is the default here. A proper check is forks, chains, tires, horn, lights, brakes, steering, hydraulics and fluids, and a check that honestly takes two minutes is a check that is not being done.
Then ask what the paper is worth
The cost is the operator's time either way. What changes with a recorded check is that a defect found at 06:00 is visible to the maintenance team at 06:01 rather than at the end of the week, which is where the value is.
Where the constants in this tool come from
Forklift maintenance checklist: the questions a works supervisor asks first
Does the check have to be written down? The examination is required; how you evidence it is between you and your inspector, and a dated record with the operator's name on it is the version that survives a question. Your own regulator's rules govern, not this page.
Who should do the check, the operator or a technician? The operator, before use. A technician's PM is a different job on a different interval, and substituting one for the other is how a defect goes a week unnoticed.
What happens when a check fails? The truck comes out of service until it is fixed. That is the whole point of the check, and it is the moment where a check sheet that reaches the maintenance team immediately earns its keep.