mini pallet truck

[Nick.]

Most Luton tail lifts are only rated to a half ton, or even just 250kg and there is plenty of machinery that exceeds that.

Hi Sideways, agreed on being careful on tail lifts.
It was sometime mid 2000's Harrogate show and Freud were using pallet crates (basically a pallet with 3ft sides around it) to remove all their stock after the show.
The crate was fully stacked up with saw blades / router bits etc - basically it was almost a solid lump of metal weighing goodness knows how much.
I was walking past them when their tail lift broke off on one side and dropped - they were very lucky and no injuries - the whole crate fell off and tipped onto the ground with hundreds of blades and bits going everywhere in the darkness.

 

[Sideways]

• A fully assembled Bridgeport mill
• On a pallet, on the tail lift of a Luton
• With a 2 ? ton hydraulic stacker truck underneath the tail lift doing most of the lifting
• And one of those teeter-totter moments when the whole thing was on the point of balance
• But we grabbed and pushed it into the van before it toppled out over the back edge of the platform...

Definately the hairiest lift I've ever been part of !

 

[Dabop]

Tail lifters come in a variety of weight ranges (it is usually printed on the arms or controls exactly what its SWL is), the one on the truck I used to drive was 3000kg!!!(one of the full sized ones that folds up over the back doors, rather than underneath)- a right pain in the posterior, lucky it was a 'curtainsider' as it was actually easier to open the side curtain rather than dropping the tailgate lifter so you could open the bloomin doors!!!....

This kind of lifter... (you can see the issue lol- useless if you are backed up to a dock...)

250kg seems a pretty light duty one- the kind of thing you find on a ute here for lifting '44's' up (202L drums for oil etc)
This is an Aussie built one, rated at 300kg...