The Ins And Outs Of AITT Accreditation

If one were familiar with RTITB forklift training, then at some point, one would also get to know The Association of Industrial Truck Drivers (AITT), an independent accreditation organization that centers on the operation training of lifts.  Since 1991, the AITT has been supported by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the British Industrial Truck Association (BITA), the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) under the Approved Code of Practice (ACOP L117) specifically for Fork Truck Operator Training. 

There are six areas that AITT focuses on for industry registration:  Employed or subcontracting instructor, accredited operator training companies, accredited instructor and operator training companies, tutors, examiners, and safety awareness instructor.  Since AITT is a non-profit organization, all costs are low (especially in comparison to forklift training costs), but they cover all industry corners.  AITT is also informed to the latest standards, rules, as well as visual and written materials of training.  Each registered applicant and applying training company will be individually reviewed by the AITT.  Certification and photo identification will be given at the successful completion of the training. Visit AFTT for more information on forklift truck training.

AITT is run by professionals currently working in the industry, and have elections twice a year to ensure the people’s leading choices.  They are closely related to the Workplace Transport Team at HSE headquarters, and are members at the Accrediting Bodies Forum (ABF).  There are four types of memberships available for purchase with AITT:  Self-employed instructor, employed instructor, associate, and company.  Self-employed instructors individually offer commercial construction training after being approved by the HSE; this type is required to be monitored by the AITT.  Employed instructors are already registered AITT members who are working under a company that does not certify licenses under their names; the AITT does not require monitoring for this type of membership since the instructor is already registered with them.  Associate memberships are either an individual or a company whose goals are on safety training, but do not actually instruct the courses themselves.  Company memberships are for any organization that trains operators, tutors, and instructors in the use and maintenance of industrial machines; this type of membership is required to be monitored by the AITT.  Self-employed memberships are £175, employed instructor memberships are £50, Associate memberships £45, and company memberships are £350.  Memberships have to be applied via the post to their Springboard Centre site at Coalville, Leicestershire. 

As a member of AITT, a newsletter will be delivered each quarter, special website access is available, AITT logos are available to be used with members’ names, and the connections that AITT is widely ranged and available to members that are involved with lift training, instruction, employers, manufacturing, and health and safety.  AITT is spread throughout the East of England, London, South West, East Midlands and Lincolnshire, West Midlands, Yorkshire, North East, North West, South, South East, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales.  The AITT website has each of these regions designated with a map, the address, contact person, telephone number, email address, and category of specialty for the separate companies that are registered with AITT.

AITT also offers further educational reading on operator training testing, available for purchase on their website (members are discounted by 50% on the reading material).  AITT has a News tab online that is updated with every new event that they update and share with all viewers that has easy tagging and accessible by month.  The elected members of AITT are also viewable online, and are updated every six months.

What’s So Good About Electric Forklift Trucks

Forklift Truck

You can get many types of forklift trucks in warehouse settings but one of the more popular choices in terms of how they are powered is electrical forklifts. They may cost a small fortune to buy but it's certainly a cheaper forklift to run as they are just powered off a battery which is charged up after use every day.

They are also a lot quieter than fuel powered forklift trucks which are a godsend when working indoors as the noise from some of them can be quite annoying.

They also require less machinery parts to run which means that maintenance on these types of forklifts are a lot easier to deal with. Someone who goes on a forklift training course is given full instruction when it comes to maintaining such vehicles but this tends to be for the upkeep rather than a full repair job. However, the upkeep on these is fairly simple too so this means that there is less likely to be mistakes made in this area.

Now this next point this may not be on a company's top agenda but they are actually quite environmentally friendly unlike the fuel powered forklift trucks which emit carbon monoxide. This apparently adds to the greenhouse effect which adversly effects climate change and global warming.

In fact both gas and diesel powered forklift trucks shouldn’t be used indoors anyway because there is a health and safety issue due to carbon monoxide building up to dangerous levels in confined spaces. This could lead to carbon monoxide poisoning for many of the staff which is obviously of major concern. Despite the fact that the warehouse or similar building may have very good ventilation it's still a big issue and so the only sensible choice companies have is to use electric forklift trucks. For more information about Forklift Trucks training visit www.aftt.co.uk.

When forklift truck drivers go on forklift training courses one of the segments on the course is related to health and safety as forklift trucks can be dangerous in themselves if not handled properly. Some courses even have first aid as part of the syllabus because it's important to understand how to deal with a situation when someone gets injured, even when having inhaled poisonous fumes.

Speaking of hazards having fuel such as gas or diesel stored on the premises is a high risk and breaks several health and safety regulations unless stored safely away from the building. This of course ends up costing the company more money for specially designed fuel storage so where a company may have saved on the cost of the forklift they end up losing through the added expense.

Electric Forklift Truck - Reviews

Now it’s not all good news when it comes to electric forklift trucks as they aren’t good in rain or areas where there is much water as this can short out the forklift. So it’s a strictly indoors vehicle unless it happens to be nice and sunny outside.

You may have needed to build a fuel storage area but for electric forklifts they also need an area setup in the warehouse for the charging and replacing of batteries. A good battery will only last around six hours on a good run  but takes a good eight hours to charge. You also have to leave them for several hours to cool down as well which delays their use further.

This means that batteries have to be replaced every shift which isn’t a problem but need to be counted into the overall running costs of using an electric forklift as one battery won’t do.

So those are a few benefits to running an electric forklift over other powered forklift trucks and should help you see the reasons why electric forklifts are used so much in warehouses today.