In this blog, we will discuss a few of the most common attachments for forklifts! This is by no means an exhaustive list, but we feel that these are some of the most useful, versatile, or helpful forklift attachments on the market.
1. Side Shifters and Fork Positioners
These are two different attachments, but both allow the driver to affect the positioning of the fork. This cuts down on any time manually adjusting the forks, and allows for faster loading and unloading of pallets. The Side Shifter attachment will allow the operator to make small, side to side adjustments for more accurate fork positioning. The Fork Positioners allow the forks to be moved closer or further away from one another, making them effective at picking up odd sized or differently shaped objects and pallets. Both of these attachments are very commonly included when you buy or rent a forklift, as they are just so useful.
2. Clamps
We’ve talked about clamps before. There are a number of different kinds of clamps (Paper Roll Clamps and Carton Clamps being two of the most used) which can allow your forklift to gently handle large objects that aren’t loaded onto pallets, and can’t be picked up with the traditional forks. The Paper Roll Clamp forklift attachment is used to handle very large rolls of paper (big surprise, we know!) such as newspaper prints, paper manufacturing, and tissue manufacturing. They clamps are very gentle on the paper, and are designed to be rotated 360 degrees. Carton Clamps are used to grip large, usually durable plastic boxes which hold the cargo.
3. Single-Double Pallet Handlers
The Single-Double Pallet Handler Forklift Attachment is incredibly useful, in that it allows you to handle two pallets side by side! You can see how this could potentially double the productivity of your forklift fleet. When you don’t need all four forks, the forklift attachment can be brought together again to create a traditional two fork forklift, fit for single pallet handling.
Like we mentioned, there are tons of forklift attachments. Some are incredibly specialized, and applicable only to small markets. Those we’ve listed above, we feel are very useful for a wide variety of businesses and projects.