05.06.2009

Scissor alert

With big scissor lift utilisation not quite what it was, many rental companies have units in their yards and are increasingly using them as high level advertising hoardings.

Prompted by a notice from the IPAF Rental Plus committee we thought it might be an idea to alert people to the dangers and risks of doing this. Certainly a big rough terrain scissor lift with its high capacity husky build is very stable piece of kit.

But put a massive banner on the guardrails and raise it to full height and there is a risk that should a gale blow up it could go over. Unlike a boom lift an empty scissor lift is actually less stable than a fully loaded one.
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An extreme example, but a big banner will pull a raised scissor over when it blows a gale

The general rule is that you do not apply big banners to the guardrails of raised machines. The stability calculations simply do not allow for it, if you are going to do something like this, banners can be produced on porous stock, similar to that used as scaffold netting. Or machines can be fitted with an anemometer to warn when wind levels rise.

However the safest solution is simply not to do it.