The forklift coaching session we run every Tuesday
Every Tuesday at 7:30 AM, every forklift operator in the building does fifteen minutes of focused practice. It's the most useful fifteen minutes of our week.
On Tuesdays at 7:30 AM, every forklift operator at the Rockford yard does fifteen minutes of focused practice. It's not training — they're all already trained. It's practice. Like a basketball team running drills before a game.
How it started
Mateo, our refinishing supervisor, ran a small experiment in late 2023. He noticed that on Tuesday mornings, after a weekend off, our operators were measurably less smooth in their first hour back. Boxes got bumped slightly more often. Stacks were a hair off-center. Nothing safety-critical, but nothing crisp either.
He proposed: what if we did fifteen minutes of skill practice every Tuesday before the regular shift started? Eli said yes immediately. We tried it for four weeks. It worked. We never stopped.
What we practice
Each Tuesday session has a focus, and the focus rotates roughly six-week. Sample focuses we've run:
- Precision pickup at variable heights (from floor to 84 inches)
- Tight-radius turns in narrow aisles
- Single-pallet placement with a one-inch tolerance to a marked target
- Stacking sequence on a four-tier load
- Backhand reverse turn with an extended load
None of them is fancy. All of them are routine motions that get marginally better with focused practice.
Why it works
Three reasons it works. First, it's fifteen minutes — short enough that nobody resents it. Second, it's collective — every operator does it, which makes it social rather than punitive. Third, it's measurable — we count drops, off-center placements, and other small misses, and we can see them trend downward over time.
Inside six months of starting the practice, our minor-damage rate at the yard dropped by about 40%. That's not millions of dollars in savings, but it's also not nothing — and it costs us no money, just fifteen minutes.
The takeaway
Most coaching in manual operations focuses on the brand-new hire. We learned that the experienced operators benefit from coaching too, if it's lightweight, regular, and respectful. The Tuesday session is one of the things we'd be saddest to give up if we had to.
Related field notes.
Mateo joined us in 2019 from a completely unrelated industry. The interview was forty minutes and one wrong question. We almost didn't hire him.
Read →Our routes have names like "Joliet Loop," "Wisconsin Long," and "Michigan Wedge." There's a quiet logic to it. There's also some history.
Read →Magnolia, Carlton, Hazel, Pete, Sergeant. The yard runs five trucks. They've all been named. There's a reason — sort of.
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