Site & Equipment Specific Training on MEWPs

Companies continuously change and improve to achieve high throughput while meeting customers’ online expectations of quick and accurate service. Equipment manufacturers have a solution. Inventory management and higher frequency order stocking and picking at low to mid height need a very agile order picking machine such as Hyster’s AP20Z, Yale’s AERO, TASK Sidewinder, Blue Giant BG1, JLG 10MSP, Genie Runabout, Crown Wave to name a few. 

I was asked if this equipment is trained on under OSHA’s PIT regulations or ANSI’s MEWP standards. As an OSHA outreach instructor as well as someone who has instructed hundreds of trainers and thousands of operators the answer to that question is simple, and if you have been in one of my classes, you already know what that answer is. Read the operator’s manual. Train on the contents of the operator’s manual and machine’s data tag.   

All the equipment mentioned in the opening paragraph have referenced the MEWP standard either in the operator’s manual, on the companies’ website or on the machine data tag.  Forklift trainers may feel they are class II order pickers and fall under the training requirements specified in OSHA 1910.178 (L) and a certification is issued. Aerial Lift trainers may feel they are aerial work platforms and need to train according to ANSI A92.24 and a safe use program must be established.  Trainers have even suggested certifying some employees as PIT operators and others in the same company on the same equipment as MEWP operators depending on their duties. I can see where this can get confusing.  

A new standard (ANSI ITSDF B56.15) not yet released may shine some different light on this when it is published.

For now, until the machines change, regulations change, or the manufacturers switch direction in the standards and regulations they follow when creating and identifying the equipment train on this equipment following ANSI A92.22 covering safe use and ANSI A92.24 covering training.

To set up a site-specific training program at your business or to train either your trainers or operators I can be contacted at Jeffrey.hauser@altg.com. Find solutions for equipment (sales, rental, service, repair), and warehouse (efficiency, automation, services) to increase your company’s throughput at www.altg.com.

Thank you & be safe.

Jeff