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Weight of a Forklift

earlypearl

Hot Rolled
Joined
Aug 21, 2004
Location
Pa
We have an older Allis Chalmers model F60-24 6000 lb capacity forklift (2 stage mast). We are trying to determine the weight and footprint weight.

A bldg. we're looking to buy only has a floor with a 4" slab and a 4" rock base. We don't want to damage the floor with an overweight lift. We may decide to buy something smaller but would like to keep the one we have because it's been so reliable for 20 years.

Case New Holland sells Allis Chalmers parts now, I have emailed them to get this information.

Can anybody take a guess on the weight?

Has anybody who has a 4" slab had any problems with putting too much weight on the floor?

Any insight would be appreciated.

TK
 
Our 5,000# Toyotas weigh almost 9,000# without load, or 14,000# with load. This taken at face value would put your 6,000# lift at 10,000# unloaded and 16,000# loaded.

Somewhere in that neigborhood.....
 
Most 6K capacity forklifts weigh about 10K as Shootist says. As to potential floor damage..dunno..depends on quality of concrete and reinforcement in slab. Less potential for damage if your truck is pneumatic tire. Worse that happens usually is a long crack, which ends up being more cosmetic problem than real problem.

I operated a 12,500 lb capacity forklift in the last little warehouse I rented, which weighed twice as much as your 6,000 machine. The truck sunk the asphalt at the outside edge of the concrete by an full inch over a period of 3 years. The floor did develop a long crack but didn't seem to get any worse. Could have been a 6 inch slab but I doubt it...probably 4 inch knowing the cheapskate owner and his intended usage of cabinet shop type business.
 
We have a 4000lb Allis/Chalmers forklift at work (1980 or so model). Empty weight is listed at 8000lbs+. I'd figure double the capacity on that one... 12Klbs give or take a grand.
 
While we are on the subject of forklifts, what is the smallest and lightest forklift that will lift 2500-3000lbs.?

Thanks

TMT
 
construction company behind my old body shop poured a 4 inch slab outside their maintenance garage for the machines that wouldn't fit in the doors. they would park huge dmag cranes and 84x cat dozers on this tiny little pad to do maintenance on them. complete with hydrulic jacks lifting them on the concrete and all. we asked them if 4 inches was thick enough to handle what they wanted to do. the owner told us when he was puring it that with the huge weights he was planning on putting on it, its the foundation that makes the difference. the concrete does nothing but make the foundation level and smooth. he must have been right because they used it for at least 6 years before they got a new maint facility and i never noticed any cracks.
 
the owner told us when he was pouring it that with the huge weights he was planning on putting on it, its the foundation that makes the difference. the concrete does nothing but make the foundation level and smooth
I'd have to agree with what he said. If the compaction and prep is good, a 4" slab will take a hell of a load. On the other hand, an 8" slab on poorly compacted soil will crack under its own weight as the underlying earth shifts and compacts over time. Everything in concrete design is focused toward keeping the material in compression. If that condition exists, the slab is far stronger than one would imagine. Several years ago we moved a bottle washing machine which weighed 68,000 out of an old Coca-cola plant here, riding on 4 caterpillar dollies and pulled with a forklift. As we went out the door onto an outside slab we werent sure whether the slab could stand the load or not, since we could see the edge of it and it was 4" thick. Didn't faze the slab. We loaded the machine using 2 50 ton cranes weighing 80,000 each, sitting on 4-24" diameter outrigger pads. Once they had the machine in the air, we had a total of 228,000# sitting on 8-2ft circles on a 4" slab, and another 40,000# of tractor and detachable lowboy sitting between the 2 cranes. No cracks in the slab whatsoever when we were done, and that would be about 90% due to the way the ground the slab was poured on had been prepped years before. With poor underlying soil, the slab woulda cracked if it had been 8" thick.
 
Thanks to everyone.

We'll probably need to do a core sample on the slab...just to be sure.

Sounds as though we can keep our forklift.

TK
 
If you can determine how much steel you have in there, you might be able to increase your comfort margin.


The reinforcement of the slab is probably the most significant factor in enhancing the bending strength of the slab. Reinforcing steel limits the amount of cracking in conrete and is the key contributor to tensile strength. Concrete is only strong in compression.
 
I have a triple mast 6000 Lb. Allis-Chalmers warehouse forklift. Hard tires. Listed weight is 12,000 Lb. Run it on nothing but 4" concrete, which is most likley no more than 3 1/2". been five years now and no cracks.
 
triple mast 6000 Lb. Allis-Chalmers warehouse forklift. Hard tires. Listed weight is 12,000 Lb
Must be shorter than a "normal" 6K truck...perhaps a "boxcar" model meant to manuver around inside tight spaces.

I have a 5,000 capacity counterbalanced standup electric forklift that is so physically small at casual glance you would think only weighs 5,000 lbs, but obviously due to being shorter than a normal sit down forklift it, by necessity must be heavier than one too. This "little" puppy weighs over 13,000 lbs !

www.schaeffinc.com/w50.htm
 
As several people have said, the subgrade is what makes the difference. For example, if you have a well compacted gravel subgrade, it wil not settle much even with no slab, because the concrete is not spanning a very long distance. OTH, if the subgrade is poorly compacted, then the concrete will have to span some distance, and will have much less capacity. As far as rebar goes, you need at least 1" of concrete on top of the rebar, and preferably 2". One does not know which way parts of the slab will be bending, so it is necessary to have rebar in both the top and bottom, to cover both cases. A 4" slab does not provide enough room for any signifigant reinforcement. What you are likely to have is 4" plain slab, over an unknown subgrade.

My firm was asked the same question by a client who needed to install a 20 ton granite surface plate for optical measurements. Not going through the floor was not good enough. I think their problem was keeping the surface plate from deflecting by fractions of a wavelength of light, but I am not sure. We had core samples of the floor, and the subgrade taken, to measure the strength. I don't think there was a problem, even though the floor was thin, but I think their budget was also thin, and the project was postponed.

Hope this helps.

Thermo1
 
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"Must be shorter than a "normal" 6K truck...perhaps a "boxcar" model meant to manuver around inside tight spaces."
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Yes, shorter and not as wide as a standard FL. Very compact and manuverable. Made for working narrow warehouse ailse. Mast fully extends to 20'. Propane powered. Has the wide heavy duty forks. Best $1000 I ever spent.
 
I will pour a slab soon and I will drive around on it with a forklift, so this discussion was very interesting to me.

Especially stressing the need for very good site preparation and compacting.

Here in Maine we like to put foam insulation underneath the slab so our feet will stay toasty. But if you do that, the 2" foam boards go over the prepared ground and the concrete is poured on top, you will inevitably create air pockets between the foam and the ground, hopefully not much but there will be some.

And if some of the posters here are right then that will already weaken the slab considerably.

So what is one to do in a situation like this??

Uwe
 
Should be around 12 to 13k empty weight, based on all of the 6k forklifts I have been around.
How many have you "been around" ? I've been around, and looked at the nameplates of, fifty or more 6k capacity forklifts over the years, and of all the standard length ones the empty weight was 9,200 to 10,500 lbs.

Just pulled out a Toyota brochure and weight of the 7 series, 6,000 lb truck is 9,580 lbs, CAT-Mitsubishi 6K pneumatic weighs 9,600 lbs, and the Linde 6K pneumatic I just bought weighs 9,300 lbs, for example. These are LP powered examples, a diesel engine will add another 800 lbs typically.

Solid tire 6K lifts sometimes weight even less. Reason being with smaller overall front tire OD the horizontal center of gravity can be more favorable. This is why those huge Hyster and Taylor lumber yard type lifts are such pitiful capacity for their physical size compared to compact solid tire trucks, as the Hysters have, by necessity of their "in the mud" useage, large front wheels/tires and therefore increased HCG due to greater distance from wheel center to back of forks.
 
on a similar note but different. What is the Lightest machine that you can get that can be used for lifting small machinery that a home shop person would tend to have. For example bridgeports, southbend lathes to say 16", grinders, that sort of stuff? Can this be done with one of them walk behind deals like a big joe?
 
steel, assuming by "lifting" you mean "lifting high enough to set a machine on/off a truck", the bottom line is the lightest *counterbalanced* lifting device is going to typically weight at least 1.5 times whatever you are wanting to pick up.

The only way to get lighter than that is to add length (which is the opposite of what you want in a small shop), or use something that is not counterbalanced or not fully counterbalanced, with "legs" projecting out in front.

Problem is that the legs often get in the way of the base of what you want to pick up. I've toyed with the idea of designing some sort of motor powered lightweight crane over the years, where the legs would be easily adjustable for width apart from each other, but just haven't "done it" yet.

The forklifts one sees mounted at the end of lumber trucks are the lightest commercially available forklifts for their capacity. And the legs are far enough apart for most machine shop use. The catch is they are rarely if ever, LP powered, and they are ungodly expensive for their capacity...even the used ones command a premium due to hot building supply/construction market.

Having said all that, if by "lifting" you mean "just enough to move something around the shop" then the lightest device is rollers/skates or a pallet jack.
 








 
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