Warehouse Ergonomics Failure: Worker Killed When Unstable Pallet of Bottled Water Collapses

On May 13, 2022, at about 5:00 a.m., a 39-year-old warehouse worker in California was acting as a forklift spotter near the end of a night shift. He was assisting a forklift operator who was moving double-stacked pallets of cased bottled water. The pallets were shrink-wrapped and stacked to a combined height of about 9.5 feet. As the operator attempted to remove the top pallet, the forklift forks struck part of the wooden pallet, causing it to shift and tilt backward slightly. While the operator repositioned the forks, the spotter […]