Toll Transport fined $40,000 over forklift incident at Burnie Port

Forklift ahoy! Toll Transport has been fined after an incident where a forklift fell into the ocean. The details.

Port of Burnie. Picture: Chris Kidd

The operators of a forklift that fell off a wharf and into the ocean – endangering the life of its operator – have been fined $40,000 by the Burnie Magistrates Court.

Toll Transport have been convicted and fined for a serious incident on the first of December 2020 at Burnie Port.

According to the findings of Worksafe investigation, released this week, a cargo ship owned by Toll Transport was returning to Burnie Port from Melbourne.

The cable operating the “fingers” of the ship’s loading ramp was broken and inoperable, and had been since the ship left Burnie three days earlier, Worksafe said.

The crew in Burnie attempted an alternative process that had been successful in Melbourne: using a forklift truck to guide the ship’s loading ramp as it was lowered to the wharf.

As the operator was attempting to guide the ship’s ramp, the forklift truck – which weighed approximately 36 tonnes – tipped over the edge of the wharf and into the water.

The forklift truck operator jumped out of the cab just before the truck went over the edge. While he was not injured, Work Safe found the risk of “serious injury” to the operator was high.

Forklift operator. Generic image.

Worksafe investigators also found the company had failed to take “reasonable steps” to avoid the incident and were also culpable for failing to conduct an adequate risk assessment, failing to ensure the forklift’s front wheels were chocked, failing to use a mobile crane instead of the forklift and failing to ensure their worker wore a personal flotation device.

Toll Transport entered a guilty plea in the The Burnie Magistrate’s Court this week of one count of failing to comply with section 32 (category 2) of the Work Health and Safety Act 2012.

Magistrate Topfer ordered the company to pay a $40,000 fine for the incident.

“The risk arising out of the hazard was the risk of death or serious injury as a result of the worker, whilst inside the Forklift, falling into the water and being injured, trapped or drowning,” the magistrate said in their sentencing remarks.

Work Health and Safety Regulator Sam Thompson said the incident was “significant”.

“This prosecution shows that WorkSafe Tasmania takes all incidents seriously — even those where no one is harmed. In this incident, the potential for the forklift driver to be injured, or even killed, was significant,”