Did Santa bring you a $20,000 new forklift truck for Christmas? No-well perhaps he brought you a $5000 second-hand one which needed a few thousand dollars spent on repairs in order to bring it up to scratch. Naturally of course, you couldn’t leave such a valuable forklift truck out in the rain so you’d have to find somewhere to garage it.
If a forklift was on your wish list for Christmas, but hasn’t turned up yet, then take heart, you are not alone. Many farms and small businesses often require a forklift capability to unload pallets from the back of trucks, for example, but do not want to spend the capital, or do not have the capital, to purchase a forklift truck.

If you already have a 4-in-1 bucket (so-called because its jaw-like bucket can function as a bucket, as a set of jaws, as a bulldozer and as a scraper), then help is now at hand. A recently invented device known as a “5-in-1″ enables a set of forklift tines to be attached to a 4-in-1 bucket.

The 5-in-1 device has an H-shaped configuration with the uprights of the H being constituted by the two forklift tines. Instead of having only one crossbar like the letter H, the 5-in-1 device has two parallel crossbars. The device lies on the floor of the 4-in-1 bucket with the tips of the tines in front of the bucket and facing forwardly. The rear wall of the bucket closes on the rear ends of the forklift tines to grasp and secure them.

The hydraulic system which controls the bucket can, in this way, now be used to control the tines which protrude from the front of the bucket. The tines can be slipped into a conventional pallet and both the bucket and the pallet raised by the hydraulic system. So if you own a front-end loader or a BOBCAT type machine with a 4-in-1 bucket, then there is no need to ask Santa for an expensive forklift truck. For approximately half the price of a second-hand forklift you can purchase a 5-in-1 device and achieve the desired forklift functionality.

Additionally, because the spacing between the tines of the 5-in-1 device is adjustable, the spacing between the tines can be set to the outside diameter of a 44 gallon (200 litre) drum. After slipping the tines just underneath the upper chime (or groove) of the drum, the drum can be lifted. In this way a drum of fuel can be lifted off the back of a truck and positioned exactly where you want it, before being lowered to the ground.

A major advantage of the 5-in-1 device is that it can be lent up against the wall of a shed when not in use, and so no expensive garage is needed. It can be easily fitted to the 4-in-1 bucket quickly and easily when next required. Most importantly, there is no need to make any hydraulic interconnections between the 5-in-one device and the hydraulic system of the front-end loader.
Also, because the hydraulics of the bucket control the tines, the tines can have their tips tilted upwardly to an appreciable extent. This can be very useful if you wish to go forwardly down a slope or ramp whilst carrying a pallet on the tines, because the upward tilt of the tines prevents the pallet sliding off the tines. With a conventional forklift, it is sometimes necessary to reverse down steep slopes in order to prevent the pallet sliding off the tines.

The innovative advance of the 5-in-1 device has been recognised by the Australian Patent Office granting both a patent and a registered design. The product is sold by the Fork Lift Attachment Group Pty Ltd in Sydney telephone 0458 188 511.