Video of the Week: An Avalanche of Beer

A forklift operator at a Brazilian brewery took an unexpected beer shower recently when he accidentally caused several full pallets of beer cases to topple and explode around his vehicle while attempting to drop an imbalanced load.

Fortunately for us, some of his co-workers captured the incident on video with their smart phone and we are able to share this beer waterfall as this week’s Video of the Week:

https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c00_1426026643

This epic fail began as the driver attempted to use his forklift to drop a pallet of beer cases on top of a pallet stack that stood approximately 30 feet tall. As the video shows, in the moment before he made his ill-advised move, his coworkers attempted to shout a warning to the driver. But it was too late.

The tines of the forklift toppled the imbalanced load, causing case after case of the bubbly brew to crash to the warehouse floor and explode, causing a pool of sudsy foam to surround the vehicle.

From Bad to Worse

But rather than cutting his losses, the driver apparently decided to double down on disaster by attempting to back up his forklift so that it was out of way of the cascading cases of beer.

As it turns out, this was a bad idea.

The move caused dozens of more cases of beer to fall from their pallets, creating an even bigger mess.

The driver apparently was unhurt in this accident, according to “SoulRoots”, the person who posted the video on the website LiveLeak.com.

Commenters Have a Field Day

Not surprisingly, after the video was posted, commenters on the website had their fun mocking the poor driver. Many called him names while others called for him to be fired. One poster criticized the forklift operator for “alcohol abuse”.

Another stated that “once he gets chastised in his boss’s office later, at least he won’t be asked why he smells of alcohol.”

One commenter, however, offered this sensible advice:

“Once you’re in that position, it’s best just to turn the forklift off, get a ladder and take the pallet down crate by crate,” wrote the poster who goes by the moniker “Tardvark”. “I learned it the hard way. Years ago, someone from the shift before me had stacked pallets of compressed cardboard badly, right in front of the piples leading to the LN2 tank. The guy came to fill up the tank that night and I was the only one there to move the pallets and a pallet fell right onto the L2N pipes.

“The refill guy jumped back in his truck and left me,” the poster continued. “Don’t blame him, to be honest. Luckily, the warning sign took the bulk of the weight and no pipes broke.”

 

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