Forklift Drum Attachments

Forklift Drum Attachments Buying Guide

The forklift does the work, and the drum never leaves the truck. Everything here mounts to the forks or the carriage and rides the lift truck; the drum never hangs free in space the way it does under a crane. That is the line between this collection and its neighbors. Gear that hangs a drum from a hoist or crane hook is drum lifting attachments, and wheeled gear that keeps the drum at floor level is drum dollies and carts. A forklift attachment earns its place when a lift truck already travels where the drum needs to go, because then the cheapest drum handler in the building is the one that bolts to a truck you own. From there the fork attachments split by verb: grab and carry a sealed drum, lift one below the hook, or turn and pour to dispense.

Grab and carry: MORSPEED handlers and drum grabbers. The workhorse is a clamp that grips the drum against the carriage and carries it upright. Morse's MORSPEED line does this: the fork-mounted MORSPEED 1000 handler from about $1,003 grips a steel drum at 1,000 lb, and the carriage-mount MORSPEED 1500 from about $1,264 raises that to 1,500 lb. Valley Craft covers the same job at a lower entry, a steel drum grabber from about $409 at 1,500 lb, a universal grabber near $595, and a plastic drum grabber around $758, both at 1,000 lb. Drum material decides the grip. A jaw shaped for a rolled steel chime can slip on a poly drum that flexes and tapers, so match the grabber to the drum you run, and when a plant mixes steel and plastic, the Morse MORSPEED for fiber, steel, and plastic drums from about $1,650 handles the whole floor with one tool.

Below the hook, on the forks. Some drum work still needs a hook, and a fork-pocket lifter puts one on the truck. The Morse custom drum lifter with fork pockets from about $1,140 slips onto the forks and picks a drum at 1,000 lb, and the heavy-duty version near $3,630 doubles that to 2,000 lb for dense product or two-drum picks. The Morse 284 series fork-mounted hook from about $155 is the simplest of these, a 2,000 lb hook that lets the forks sling a load they cannot enter, and Vestil's multi-purpose overhead forklift drum lifter near $455 grabs a drum for overhead moves. Every one of these is a below-the-hook lifting device under ASME B30.20, so it carries a marked rating, a check before use, and a periodic inspection, the same discipline as the hoist-hung tools in drum lifting attachments.

Turn and pour: dispensing without leaving the seat. The attachment that pays for itself fastest lifts a drum and then tilts it, so one operator charges a tank, tote, or hopper from the seat. Morse builds these across a wide range: a manual turn-and-pour attachment from about $1,057 at 800 lb, an extra heavy-duty 2,000 lb turn-and-pour near $2,441, and a power-tilt handler around $5,015 that spins a full 1,500 lb drum under motor control instead of a hand crank. Valley Craft's powered drum attachment near $4,495 runs on 12V and rotates a 2,000 lb drum the same way. Choose a pouring attachment only when the drum actually gets dispensed in the air. If it pours at a fixed station, a dedicated rack in drum pourers and rackers is steadier and cheaper, and if the goal is blending sealed contents, that is drum rollers and tumblers.

Rotators and positioners: dumping a drum and laying it down. Two smaller jobs round out the forks. A rotator inverts a drum to empty it: the Vestil forklift drum rotator for steel 55 gallon drums from about $777 cradles the drum and turns it over to dump the contents, useful for spent solvent or scrap material that goes straight into a container. A positioner lays a drum on its side for horizontal storage or tap dispensing without a manual roll, and the Vestil horizontal drum positioner from about $410 handles that at 650 lb. For heavier racking, the Morse Omni-Lift 405 series drum rackers near $4,080 pick a drum, carry it, and set it into a rack at 800 lb. Match each to the drum weight it actually sees, and remember that a rotator carrying a partly full drum has a shifting center of gravity worth respecting on the turn.

The mount, the derating, and the paperwork. Two specs govern how any of this bolts on. Fork-pocket models slip over the forks and pin in place, quick to swap; carriage-mount models like the MORSPEED 1500 hang on the carriage for a more rigid, permanent setup. Either way the attachment changes what the truck can lift. Its own weight comes off the rating, and clamping a drum out past the fork face pushes the load center further out, which cuts capacity again, commonly 10 to 15 percent before the drum is even counted, under the load-center math in ANSI/ITSDF B56.1. Read the truck's data plate against the attachment before buying, not after. OSHA 1910.178(a)(4) also requires the truck maker's prior written approval for attachments that affect capacity, and 1910.178(a)(5) requires the truck be marked with the combined weight of truck and attachment at maximum elevation with the load centered. That is the same paperwork behind every rig in forklift truck attachments, and it is what an inspector checks first. The rest of the drum room lives in drum handling equipment.