I’ve found that if you Google “forklift tricks,” your results can be filed into two categories.

The first is “guys picking up quarters with a forklift.”

The second is “guys doing some REALLY stupid stuff.”

But that’s just scratching the surface of the potential for forklift stupidity (although that quarter thing is actually pretty cool).

Let’s take a look at a few people who should probably NEVER be allowed to operate a forklift again. Ever.

Fired employee steals forklift, tries to use it to flee cops

This is the tale of Javier Villasenor-Arreola an East Chicago man who decided to celebrate his 43rd birthday the way any stable person would: by getting drunk and stealing from his former employer.

It all started when said former employer was getting ready to head home for the day and noticed Javier hanging around outside the office. This was concerning, considering that Javier had been fired just a couple weeks prior.

He decided to take a quick trip around the block, only to return to find a broken front window, an open garage, and an extremely intoxicated Javier driving away on a forklift.

Here’s the thing about forklifts: They’re good for a lot of things, but evading the police is not one of them.  A crippling lack of speed combined with a distinct inability to blend in makes for a pretty ineffective getaway vehicle (Source: video games).

Apparently, this was wisdom that had never been passed on to Javier.

It didn’t take long for police to identify and apprehend him. The final charge tally: felony burglary, theft, and aggravated DUI, and a damaged property misdemeanor.

Happy birthday, bud! Next time, maybe go for something a little faster, or something that fits in your pocket.

Or, you know, just don’t steal from former employers.

Warehouse worker tries to use forklift to dislodge candy bar from vending machine

It’s happened to all of us at some point. You put your money in the vending machine, select a candy bar, the coil starts to turn, the candy bar starts to fall, aaaaaand…

Oh, sonofa-…freakin’ thing got stuck!

MAN, that is frustrating. You paid some of your hard-earned money for a candy bar and now it’s just hanging there  mocking you!

So you start banging on the machine over and over again, trying to dislodge the darn thing. But does that ever really work?

That’s when you usually slink away in shame and defeat to go steal some candy off of the receptionist’s desk.

But for Robert McKevitt, a warehouse employee in Milford, Iowa whose Twix bar got stuck, that’s when he decided that he wasn’t going to take it anymore.

After rocking the machine back and forth a few times, McKevitt took the next logical step.

According to his (now former) supervisor, he fired up the forklift, drove up to the machine, lifted it a couple feet, and then dropped it. When that didn’t work, he did it again. And again. And again.

If that seems like a good idea to you, then you’ll probably be surprised to hear that McKevitt was fired a few days later.

No word on if he ever got the Twix.

Guy driving forklift flips BMW, drops dumpster on it

This guy…I don’t even know.

The fact that this actually happened is almost impressive.

Earlier this month, Redditor dreamsryche posted this picture on the St. Louis subreddit (basically just an image/message board, for all the uninitiated out there).

If you can’t tell what you’re looking at, or if you just don’t feel like clicking on any links today, that is a picture of the Broadway and Convention Plaza intersection in St. Louis, MO. Sitting in the intersection is a fire truck and what appears to be a flipped-over car with a growth coming out of it.

That’s half right. The growth is actually a dumpster. Yup, an upside down BMW with a dumpster on top of it. St. Louis, you’re crazy.

But what does this have to do with a forklift?

Everything.

While his car was still right-side up, the BMW driver was reportedly driving through the intersection when a guy driving a forklift carrying a dumpster decided that it was a good time to make a left turn.

See where this is going?

The forklift crashed into the BMW, flipping it over. The force then pushed the dumpster off of the forklift, after which it landed like a dainty butterfly on top of the overturned BMW.

There’s not a lot of info on the aftermath of this bizarre scene, but it appears that the driver of the BMW was conscious and taken to the hospital for treatment, while the forklift driver was cited for failing to yield at a left turn.

The bottom line is that a forklift is a very powerful piece of equipment that is usually being operated around other people. Always observe proper forklift safety, and you’ll avoid having some smart-ass blogger call you an idiot.

Oh, and you’ll avoid killing someone. Which is good.

“Forklift Driver Training In Warehouse” by Mark Eslick is licensed under CC BY 2.0