Four Cardinal Safety Rules for Material Handling: What You Need to Know 

If you work in material handling, safety cannot be treated as just another checklist item. 

Quickly moving heavy loads with heavy machines, such as forklifts and access equipment, while your team members operate them or work nearby means a single lapse can result in significant injuries, downtime, financial loss, or worse. 

In order to help mitigate these risks, there are four cardinal safety rules for material handling that every operation should follow. 

These are not comprehensive safety rules but should be your core non-negotiables designed to serve as the foundation to protect teams from the most dangerous situations. Break them, and the consequences can be catastrophic. 

“These are the things that can lead to serious injury or death,” says Jesse Pruden, Burwell Material Handling COO. 

Just as importantly, your teams need to know that there will be repercussions for not following any one of the rules at any time. 

“If a rule is violated — whether or not anyone gets hurt — there’s going to be an investigation,” Pruden says. 

Together with visible modeling from leadership, job hazard analyses, and a shared feedback loop of near-miss reporting and incident bulletins, these four cardinal safety rules will help keep your teams safe and avoid costly losses. Here’s what you need to know: 

 

The Four Cardinal Safety Rules

1. Lockout/Tagout (LOTO)

Always isolate and lock out energy sources, including hydraulic, mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, or gravity, before servicing or maintaining equipment. OSHA 29 CFR 1910.147 mandates it to prevent injury from the release of stored hazardous energy. 

2. Fall Protection

Maintain 100% tie-off when working at heights, in compliance with OSHA 1926.502(d) fall protection standards. The ANSI A92 standards also require the use of personal fall protection for boom lifts, defined as Group B Mobile Elevating Work Platforms (MEWPs). 

3. Safe Driving

Defensive driving, seatbelt use, and elimination of distractions are essential for safe operation. Vehicle and forklift incidents remain one of the most common and deadly hazards. 

4. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

Wear the PPE identified during a job hazard analysis (JHA), per OSHA 1910.132. PPE must be viewed as the last line of defense only when hazards can’t be engineered out or eliminated entirely. 

 

How to Put the Four Cardinal Safety Rules into Practice

Adopting cardinal rules is more than posting them on the wall. The organizations that succeed in embedding them into daily operations need to build and enforce a safety culture that upholds them.  

This means empowering your entire team with ownership and accountability to identify, call out, and alert others to safety risks. Mistakes will happen, but negligence cannot be tolerated. It’s important that everyone takes individual responsibility to maintain the safety of all. 

“Regardless of who the safety manager is, if everybody doesn’t own it, your organization’s safety will never be where it needs to be,” Pruden says.

Here are some of the items that should exist in a safety culture that supports the four cardinal safety rules:  

• Stop-work authority: Employees must be able to halt unsafe work without fear of repercussions. Emphasize that anyone has the power to do this at any time.
   

• Near-miss reporting: Create an easy, non-punitive way to log near-miss events, which are any unsafe events that could have led to an incident but didn’t, so hazards are addressed before they hurt someone. This could be something as simple as an extension cord that was a trip hazard.
   

• Daily safety minutes: Start meetings with a 60-second safety reminder. These can flag important reminders or share recent near-misses or safety incidents. Over time, these safety minutes help reinforce good habits.
   

• Job Hazard Analyses (JHAs): Require teams to assess their jobs and sites for hazards at the beginning of every job and reassess and update when conditions or the scope of work changes. Eliminate any identified hazards as a primary step whenever possible and develop processes for working safely around any that remain.
   

• Investigate violations: When cardinal rules are broken, review whether it was negligence, lack of training, or missing resources — and take corrective action. 

Best-Practice Checklist for Your Facility 

• Post the four cardinal safety rules at every entrance, break room, and job trailer. 

• Train supervisors on Stop-Work expectations and how to document interventions. 

• Embed a JHA form in your work-order system (make sure it’s mobile friendly and can include photos). 

• Launch an anonymous portal where employees can easily report near-misses. 

• Schedule a quarterly “cardinal rules” review — this should take less than 30 minutes. 

• Track rule violations separately from other safety metrics to spotlight high-severity behaviors. 

The Payoff for Operations 

When enforced consistently, the four cardinal safety rules help operations: 

• Protect people from the most serious risks. 

• Reduce downtime and costs tied to accidents. 

• Build trust with team members, customers, and partners by demonstrating a strong safety culture. 

“You have to get to the point where your teams do things safely because they want to, not just because they should or merely to be in compliance,” Pruden says. “It should become second nature.” 

Need help building out your material handling operation safely? Contact your Burwell Material Handling specialist today. 

 

FAQ: Four Cardinal Safety Rules in Material Handling 

What are the four cardinal safety rules? 

Lockout/Tagout, Fall Protection, Safe Driving, and PPE compliance. 

Why are they called “cardinal” rules? 

Because they address the situations most likely to cause serious injury or death if ignored. 

How can an organization apply these rules? 

Start by adopting them as non-negotiables, train employees on them, and investigate any violation to understand and correct the root cause. 

What builds a culture around the rules? 

Stop-work authority, near-miss reporting, daily safety minutes, and consistent job-hazard analyses (JHAs) help turn rules into habits. 

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