Video of the Week: Can You Flip a Coin with Your Forklift?

In this week’s Video of the Week, we ask an intriguing question: Can you flip a coin onto one of the forks of your vehicle?

This man can. He’s Ronald Khoo and he’s a forklift instructor from Singapore with more than 20 years’ experience.

This video shows Khoo flipping a Singapore 20-cent piece — about the size of a US quarter — from a cement warehouse floor onto the fine of his forklift, using only the pressure and weight of his fork and an unbelievable amount of control.

But that’s not all: After the coin lands on the fork, Khoo gently shakes it so that it is balanced at the end then drops it into a five-gallon gas can.

Yet Khoo is still not finished with his impressive forklift tricks. He also picks up a dime-sized coin and drops it into a soda pop bottle. Now, THAT’S incredible!

This video went viral after it was posted on the Facebook page of Singapore Labor Chief Chan Chun Sing. It already has more than 83,000 views and 1,000 “Likes” since it was first posted about a month ago.

World-Famous Forklift Operator

Now Khoo finds himself one of the world’s most famous forklift operators, as people all over the world marvel at his skill.

Khoo told Channel News Asia that he developed the trick about 10 years ago as a training tool for the forklift operators he trains at Singapore’s NTUC LearningHub. The purpose of the exercise is to teach students how to control the pressure of their forks with pinpoint accuracy and to control the speed of the lever in order to move the coin to the edge of the fork so that it can be dropped into the container.

Making Learning Fun

Students learn how to adapt to different types of situations and cargo, according to Khoo.

Another training trick he uses is the “Figure 8”, in which students must pick up a crate containing a ball sitting on top of a cone then drive their forklift around obstacles without disrupting the ball. Khoo said he personally learned this trick from a “Japanese master” when he himself was a forklift operator trainee back in 1993.

Khoo said the coin flip trick and the “Figure 8” are ways to make forklift training more interesting and exciting, even impressive. He said students sometimes get bored with old-school training methods, so he looks for ways to make it fun and memorable.