Operate machinery and heavy equipment, such as forklifts.

“Operate machinery and heavy equipment, such as forklifts.” is a supplemental task performed by Team Assemblers. Among the occupation's 11 rated tasks, workers place it 1st by importance (#11 most important). About 43% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Operate lifting or moving equipment. in Controlling Machines and Processes

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E0. No direct exposure — current language models give little or no time savings on this task.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.00. Automation potential label: T0.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Perform quality checks on products and parts. · importance 4.6
• Review work orders and blueprints to ensure work is performed according to specifications. · importance 4.4
• Provide assistance in the production of wiring assemblies. · importance 4.2
• Maintain production equipment and machinery. · importance 4.2
• Rotate through all the tasks required in a particular production process. · importance 4.2
• Complete production reports to communicate team production level to management. · importance 4.1
• Determine work assignments and procedures. · importance 4.0
• Supervise assemblers and train employees on job procedures. · importance 3.9
• Package finished products and prepare them for shipment. · importance 3.9
• Shovel, sweep, or otherwise clean work areas. · importance 3.7

See all tasks on the Team Assemblers page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-20164,
  title  = {Operate machinery and heavy equipment, such as forklifts.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-20164}
}