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Plant and machine operators, and assemblers · code 8344

Lifting truck operators

Lifting truck operators drive, operate and monitor lifting trucks or similar vehicles to transport, lift and stack pallets with goods. Tasks include - (a) operating and monitoring lifting truck and similar equipment to load and unload, transport, lift and stack goods and pallets in terminals, harbours, warehouses, factories and other establishments; (b) positioning lifting devices under, over, or around loaded pallets, skids and boxes, and securing material or products for transport to designated areas; (c) inspecting equipment to identify wear and damage; (d) performing routine maintenance on vehicles and equipment; (e) keeping records of work undertaken and breakdowns of vehicles. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Forklift truck driver

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 140 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • forklift operator

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

80.2
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 19.8 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 19.8 = 80.2

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

69.7
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 3 US jobs

36.6
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 37.5 · hand skill 38 · cramped spaces 34.3 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4 Hands-on, less fiddly work

Less fine handwork and fewer cramped spaces than a typical hands-on job. That clears one hurdle for machines. It doesn't mean machines are doing this work yet.

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

This number is probably too high

This score only looks at AI tools like chatbots. It doesn't look at robots at all — and this job rates 69.7 out of 100 for how hands-on it is, which is exactly where robots come in.

Have a look at the tasks below and judge for yourself. The ILO scored them low because a chatbot can't do them. Whether a machine with hands could is a different question, and we can't answer it yet.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 37.8, while the average is 19.8. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 37.8

    Keeping records of work undertaken and breakdowns of vehicles.

    Low
  2. 15.5

    Operating and monitoring lifting truck and similar equipment to load and unload, transport, lift and stack goods and pallets in terminals, harbours, warehouses, factories and other establishments

    Very Low
  3. 15.5

    Inspecting equipment to identify wear and damage

    Very Low
  4. 15.3

    Performing routine maintenance on vehicles and equipment

    Very Low
  5. 15

    Positioning lifting devices under, over, or around loaded pallets, skids and boxes, and securing material or products for transport to designated areas

    Very Low

5 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

AI helps you
53
AI does it for you
18

Helping wins by 35 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 7213

Compared with similar jobs

There are 39 jobs in the “Plant and machine operators, and assemblers” group, averaging 80.1. This one is above that.