UNITED KINGDOM / AGILITYPR.NEWS / October 12, 2026 / This week marks Back Care Awareness Week, the annual campaign run by the charity BackCare to bring focus on the scale of back pain across the UK - and the practical steps workplaces can take to reduce it.

Midland Pallet Trucks says that for manufacturers and warehouses across the Midlands, one of the most immediate and achievable actions doesn't involve a training course or a change in culture - it simply means looking properly at the equipment staff are using every day.

Back pain remains one of the most common reasons people miss work, and manual handling is consistently one of its biggest contributing factors in industrial and warehouse settings.

Midland Pallet Trucks sees the same pattern time and again: businesses investing heavily in training and risk assessments, while the equipment actually doing the lifting, pushing and moving stays unreviewed for years, working against everything the training is trying to achieve.

Phil Chesworth, Managing Director at Midland Pallet Trucks, said, "Awareness weeks like this are genuinely useful because they give businesses a reason to stop and look at something they'd normally put off. Back pain isn't seen as an emergency the way a single injury is: it builds up slowly, and that makes it easy to overlook until someone's already struggling.

"Before anything else, look at the pallet trucks, stacker trucks and lift tables your team are using. Are the handles at a reasonable height? Does it roll smoothly, or does it need a shove to get moving? Is it rated properly for what's being loaded onto it? None of that needs a big budget to fix, but it makes a genuine difference to the physical toll on whoever's using it, shift after shift.

"We're not saying equipment solves everything on its own: training and good practice matter too. But if a business hasn't properly reviewed its handling equipment in a while, this week is as good a prompt as any to do it, rather than waiting until someone's already dealing with a bad back."

For more information, visit https://www.midlandpallettrucks.com.