There is no single figure, but the National Safety Council puts the average total cost of a medically consulted work injury at $48,000 and of a work death at $1,540,000, based on 2024 data. Direct costs include medical treatment, workers' compensation, and repairs to the truck, racking, doors or product. Indirect costs are often larger: lost production while an area is closed, investigation time, temporary labor to cover an injured worker, possible OSHA penalties and higher insurance premiums. A collision with no injury still costs money in damage and downtime. Track both kinds, because frequent property-damage collisions show where an injury collision is likely to happen.
The full guide is The business case for forklift safety technology, which sets out the cost of incidents and the returns from prevention. National averages frame a business case, but your own claims and damage records carry more weight with a budget holder.
To estimate your figure, total several years of forklift-related damage invoices, claims paid and reserved, downtime hours valued at your operating cost, and management time spent on investigations. For who carries legal responsibility after an incident, see Forklift accident liability.