Abstract: It appears that on the evening of February 5, 1994, Employee #1, a maintenance mechanic for the Atlanta Coca Cola Bottling Company, was trying to clear a pallet jammed on a fork car from the left side of the car, where there was only an 8 in. clearance. As a result, the employee was crushed at mid-chest level between the left fork car mast and the frame of a palletizer. He was facing toward the back of the machine and leaning slightly forward and to the right with his left arm toward the conveyor and his right arm outside the machine. The fork car control panel was in the automatic mode and two pallets remained on the infeed conveyor. Employee and management interviews revealed that the bottom pallet on a stack would frequently become jammed by the forks on the fork car and that the employees would routinely clear the jammed pallets by hitting or moving the pallet. This was generally done without changing the machine's mode from automatic to manual. The coworker who found Employee #1's body stated that they were waiting to change over to the adjacent palletizer and that was probably why Employee #1 was at the machine. There were no witnesses to the actual accident, but circumstances support the coworker's statement. The position of Employee #1's body when discovered also supports this finding. Why he would have been clearing a jam from the left side instead of the right is unknown; if he had been on the right side, he most likely would not have been injured. Most employees stated that they would have cleared the jam from the right side of the car because there was more room. With the forks jammed against the pallet, 1,350 psi of hydraulic pressure would have been trying to push the cart forward and when the jam cleared the pressure would have been released and the cart would have moved forward rapidly, crushing the employee.