An electric pallet truck with a 2000 kg or 3000 kg rated load and a 24 V DC traction battery falls under the EU Machinery Regulation 2023/1230, which replaced Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC for new placements after January 20, 2027, and a packaging-warehouse deployment also touches the Low Voltage Directive 2014/35/EU, the EMC Directive 2014/30/EU, and the Battery Regulation 2023/1542 [S1].
For Spirit SEP-20 and SEP-30 reference units, the certification-relevant numbers are 2000 kg and 3000 kg at 600 mm load center, 250 mm and 125 mm lift, 85 mm lowered fork height, 1400 mm tiller height, 4.5-6 km/h no-load travel, 4-5 km/h full-load travel, 8-10% gradeability, 24 V / 1.2-1.3 kW drive motor, 24 V / 2.2 kW lift motor, and 24 V / 210 Ah battery at 650-700 kg truck mass [S1].
Which standard governs an electric pallet truck in a packaging warehouse
EN ISO 3691-1:2015 + A1:2020 is the type-C safety standard for industrial trucks and is the primary citation auditors expect on the Declaration of Conformity for any pedestrian-propelled or ride-on pallet truck used inside a warehouse [S1].
EN 1175:2020 covers the electrical requirement on the truck itself, and any 24 V DC control circuit, contactor, or onboard charger must be evaluated against it; pallet-truck documentation routinely pairs EN ISO 3691-1 with EN 1175 and EN 16307-1 for functional safety [S1].
For the battery pack, IEC 62133-2:2017 applies to portable lithium cells, and UN 38.3 (UN Manual of Tests and Criteria, Rev. 7) is the shipping-test regime that the same pack has to clear before it can be moved by air, sea, or road into the warehouse [S1].
What the audit team will physically inspect on the truck
Nameplate data on a compliant truck must show manufacturer, model, serial number, year of build, rated load Q in kilograms, load center C in millimeters, maximum travel speed with and without load, the 24 V traction system voltage, and the battery capacity in Ah; the Spirit SEP-20/SEP-30 nameplate dataset of 2000/3000 kg at 600 mm, 24 V / 210 Ah, and 4-5 km/h full-load speed is a clean fit against the EN ISO 3691-1 nameplate schedule [S1].
The 24 V / 2.2 kW lift motor and 24 V / 2.0 A onboard charger together define the low-voltage boundary; under EN 60204-1 / Machinery Regulation 2023/1230 Annex I, the truck's electrical equipment has to be designed and built so that hazards from electric shock, fire, and electromagnetic disturbance are avoided, which is why the CE technical file has to bundle the EMC test report (typically EN 61000-6-2 / EN 61000-6-4) alongside the LV report [S1].
The forks, marked 1150x160 mm (SEP-20) and 1220x160 mm (SEP-30) with a 570 mm or 680 mm outer spread, must carry a permanent fork-marking stamp showing capacity, fork-arm class, and the truck's serial; EN ISO 3691-1 paragraph 4.3.3 treats unmarked forks as a non-conformity during the periodic warehouse inspection [S1].
Who this checklist applies to and who it does not
This walkthrough covers pedestrian electric pallet trucks up to roughly 3000 kg rated load running on a 24 V battery, the segment that the Spirit SEP-20/SEP-30 represents and that dominates the order-picker and dock-feed lanes of a packaging plant [S1][S2].
It does not cover ride-on counterbalanced forklifts, reach trucks, or order pickers on a separate chassis; those are governed by EN ISO 3691-1 in the same family but with a wider clause set and additional visibility / fall-object structural tests [S3].
Stackers and straddle-leg pallet trucks sit on the same family of standard, but the load-curve calculation is different because of the mast, so a packaging-warehouse buyer that also runs a 1000-1600 kg walkie stacker should not reuse this checklist verbatim [S1].
Comparison of the four certificate gates a pallet truck has to clear
The four gates line up against the four main risks a warehouse audit watches: mechanical safety, electrical safety, energy storage, and electromagnetic compatibility [S1].
Gate 1, mechanical safety, is EN ISO 3691-1:2015/A1:2020, evidence is a third-party type test on the actual truck model, and the common failure is missing or non-anchored load-backrest on the fork carriage [S1].
Gate 2, electrical safety on the truck, is EN 1175:2020 plus the Low Voltage Directive 2014/35/EU, evidence is a test report covering the 24 V control circuit and the 24 V / 2.2 kW lift motor, and the common failure is using a non-CE onboard charger without a separate EU declaration [S1].
Gate 3, battery, is IEC 62133-2:2017 plus UN 38.3 plus Battery Regulation 2023/1542, evidence is the cell UN 38.3 summary plus the Battery Regulation carbon-footprint and recycled-content disclosure that took effect in 2024 for industrial batteries above 2 kWh, and the common failure is a 24 V / 210 Ah pack shipped without a 38.3 test summary that the carrier can verify [S1].
Gate 4, EMC, is EN 61000-6-2 and EN 61000-6-4 under EMC Directive 2014/30/EU, evidence is the laboratory test report, and the common failure is a DC motor controller that radiates above the industrial Class A limit when the truck is plugged into the wall-box charger [S1].
Real use-case: a packaging-line dock in a 2000 m² warehouse
Take a 2000 m² packaging hall with two dock doors, four packing benches, and one stretch-wrap station; the duty cycle is 80-120 pallet moves per shift over a 30-50 m one-way distance, mostly with euro pallets at 400-600 kg payload [S1].
The Spirit SEP-20 is rated for a 2000 kg load, has a maximum travel speed with full load of 4-5 km/h, is equipped with a 24 V / 210 Ah battery, and has a maximum climbing ability of 8-10% [S1].
For a 24/7 operation, the 3000 kg Spirit SEP-30 with 12x2 / 210 Ah battery pack doubles the energy budget to roughly 8-10 hours per charge and the larger 1900 mm turning radius and 1500 mm wheelbase keep the truck stable when it pulls 2000 kg of finished goods across the dock plate [S1].
Limitations, failure modes, and what a buyer should verify on the certificate
EN ISO 3691-1:2015/A1:2020 has a stability test on a slope, a braking-distance test with full load, and a noise-measurement clause; the 8-10% gradeability on the Spirit spec sheet is the maximum static ramp the truck can climb, not the sustained operating slope, and a packaging buyer that runs the truck on a 6% dock ramp for 8 hours a day should ask the supplier for a duty-cycle confirmation [S1].
A second common failure is the operator-presence tiller switch; EN ISO 3691-1:2015/A1:2020 requires the truck to de-latch travel within roughly 0.5 seconds of the operator releasing the tiller, and this is one of the first tests an HSE auditor will run when the truck is commissioned [S1].
When verifying a supplier's certificate, the packaging-warehouse engineer should match the model code on the Declaration of Conformity against the nameplate (SEP-20 vs SEP-30 are distinct type approvals), confirm the notified-body four-digit number is current on the EU NANDO database, and check that the EN ISO 3691-1, EN 1175, and EN 61000-6 reports all share the same serial number as the chassis plate [S1].
How this checklist links to the wider packaging-line equipment chain
The same 24 V DC architecture and the same 8-10% gradeability logic show up in a walkie stacker and in a powered conveyor, so the EN ISO 3691-1 / EN 1175 / IEC 62133 stack is a good template to carry across to a packaging machine and to a vacuum packaging machine on the same line, where CE / Machinery Regulation compliance and a packaging material specification chain all sit in the same audit binder [S1].
For the dock-feed end of the line, the truck's 24 V / 20 A charger and 24 V / 210 Ah battery sizing line up with the spec culture used for the electric actuator on a downstream valve and the electric ball valve on the clean-in-place loop, both of which run off similar low-voltage DC rails and carry the same CE / LV / EMC evidence stack [S1].
A packaging-warehouse engineer ready to act should request the four-file bundle (DoC, EN ISO 3691-1 test report, EN 1175 test report, UN 38.3 battery summary) from the supplier before purchase, and confirm that the 2000 kg or 3000 kg rated load, 600 mm load center, 24 V / 210 Ah battery, and 24 V / 2.2 kW lift motor match the nameplate of the truck that physically arrives on the dock [S1][S2].
See also our earlier report, Air Pick Selection for Road Maintenance: Spec Gates and Compressor Match.