The second time a safe slammed my finger, I wasn’t in a firefight. I was loading a gun safe for a customer and thought I could muscle it instead of slowing down and sliding it into the truck bed. One bad angle, one shift in weight, and my finger was between several hundred pounds of steel and the truck.
The day the safe won
It started like a lot of “easy” jobs do: I had done this before, I was in a hurry, and I wanted to keep the customer happy. The safe was heavy, awkward, and just a little more than I should have been trying to manage with the setup we had. Someone stepped in to “help” without a plan, grabbed the safe at the wrong time, and the load moved in a way I did not expect. My hand was exactly where physics decided to teach a lesson, and my index finger paid for it. Hand and finger crush injuries like this are common when heavy loads shift unexpectedly, especially around truck beds, door frames, and narrow spaces.
How a simple “helping hand” breaks fingers
The problem was not bad intentions. The problem was no control. There was no clear leader on the lift, no agreed‑upon commands, and no rule about who touches the load and when. When someone suddenly adds force or changes the angle on a heavy safe, the center of gravity shifts and pinch points open and close in an instant. In those moments, fingers become the softest, closest thing between solid steel and another hard surface. Pinch‑point injuries like this are one of the most frequent ways workers injure hands and fingers when handling heavy materials.
What the second broken finger taught me
Breaking one finger should have been enough. The second time made the message impossible to ignore. The lesson was simple: if I do not control the lift, the plan, and the communication, I am volunteering my body for someone else’s mistake. Now, there is no loading a safe for me anymore, where it starts, where it ends, how we move it, and who calls the shots, not anymore. Before any lift, roles are defined, the path is checked, and everyone knows: no one touches the safe unless the person in charge says so. Clear planning and communication like this are standard recommendations in safe manual handling guidance for heavy objects. I am the example of what can happen if you don’t.
New rules for moving heavy safes
From those injuries came a few hard rules:
One leader, one voice
Every lift has a single person calling commands, up, down, stop, and hold. No one else makes a move or adjustment on their own. This prevents surprise pushes or pulls that cause sudden load shifts and crush injuries.
Hands where steel cannot trap them
Fingers never go under edges, in door gaps, or in any place where the safe can roll, tip, or slide against a hard surface. If the safe can move there, hands do not. Keeping hands clear of known pinch zones is one of the simplest and most effective hand‑safety practices.
Use tools, not just muscle
Dollies, lift straps, bars, and other handling tools are not optional when the weight and shape say they are needed. Human strength is inconsistent; leverage and wheels are not. Using proper material‑handling equipment is a key control for both crush injuries and overexertion.
“No plan, no lift”
If the setup feels wrong, the angle is bad, the path is tight, or the person “helping” does not listen, the job pauses. The safe does not move until the plan makes sense. Stopping work to reassess when risks are high is a core principle in many workplace safety programs.
Why tell this story at all
This is not a story about a bad customer or a bad store. It is a story about what happens when heavy steel, tight spaces, and good intentions meet no real plan. The broken finger is the price paid for assuming “we’ll just muscle it” would be good enough, twice. If this post does anything, it should give one person loading a safe, a cabinet, or any heavy piece of equipment a moment of hesitation before they let “help” touch the load without a clear plan. That one pause, one conversation, and one set of rules might be the difference between a normal day and a second broken finger. Workplaces that invest in planning and clear communication around manual handling see fewer of these preventable injuries.
Stay safe out there!
Yard 2 Yield! 