Buckle your seatbelt, keep all body parts inside the forklift perimeter at all times, and exceed no more than 5 miles per hour. If you break any of these rules you will be penalized. Of course, that's if you're participating in a forklift rodeo.

Instead of cowboys, lassoes, and recklessness, the second annual All-Ohio Forklift Rodeo, held during the Ohio Safety Congress & Expo (www.ohiobwc.com ), was all about safety.

Conducted by the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, Division of Safety & Hygiene, the rodeo consists of the top two winning teams from other regional rodeos throughout Ohio.

This year, 24 teams qualified. Each team has four people and one alternate. On sit-down counterbalanced fork trucks, each team has to complete 5 events.

Before the events, each team is tested on their knowledge of forklift safety. Based on how many of the 25 questions they answer correctly, time is taken away from the final score. However, a judge adds time onto the final score based on how many penalties occur during the event.

The top three teams and individuals with the lowest time are given trophies. This year's team winners are: Con AgraGrocery (www.conagra.com), KTH Parts Ind. (www.kth.net), and Morgal Machine Tool (www.mor-gal.com). Individual winners were: Dean Winks, KTH, and Jerry Schaeffer and Scott Bageant of Morgal.

"The goal of the rodeo is to promote the safe operation of forklifts to the 6,000 other attendees who come to the tradeshow," says Julie Darby Martin, the Ohio Safety Congress & Expo Manager.

The founding rodeo, conducted by the Springfield-Clark Country Safety Council, will have its seventh rodeo indoors on October 5 and 6. Last year 40 teams competed.