Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My review will be a little bit different than most peoples, but I feel this is important for people looking at pallet forks. I received these last Friday the 18th and put them on my 1997 Ford/New Holland 1720 tractor 4x4 with a 7108 bucket so that I can move steel H beams and 6"x8"x6' timbers for a retaining wall I'm building. The forks I bought are rated at 1500#'s which is about 500#'s more then my tractor is rated to pick up with the bucket, so just about perfect. The 20 H beams are 7' long and weigh 175#'s a piece, so I loaded up 4 on the pallet forks (700#'s total weight of steel) and headed down the slight hill in my pasture to the pallet where they will be closer to where the retaining wall is being built. As I was going down the hill the tractor started going to my left and the rear started to swing around so that I was now sideways on the hill and the tractor was going nose first into the ground. I jumped/got launched to the left as it was going over and got shot into the back of the bucket that was now on the ground. The tractor did not roll over as I expected and was still up in the air being held up by the forks and right front tire. I had the wind knocked out of me and sore as hell the next day, but nothing broken and no stitches. I got real lucky. Like play the lotto lucky. What went wrong? Me being stupid is the simple answer. Loading 700#'s of steel, or whatever on those forks and not adding some type of ballast to the rear of the tractor was stupid. The other major problem was me pulling down on the loaded handle expecting it to lower the forks when down is up, and up is down on most tractors. If it didn't tip forward I probably would have 1-4 175# beams coming right at my face due to my lack of experience with frontend loaders. I have close to 200#s of wheel weights on the rear and I don't think that even if I had a liquid ballast in the tires that would have made much of a difference in my situation. This weekend a 55gal barrel will be full of concrete and attached to the rear of my tractor. The forks did not bend or deform while holding up my 4000lb tractor for 20 minutes and it took me about 10 minutes to install them on the bucket and get them hooked up to my chains. They worked great and I have no qualms telling people that they are great for the price and are easy to install. *Update* I've had these now for four years and they are doing great and I'm still alive. I've added 500lbs of rear ballast to the tires and now hook up a six foot brush hog when doing any heavy lifting. We use these all of the time for picking up welders, 4x4x8 bales of hay, picking up trailers, and anything else you can think of. Neither one is bent and for the most part are still level but that could be from the bottom of my bucket being dented now. The only two things that I would change is the height of the handles so that I'm not loosing anymore skin off my knuckles, and a larger pad on the rearmost part of the forks that contact the bottom of the bucket. Just a little narrow for my taste by nothing that I can't fix with a little bit of welding and a 1/4" piece of scrap plate.