On 22 October 2025 we published a commentary on a recurring problem in automation discussions: treating gross salary as the entire cost of a forklift operator. The topic concerns employer contributions, the organisation of shift work and the assumptions behind an AGV business case.
Original commentary and illustration
The illustration on this page belongs to the historical publication. It is not a current salary benchmark or a quotation for an AGV deployment. Read Bogumił Zięba’s original LinkedIn post.
The original material referred to bialecki.pl, pomoc.ifirma.pl and hrappka.pl. Those references describe the provenance of the commentary; the assumptions and official contribution sources used in our worked calculation are stated in the guide below.
Where to find the detailed calculation
The forklift operator cost guide for 2025 contains the payroll breakdown, a single exchange-rate assumption, overhead scenarios and the distinction between released employee time and cash savings.
The guide applies the 20–30% overhead scenarios to employer cost including contributions, not to gross salary alone. It also explains why overhead items cannot simply be added together and why two shifts do not automatically mean two positions replaced by one robot.
This page remains the dated record of the original commentary. The full calculation is maintained in the guide so there is one consistent set of assumptions.
Supporting material: Original source ↗