A plastic conical 55 gallon storage drum apparatus is disclosed. The drum includes a generally cylindrical hollow container having a top portion, a mid portion, and a lower portion. The top portion has an outer diameter which is larger than an outer diameter of the mid portion, and the lower portion wherein the top portion and the bottom portion form a cylindrical shape, and the mid portion forms a conical shape. An elastic flexible removable bumper belt can be located about the outer diameter of the lower portion of the drum. The belt has an outer diameter approximately the same as that of the outer diameter of the top portion of the container. Filled drums can then be stored side by side together during transportation and reducing the possibility that the drums will tilt and collapse during extreme lists of approximately 30 degrees or more. The belt itself can be removed and stored in the inside bottom of the drum when the contents of the drum have been emptied. Further, the conical shapes of the drums allows for the stacking of the drums when the drums have been emptied of their contents. The elastic belts can be preformed into a ring shape from resilient material such as rubber and the like, and stretched about the lower portion of the container. Alternatively, flexible loops can be incorporated to hold the belt in place. A still another embodiment includes interspersing flexible link portions together with inflexible portions to form the belt and using a latch fastener to connect the belt into a loop shape for attachment about the lower portion of the drum.
Drum lifting attachments for allowing forklift trucks to be able to raise and lower 55 gallon storage drums. A first embodiment includes a drum lifting attachment having two pairs of arcuate lifting arms positioned side-by-side to allow for lifting two 55 gallon plastic drums simultaneously. This embodiment includes a pair of arcuate arms for each drum. A rotatable rectangular flap can fold-down over the portion of the side-by-side connection between the two pairs of arcuate arms inorder to allow for the lifting of a different diameter sized drum. Optionally, the fold-down flap can have arcuate shaped sides. Optionally, plural flaps of increasing sizes can be folded down to adjust for the different diameter drums. A second embodiment includes a forklifting attachment that includes four sets of arcuate arms for allowing four 55 gallon drums to be able to be lifted simultaneously. The drums to be lifted in include standard 55 gallon metal drums, 55 gallon conical drums and drum sizes of varying diameters. Each of the embodiments include attachment couplers for hooking about the standard parallel forks of a forklifting truck. The drum lifting attachments can be formed from galvanized steel, stainless steel, and combinations thereof. The lifting attachments are able to lift and lower two drums and four drums simultaneously.
