About CertifyMeOnline.net

Why this exists

In 1999, Tom Wilkerson was running a safety training business the traditional way — driving to job sites, standing in front of crews, filling out paperwork by hand.

The problem was never that employers didn’t care about safety. It was that compliance training was built for large companies with training departments. A contractor with six people and one scissor lift had two options: pay a consultant several hundred dollars a head, or lose a full day to a rental company’s class. Most did neither, and then hoped nobody got hurt or inspected.

CertifyMeOnline.net exists to remove that choice. The classroom portion of OSHA-required lift training is the same whether it’s delivered in a conference room or on a phone in a truck cab. Moving it online drops the cost to $75 and the time to about an hour — and puts the documentation in your hands the moment an operator passes.

What we do, and what we don’t

We deliver the formal instruction portion of OSHA-compliant aerial and scissor lift training, plus the documentation employers need on file.

We do not deliver the hands-on evaluation, and neither does any other online provider. OSHA requires a qualified person to watch each operator run the specific machine at the specific worksite, then sign off. That has to happen where you are, on your equipment.

We say this plainly because the alternative is worse. An employer who believes an online course alone makes them compliant is exposed — to a citation, and to the consequences of an operator who was never actually evaluated. We’d rather sell you an honest product than a comfortable story.

So: we supply the course, the test, the certificate, the operator card, the wallet card, and the evaluation checklist. You supply the evaluator. If you don’t have one, we’ll train them.

What we won’t say

A few claims are common in this industry. We don’t make them.

“OSHA-approved” or “OSHA-certified.” OSHA does not approve, accredit, or endorse training providers, and it doesn’t issue operator licenses or cards. No company can be OSHA-approved because the status doesn’t exist. What OSHA requires is that the employer certifies each operator.

“Certified for any job site.” A training record travels with an operator. An evaluation doesn’t. A new employer is responsible for confirming competence on their own equipment, and a careful one will run their own sign-off.

“Instant certification.” You can finish the coursework in about an hour. Certification isn’t complete until someone qualified has watched the operator work.

Being straight about these is not modesty. It’s the difference between documentation that holds up and paperwork that doesn’t.

The company

CertifyMeOnline.net is a brand of CertifyMe.net, Inc., founded in 1999 and based in Phoenix, Arizona. We’ve been delivering online OSHA training since before most of our competitors existed.

Founded: 1999
President: Thomas V. Wilkerson
Address: 720 E. Flynn Ln., Phoenix, AZ 85012
Phone: (602) 277-0615
Email: info@certifymeonline.net

BBB Accredited since 2008 · Rating A+

We cover aerial lifts, scissor lifts, boom lifts, telehandlers, cherry pickers, and fall protection. Forklifts and other powered industrial trucks are handled by our sister brand, CertifyMe.net.

Who’s behind it

Thomas V. Wilkerson — Founder & President

Tom founded CertifyMe.net, Inc. in 1999 and has led it since. He built the original forklift curriculum, and the aerial and scissor lift programs that followed, around a single question: what does an employer actually need in a file when an inspector asks?

Before moving training online, he delivered it the traditional way — on site, in person, for companies that could afford to shut down for a day. That experience shaped the product more than anything else. The evaluation checklist exists because employers kept asking what they were supposed to hand over. The free lifetime renewals exist because operators kept losing certification over a lapsed date rather than a lapsed skill.

Tom Wilkerson LinkedIn

How we keep this accurate

Regulatory content decays. Standards get revised, penalty amounts adjust annually, and OSHA issues interpretation letters that change how a rule is read in practice.

Our courses and the regulatory guidance on this site are reviewed against the current text of 29 CFR 1926.453, 1926.454, and OSHA 1910.67. When a standard is revised, we update the course, not just the marketing.

We also publish our sources. Where we state a regulatory requirement, we cite the section it comes from, and where we describe an industry practice rather than a legal requirement, we say so. Those are different things, and conflating them is how employers end up confidently non-compliant.

Found an error? Email info@certifymeonline.net. We’ll check it, correct it if you’re right, and tell you either way.

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Tom’s Story

Back in 1991 I was a rigger. My own boss. I’d started a business on the belief that I could handle complex machinery moving, millwright work, and crane services. I got lucky, found some genuinely talented people, and grew a nice little company — DMX Group Inc. Industrial Contractors — which I ran until 2001.
At our peak we had seven large forklifts, from 7,000 to 30,000 lb capacity, and we routinely rented equipment with 100,000 lb lifting ability. We moved semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Extremely large, extremely heavy, extremely expensive. In clean rooms, no less.
Then in 1999 I got a letter in the mail.
It was from my liability insurance carrier. There was a “new” OSHA rule about operator training, and the letter was blunt about what it meant for me: you have all these machines, and under the new rule you must document training for anyone who operates them. If your operator isn’t certified under OSHA’s guidelines and they do something stupid, we’re not paying the claim.

I called my insurance guy. Sure enough. Now what?

So I called a company I rented from occasionally. “Come on down, we’ll put you through an all-day class and sell you the videos so you can train the rest of your guys to do what they’re already good at.” Then he sort of gargled the price. Fourteen hundred dollars.
I’m thinking: are you kidding me? My guys performed in the forklift Olympics every day. We weren’t moving a pallet of breakfast cereal.
I went anyway. Actually learned a few things. But the instructor said something that stuck with me — the classroom portion of the requirement didn’t have to happen in a classroom. It could be delivered by video, by DVD, or by interactive computer learning.

Light bulb moment

What about the internet? We decided early on that whatever we built had to do two things: solve a real problem, and be so easy to use that it’s like taking aspirin for a headache.
We got the program built, debugged, and live. I think it was a Friday. About two hours later, our first order came in.
That was CertifyMe.net. The aerial and scissor lift programs came later, for the same reason and in the same shape — customers kept asking, and the problem was identical. A crew with one scissor lift shouldn’t have to lose a day and several hundred dollars a head to prove they know how to run it safely.
I never wanted to be the Everything-OSHA-Outfit. I’d rather be genuinely good at a handful of things and make sure one of them is customer service. When something goes sideways for a customer, we treat it as another chance to get it right — even the simple stuff, like where’s my card and when does it ship.
That’s still how we run it to this day.

Tom Wilkerson
Founder, CertifyMeOnline.net