An industrial truck (2) and a method for operating the same. The industrial truck includes a load fork (4), a fork back (6) and a plurality of fork arms (8a, 8b), each of which include an arm tip at a free end and an arm root arranged on the fork back. The industrial truck includes a load carrier detection system for a load carrier (20, 30, 40) to be transported, which includes at least one spacing distance measurement sensor (14) provided on the load fork that is configured to detect a spacing distance between the load carrier and the fork back, and one or more monitoring sensors (10, 12) provided on the load fork configured to monitor a predetermined measurement region on the load fork. A processing unit for the sensors is configured to determine a reception of the load carrier picked up by the load fork.