Laravel uploaded image fires a 404 Not Found error - file-upload

Question

I've written a Laravel 5.3 app that uploads an image and saves its details to the database. When I used it on localhost, everything worked fine. As soon as I uploaded it to Forge, all images uploaded via the app return a 404 code instead of displaying the image.
Some details:
The new files are uploaded correctly. I can access them via console and ls -l the files.
The new files have the same permissions and owner as the files I have uploaded via local and then pushed to the server. The old files (those pushed) are showing. The new files (those newly uploaded) are giving 404.
The new files and the old files have an identical URL structure. That is, they both go to /storage/uploads/file_name.jpg
The upload code:
if($image = $request->file('image')) {
$file_data = [];
$file_data['path'] = $image->store('uploads', 'public');
$file_details = pathinfo($file_data['path']);
$file_data['url'] = 'uploads/';
$file_data['filename'] = $file_details['filename'];
$file_data['extension'] = $file_details['extension'];
$file_data['is_image'] = 1;
$file = new File($file_data);
$file->save();
$data['image'] = $file->id;
}
Help, please!