The Material Handling Blog

Battery changeover is a necessary pain for most operations that use electric trucks. Changing the battery involves removing the forklift from its ordinary operation and taking it to a purpose-built battery changeover area or a larger battery room. Here, the extremely heavy spent battery must be removed and connected to the charger, and a new battery removed from the charger and connected to the truck.

Special equipment is required to make the battery change possible, like a battery roller that can push the new battery into the compartment while pushing the old one out, or a specially-adapted pallet truck with an attachment designed for handling batteries. On top of all this, lead-acid batteries require regular fluid top-ups, cleaning and maintenance to work effectively and safely, and ventilation systems are essential to stop the build-up of explosive hydrogen gas produced during charging.

With all of these factors to consider, it's unsurprising that Li-ION batteries are becoming a popular energy solution for forklifts.

Even the most well-constructed, stable reach truck will experience mast tilt when stacking at high heights. When you're lifting hundreds of kilograms many metres off the ground, it's impossible to avoid the mast tilting and swaying back and forth when it reaches the correct height.

The traditional lead-acid forklift battery is a tried-and-tested technology that is still being improved, and it's still the most common source of power for electric forklifts. However, there's still not a solution for the regular maintenance these batteries require to keep working at their best.

For one, lead-acid batteries need to be topped up with water regularly. When this type of battery is charged, the fluid inside it dissociates into oxygen and hydrogen gas, which results in the fluid level dropping. If it drops enough, the lead plates are exposed to air, and begin to oxidise. This can cause permanent battery damage, and it's one of the main reasons that batteries become defective early.

Lithium-ion, or Li-ION batteries are everywhere these days — in your smartphone, in your laptop, possibly even on your bicycle or in your car. However, they're probably not in the forklift trucks your company uses for materials handling.

As you know, forklift drivers come in all shapes and sizes, and a cabin that feels good and fits perfectly for one operator may be completely wrong for another.

It’s obvious that comfort plays a huge part in ensuring safety and keeping productivity high. So why shouldn’t you treat this as a priority? Especially when you consider that the driver takes up the majority of a truck’s total cost of operation.

In an ideal world, all unit loads would held on standard pallets, in uniform weights and sizes, allowing for easy handling with all kinds of forklift. Unfortunately, that's not the real world - and in many warehouses, standard pallets are the exception.

Many types of goods - for example, pipes, construction materials or metal sheeting - are often quite long, and impossible to fit neatly onto a 1,200 by 800mm pallet. These loads can be difficult to get down warehouse aisles, even if they aren't particularly narrow.

Cantilever racking, as shown in the illustration above, solves the storage problem - this kind of racking is open-fronted, meaning there are no vertical bars to block the placement or removal of long goods.

But when you need to move these goods down an aisle, how do you get around the space problem? The simplest and most versatile solution is - with a multi-directional truck.

Owning and operating a forklift truck naturally involves many different costs. There's naturally the upfront cost of the machine itself, or regular payments if it's financed, as well as costs for routine or avoidable service and maintenance, and downtime.