The Material Handling Blog

Even if a forklift is developed to be as safe and ergonomic as possible, it can still be a dangerous tool if not used correctly. Almost all businesses that deal with materials handling will have a safety policy, but a busy, fast-moving warehouse will always be an environment where safety is highly important.

Fortunately, warehouse work can be made much safer when some basic rules are followed closely, and potentially risky practices are completely avoided. This list is a long one, but here are a few basic rules which are important to remember in your daily work.

Sometimes, only the smallest change is needed to make a big difference to your materials handling operation — especially when it affects such a time-consuming operation as order picking (which is also the most expensive process in the handling chain).

For order pickers who spend their working days walking along aisles, removing items from the racking and placing them onto pallets on their trucks, an additional feature as minor as rising forks could have huge benefits — both to their health, and also to their efficiency and productivity.

A forklift's sticker price is an important figure, but it's often smaller than the much larger set of costs which arise over the truck's lifetime from things like service, driver costs and financing.

One major cost that every materials handling professional wants to avoid is the cost of downtime. This occurs when the truck is out of operation at a time it would otherwise be in use — typically when it has broken down and needs maintenance.

Creating an effective materials handling operation is hard, and it's even harder if you have to deal with different supplier for your forklift trucks, fleet management solution, service and rental. Even with smaller fleets, juggling different suppliers can be tricky, and it means you have less time to deal with the most important thing — your operation.

That's why choosing a supplier that can offer all of these services at the same time is a good choice. Regardless of your materials handling issue, you have one point of contact at one company — not a network of suppliers who have to get involved.