The Material Handling Blog

In a climate of rising costs, it’s important to uncover the solutions that will save you both time and money. That brings us to the question: How can I combat rising costs and positively impact my TCO (total cost of operation)? The answer is to improve the efficiency of your material handling operations.

The struggle to keep unnecessary costs to a minimum is always important for materials handling professionals. But when economies slow down and business is disrupted, like during the current COVID-19 crisis, using your resources efficiently becomes even more vital.

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.

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.

When purchasing new forklift trucks, it's tempting to get caught up comparing different options on the purchase price alone. The graphic above should hopefully show you why that's not the best option. 

The UK is scheduled to leave the EU at 11pm UK time on Friday, 29 March 2019, although if all 28 EU members agree it can be postponed.  As a business, do you want to postpone your materials handling operation?  

When the time to purchase new forklifts comes, the focus is always on costs. This makes sense — no-one in business would want to spend money unnecessarily, and if a machine can do the job, then the lower the cost, the better.

When procuring new forklift trucks, it may be tempting to go for the machine with the lowest purchase price.

However, trying to get the most for your money based on this single cost is the wrong approach. The truck's sticker price is one thing, but a much bigger share of the costs that will come with your forklift during the time you own it, come after the purchase, during its operation.