24 WESTERN PALLET
2024 Focus on Forklifts
Welcome to our 2024 Focus on Forklifts. Nowadays, forklifts are manufactured with ergonomics, safety, productivity, sustainability and cost of ownership firmly at the forefront. We reached out to two leading industry veterans to provide an update on forklifts for the wood products sector. Dan Kossow, is Director of National Accounts & Heavy Duty Sales at Toyota Material Handling and Rick Warren is Director, Major Accounts, Hyster Company. Here are the highlights of those conversations.
Telematics time?
There is increased interest in telemetry. Telemetry for forklifts is a digital technology that collects and transmits data on the performance, usage, and condition of forklifts in real time. This information allows for enhanced operational efficiency, preventive maintenance, and safety improvements by monitoring various aspects such as speed, location, fuel consumption, and operator behavior.
“Telemetry is not a particularly new technology for forklifts, but these systems have not necessarily been fully embraced by this industry segment,” Warren explained. “The insights that telemetry and fleet data can unlock can help operations choose the right equipment, balance their fleet, optimize truck utilization and protect their investment.” For instance, utilization proficiency data can enable operations to right-size their fleet and optimize workflows by analyzing the efficiency of individual equipment and operators.
“Telemetry is certainly not a new word in the industry,” Kossow added. “What makes Toyota special in this particular regard is we took a different approach in a couple of different ways. One, we felt that every forklift should have standard telemetry. It certainly is an option for a lot of industry products but it typically is a third-party option sold through the manufacturer, or maybe it's added by the dealer or even the end user themselves after the fact. Toyota launched standard telemetry this year on its core products.”
The Hyster® H30-40A is shown at left. The H30-40A and H40-70A forklifts, models from the A Series, are attractive options for wood pallet manufacturers or recycling operations because these highly configurable forklifts allow the customer to easily fine-tune the truck to their specific application and industry. Source: Hyster