Justifying tailor-made trucks
March 1st 2010 While specialist trucks can greatly
enhance operations, Hubtex sales
and marketing manager Jim
Hammond argues care should be
taken to ensure it is the right option.
A 20 tonne steel section 10 metres
long can easily be picked up by a
large counterbalance truck but it
requires a lot of space and questions
over it's safe operation could be
asked. This has to be balanced
against the extra cost of designing
and producing a tailor-made
handling solution.
A company with a handling issue
of such size will find the best
solution is talking to a manufacturer
used to providing a solution to
similar problems. Time is also very
important. It can take many weeks to
create a solution in concept and a
sensible guide to cost is important at
the earliest stage for both customer
and supplier as much time can be
wasted otherwise in development if
the cost is never going to be justified.
Take a dedicated picking platform,
for example. The cost of such a truck
is known through similar
applications and balancing this with
the expected customer benefits at
stage one determines whether the
concept will be cost effective.
If the project goes forward from
here, Stage Two consists of detailed
investigation. An example of the
importance of accuracy here is
simple. If a fork truck dealer
provides a customer with say a 2.5
tonne counterbalance truck with a
4500mm duplex mast and a low
door height has been missed, the
truck can be changed very quickly,
even if at someone's cost. However, if
a hybrid truck has been specified
wrongly, the truck may need to be
scrapped and the cost to whoever
may be far more than the truck cost
to produce. An example of a
successful specialist truck is the
Container Destuffer. It unloads a full
trailer from the rear lifting 12,500kgs
at 4,000mm load centre.
In summary, only through
intelligent planning and research is
there a good chance of a solution
being found for anything awkward to
handle. However, with expert
guidance improvements in the way a
product is currently being handled is
possible - enabling better safety and
greater efficiency. More articles from Hubtex (UK) Ltd: | 
