Versatility means earlier doors
August 1st 2009 A Combilift 4-way forklift with a raft of customised features is making light work of
materials handling at Garador's production facility in Yeovil, Somerset
The "very clever forklift" as Production
Director Uwe Ruffing calls it, has
replaced two diesel powered
counterbalance trucks and one electric 4-
way forklift, rationalising and speeding up
the handling of raw materials, through to
the dispatch of the finished product –
domestic garage doors.
Garador's range, which is supplied to
customers throughout the UK and Ireland,
includes steel, timber and GRP Up and Over
garage doors in single and double sizes. A
wide variety of materials with varying
weights and dimensions therefore needs to
be offloaded and moved around the Yeovil
site. Finished doors can be up to 5m long
and 2.5m high, but a special clamp
designed by Combilift secures them from
above and below for stable transportation
from the production line to cantilever
racking in the storage area, and back out
for loading onto delivery vehicles with the
C4000 electric powered Combilift model.
Telescopic forks fitted to the truck allow
incoming raw materials such as 5m long
stillages of steel profiles to be offloaded in
the delivery bay from just one side of the
vehicle, and they can then be taken directly
to racking to be stored until needed. This
has considerably improved efficiency, as
the previous system involved offloading
with a counterbalance forklift outside, then
transferring the loads to the electric 4-way
truck, which was only suitable for indoor
operation. The disadvantages associated
with this double handling prompted Uwe to
look for a more streamlined system, and
the Combilift's proven versatility lent itself
perfectly to Garador's requirements.
The semi automatic clamp used for
handling finished doors is fitted to the
centre of the fork carriage, and is manually
opened when needed by an operator. It can
then be raised or lowered from controls in
the cab to fit the size of the doors being
carried. Hydraulic fork spreaders, which are
again operated from inside the cab, allow
quick adjustment of the fork width for
varying load dimensions.
The new cantilever racking installed in the
13,500m2 warehouse has been configured
according to the 4-way capability of the
Combilift, which has enabled aisle-widths to
be kept to a minimum for considerable
space savings in this area. Uwe comments:
"If we were still working with the old
counterbalance truck we would have
needed 6m wide aisles." Excellent
manoeuvrability also enables exact
positioning of materials at the machining
facilities in the manufacturing area.
When it comes to distributing the
finished product, the loading of 60 doors
onto one HGV is also a much quicker
procedure as the Combilift's 4t capacity
combined with the telescopic forks enables
five doors to be loaded across the bed of
the truck in one manoeuvre.
Ruffing says reliability, safer handling
and less product damage are further
benefits of the new system. More articles from Combilift Limited: | 
