The articulated answer
June 26th 2006

The ability to load like a counterbalance machine combined with a capacity to work comfortably both inside and outside and within very narrow aisles, has established the articulated forklift as a popular choice with truck specifiers.

Narrow Aisle Flexi has been at the forefront of Articulated and Very Narrow Aisle Truck design and production for the best part of three decades with its eponymous Flexi forklift.

“Until the Flexi was introduced, companies had little alternative but to operate a two truck system with a counterbalanced machine working outside feeding a reach truck inside the warehouse,” says John Maguire, Narrow Aisle Flexi’s Sales & Marketing Director. “With the arrival of the Flexi users realised that they could eliminate this often costly and generally inefficient arrangement. The Flexi loads and unloads lorries and delivers pallets directly to the racking in a single operation. By doing so, it increases efficiency and productivity while abolishing double handling."

Maguire continues: “To be competitive, profitable and successful, a company’s logistics operation has to be consistently efficient and reliable, therefore it is essential that the solutions offered by materials handling equipment suppliers are of the highest standard. Increasingly, we find, that manufacturers are seeking new solutions to their handling and storage problems.

"Articulated forklift trucks – such as the Flexi G3 – can increase pallet storage capacity by anything between 30 and 50 per cent. So it’s easy to see why more and more companies are using them.”

The Flexi’s front wheel drive format, combined with its clear fork visibility, allows drivers to stack and retrieve loads from within the storage aisle at up to 40 pallets per hour. According to Maguire, this level of efficiency is unsurpassed by any other articulated truck model on the market and is close to the efficiency achieved by counterbalance forklifts which is some way ahead of traditional moving mast reach trucks.

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