Fact-finding tools to help determine when to retain, reallocate, replace, or remove your lift truck

By John Rosenberger, product and program manager for iWAREHOUSE GATEWAY and Global Telematics, The Raymond Corp.

It can be a daunting task to track and analyze individual truck and operator hour meters, use rates, and repair and maintenance fees. In addition, tracking these numbers can cost you and your workers a lot of time. Fortunately, it’s never been easier to enhance your fleet’s productivity and profitability, as there are time-saving web-based tools that can do all the tracking, analyzing, and reporting for you. Best yet, much of the work can be done from your office with a few clicks of a button.
In Part 1 of our fleet-replacement blog post series, we addressed questions to ask when determining if it’s time to replace your truck. Now we’re going to examine two tools that can help you make fact-based decisions — rather than assumptions — to more efficiently determine when your trucks need to be replaced.

Tool 1: Maintenance monitoring

When you’re deciding whether to replace a truck, there are two key factors to consider: which machines are operating the best (high utilization, low maintenance costs) and which are costing the most to operate. In a typical five-day, two-shift workweek, it’s common for a lift truck to operate for roughly 40 hours. If that truck is down for a day or even a few hours, that’s lost productivity — and revenue.

Read the entire article in PlantService.com here.