Material handling has always been a major challenge for many businesses across different industries, thanks to heavy and robust looking machinery called ‘forklifts’ that have revolutionized the way businesses move heavy materials from one place to another. Instead of hiring multiple people to move or store heavy material from one place to another, businesses now rely on forklifts to do the same task without as much labour and time. It is because of the efficiency they bring that forklifts have now become an integral part of the modern day industrial world. Whether you own a lumber yard or a big manufacturing company, a distribution centre or an online merchandising site, you cannot achieve maximum returns from your business without taking these heavy lifters on board.
Forklifts come in different shapes, sizes, and power and can be used for different purposes; here is a list of some places where the use of forklifts has increased the performance and productivity of workers in general and organization/business as a whole:
Warehouses
Keeping in mind that the ever-changing demands of customers and material handling processes are being integrated into supply chain management practices. The use of forklifts has thus become almost indispensable in large warehouse operations. Streamlining the material handling and storage operations have always remained a major challenge for many medium to large sized warehouses. Using heavy duty forklift trucks capable of tackling heavy lifting and high capacity operations has greatly benefited the workers, managers, and businesses that take care of such difficult tasks on daily basis. In a warehouse setting, workers often had to pass through narrow rows carrying heavy loads and stacking them on high shelves. Today, workers can use pallet trucks (forklifts) to transport and store goods on shelving and racking systems, sometimes at great heights with great easy and much lesser time.
Construction Sites
Many outdoor facilities such as lumber yards, shipping ports, junkyards, garden areas, and construction sites also rely on forklifts for the movement of heavy materials from one place to another. Construction sites, in particular, rely on rugged design, heavy-duty forklift trucks are specially made to carry heavy construction material and other construction-related items over fairly long distances, across rough terrain. Whether it is about offloading a heavy load of bricks from the delivery trucks and carrying them to parts of the construction site or dumping construction material into larger dumpsters, diesel-operated forklifts with inflatable tires and thicker threads are ideal for carrying heavy loads across rugged terrains.
Junkyards/Dockyards and Recycling Industry
Forklift trucks are also a common sight in most recycling industries, junkyards, and dockyards, as all of these facilities involve loading and unloading, transporting, and dumping heavy materials. Special attachments are added to the forklifts used in these facilities to make the material handling process safe and easy.
Whether used in an indoor setting such as a warehouse or an outdoor setting such as the junkyard, dockyard or recycling facility, an operator of a forklift should undergo basic forklift training to ensure that he/she is able to operate the machine in the safest way possible.