Selecting the right attachment

Clamps for paper rolls or cartons, push-pulls for slip sheets, and stabilizers for tippy loads are among the special tools to make your lift truck more productive.

By -- Modern Materials Handling, 4/1/2000

Not all lift trucks have forks; there are many forkless forklifts, so to speak. After all, not every load fits neatly on a pallet. That's where lift truck attachments come into the picture. The trick is to match the attachment to the load at hand.

With the right attachment for the right load, handling operations can become more productive and often safer. The attachment can also help minimize damage to products on the load.

Indeed, greater productivity and safety along with less damage are the "hot buttons" driving attachment usage, says one industry exec. Large distribution centers and third-party warehouses, in particular, with their demands for high volumes and throughputs "can't afford the costs of damage and lost time," he adds.

To put some perspective on attachment usage, think about your breakfast this morning. Let' s say you glanced at the newspaper, and then had some orange juice, coffee, a breakfast cereal, and maybe other foods or beverages before rushing off to work. Quite likely, lift truck attachments figured in getting many of these items through the supply chain to your table.

Properly equipped with clamps to handle a huge paper roll, a lift truck adds to handling efficiencies in your newspaper printing plant.

Fitted out with different clamps to hold, lift, and move cartons of breakfast cereals without damage, an industrial truck increases productivity in dry goods grocery distribution.

Elsewhere, a truck may have used a special attachment to handle bins of oranges or other produce items in agricultural operations and juice processing.

And maybe a forklift used a load stabilizing attachment. With a plate pressing down on the top of a palletized, but tippy load to help secure it, the truck was able to move your bottled water jugs, other beverages, or similar unstable loads with less risk of damage or spills.

Perfecting pallet handling

Some kinds of attachments, like a load stabilizer, are designed to add safety and efficiency to ordinary pallet handling. Some are designed to replace the forks for more specialized jobs-handling 55 gallon drums or big rolls of product rather than loads on pallets.

Many lift trucks roll out the dealer's door with a sideshifter. These attachments are a high volume product for several suppliers. "They're almost a standard on lift trucks with forks," says the product manager for one firm.

Hydraulically powered, the sideshifter enables the operator to shift the forks horizontally, left or right, for more precise positioning of forks into a pallet' s entry points. Should the operator miss positioning the forks properly on his first try, he often need not back up and drive forward again for a second try. Use of a sideshifter makes the adjustment, improving operator productivity and limiting wear and tear on the truck.

Similarly, hydraulically powered fork positioners change the horizontal distance between the forks. The operator need not leave the driver's seat to make this adjustment. Nor need he risk injury manually wrestling with the forks. Fork positioners, though less commonly used compared to sideshifters, are very helpful for handling varied types of pallets or in balancing off-center palletized loads.

Single/double fork positioners, which have two pairs of forks and can handle one or two pallet loads at once, are becoming more popular, meantime.

Clamps, push-pulls, and more

Specialized attachments are required for the special jobs. Clamps for paper rolls and for cartons fall into this category.

Increasingly, companies are going over to palletless operations, says one attachment supplier marketing exec. Carton clamps are one type of attachment that helps them do so.

Hydraulically powered clamps for paper rolls and cartons have long been valued for the tasks they perform and increasingly so for limiting product damage. "Customers don't want to buy a box of breakfast cereal that's been creased," says one supplier exec. And grocery distributors don't want to deliver these slightly damaged goods to store shelves.

Instead of pallet handling, many warehouse operations prefer the products they handle to be placed on slipsheets as unit loads. In this way the warehouse avoids some of the headaches that may be associated with pallet storage and broken pallet repair or disposal.

Slipsheets are inexpensive and far less costly than pallet purchases. Adding the attachment to handle a slip sheet will be a major investment to consider, however. Attachments for slip sheet handling range in cost from $5,600 to $12,000.

Push-pull and load-push attachments can handle slip sheeted loads readily. For fully dedicated slip sheet handling, a push-pull can be mounted on a truck' s carriage. For operations that need to switch from handling slip sheets to pallets and back again, attachments that mount quickly in minutes to the forks are available.

Some push pulls can do double duty: They handle slip sheets as well as a variety of pallet types, including Euro pallets, GMA pallets, and others.

Double pallet handlers, fork rotators, bin dumpers, bale clamps, and more - the variety of attachments is wide and varied. A number of these devices can be purchased as standard items from manufacturers, their distributors, and through lift truck dealers.

Custom attachments for very specialized jobs are available as well. Some companies specialize in these one-off handling solutions, moreover.

One of these jobs involved outfitting a narrow-aisle truck with a relatively inexpensive, 36-in. fixed boom with a 500 lb capacity. So equipped the truck can maneuver a 40-in.-diameter tank suspended from the boom quickly and precisely. Previously this job was done with "a cumbersome, portable overhead crane," says the supplier's design engineer, and with lengthy cabling.

Another custom attachment, he explains, involved developing a 360 degree rotator, sideshifter, and special docking module combination. With 26,000 lb. capacity, at some 60 in. beyond the docking module, this attachment operates remotely and does so fitted to a front-end-loader truck in a uranium mining operation.

Attachments change the lift truck's capacity and often alter how drivers should operate the vehicle.

For instance, adding an attachment generally lowers truck capacity. Lift truck manufacturers, their dealers, and attachment suppliers can help you determine what the new value is.

Attachments also can affect truck performance through changes in the center of gravity, visibility, maximum mast height, and other factors. Your operator needs to be trained in using the attachment and how it alters performance.

What attachments cost

Attachments obviously add extra value to lift trucks in terms of increased productivity. But they can significantly raise the cost of the user' s investment in truck and attachment. Costs start from a low of $300 each for some sideshifters. They go up to as much as $25,000 or more invested in a single automated paper roll clamp with an on-board computer and terminal display for load status and related data.

Here, very roughly, are what industry sources say to expect to pay per attachment installed:

• Sideshifter, $300 to $700