Household products are always in demand. And at Church & Dwight, which makes numerous products including Arm & Hammer baking soda, inventory at its warehouses turns over every two to three weeks. Clearly, the uptime of its lift truck fleet directly affects distribution center efficiency.

Unfortunately, downtime for the fleet at the company's North Brunswick, N.J. warehouse became too much for facilities manager Bill Loudermilk, who decided a change needed to be made.

"In an active environment like this, we can't afford downtime for maintenance problems, Loudermilk says. "So it is vital to us that we are equipped with forklifts that can endure the stress of constant operation."

Reliability was the key factor in making a switch to a new fleet. The average truck in the Church & Dwight warehouse runs an average of 4,000 hours per year. The old fleet, which included many different brands of trucks, experienced an average of 5% downtime because of maintenance issues.

Downtime has practically been eliminated with a program of scheduled routine maintenance. This, in turn, eliminated the need for on-site service staff, freeing up valuable labor hours and increasing productivity.

"Our maintenance costs on the old machines were high," Loudermilk says. "We realized a better long-term value was making the decision to go with the new fleet."

Not only are the new trucks more reliable than the old, but they also offer much more flexibility. All trucks feature a three-stage mast with excellent visibility and side-shift capability for versatility in load handling. They run on clean-burning liquid propane.

Warehouse manager Mike Martino is also pleased that operators were impressed with the new fleet. All trucks feature a floating operator compartment that absorbs vibrations and an ergonomic seat, both of which ultimately reduce operator fatigue.

"It has improved morale by providing our employees with the most up-to-date equipment to effectively do their jobs," Martino concludes.