Lift Truck Tips: Lift truck buyers and users share data and responsibility

Few lift trucks are used and maintained in the same ways they were just five years ago. Somewhere along the line, fleet owners started turning over stones to find a surprising amount of money underneath, and soon they saw that clearing those stones was good for productivity. Just as the day-to-day usage of lift trucks has changed, so has the way an organization procures its equipment. Unfortunately, some of the boulders between operations and purchasing have proven a bit harder to move.

The challenge is centered on the concept of total cost of ownership, which factors in the initial price of a lift truck, its need for parts and service over its usable life, the costs associated with its operator, and more. Too often, the departments responsible for procuring equipment base their decisions almost exclusively on the initial price. The quality, capabilities and long-term costs of the lift truck are secondary concerns, even though they will have a daily impact on operations for years to come.

After spending five years in national accounts departments, Jill Comer, vice president in the east region for Yale Materials Handling, says she witnessed increased customer interest in alignment between operations and procurement personnel. Without established best practices for this collaboration, many businesses are building cross-functional teams tasked with learning as they go.

“We see customers sending procurement people to plants and distribution centers to see what’s happening operationally at a local level,” Comer says. “With operations and finance on the same page, they’re looking very carefully at dealers to gauge how they will be able to provide the services they need.”

From a purchasing standpoint, a dealer’s recommendation to upgrade a fleet’s taillights to a ruggedized package might come off as a simple upsell. But if they have seen the amount of breakage and the costs associated with repairing them, that conversation might unfold differently, Comer suggests.

From an operations standpoint, a fleet manager might want to hold on to lift trucks for seven years, based on, well, not much. “A financing person might explain that the way it benefits them the most is to have a replacement cycle and structure it as a lease,” Comer says. “They’ll find that the total cost of ownership is lower if replaced every five years.”

At the end of the day, it’s operations folks who live with the impact of leases, maintenance contracts and the like. However, the advent of pay-by-the-hour programs puts some additional power in their hands while still providing peace of mind for procurement people worried about the bottom line.

As opposed to a fixed 2,000-hour-per-year lease, if a customer uses 1,600 hours a year, that’s what they pay for. If they choose to walk away when they’ve reached their hour cap, or blow right by it, that’s fine, too.

“In any case, dealers should notify customers at least six months in advance that a lift truck will be coming off a lease,” Comer says. “That’s a great opportunity to start a conversation with the customer to see if they have any plans for expansion, movement, changes in operation, changes in load sizes, or different specifications.”

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