Adapting forklift trucks and stackers ...
... can offer great benefits
Author: Dee Jones/01 July 2019/Categories: HEALTH & SAFETY, Creating safe working conditions, PRODUCT GUIDANCE, Stock handling, Height access, WORKPLACE ADVICE, Gain elevation, Goods movement
Businesses are often faced with the need to provide new or additional materials handling or access procedures in order to deal with trading expansion, health and safety implementation or new legal requirements. It is very easy to overlook the existing equipment that you already have within your organisation, that could easily be adapted to suit the task in hand. One such item of equipment is a forklift truck or stacker truck. These reliable items of materials handling equipment have probably been purchased to facilitate the lifting and movement of goods and materials that are more likely than not stored on traditional pallets.
Forklifts and stackers are very efficient and reliable at handling palletised goods, but did you know that they can easily be adapted to carry out many other popular industrial tasks along with some not so popular ones! By using their existing forks, they can lift a variety of attachments that are designed to carry out many different jobs. In some cases by removing the forks completely and retro fitting the truck with other attachments, a whole list of new operations become available.
We can look here at some of the more popular tasks that your forklift/stacker could be used for:
There are some great attachment products that could help you to easily achieve a given aim without the unnecessary expense of purchasing a totally separate item of equipment. Affordable attachments can help you to provide your workers with a better way of working. The drum and cylinder handling attachment ranges are particularly helpful when dealing with a product that traditionally has often been manhandled over the years.
As you can see, there are great benefits to adapting the normal working practices of your forklift/stacker truck. These we can generally summarise as being the following:
- Significant cost savings on not having to purchase new equipment.
- Minimal re-training of operatives.
- Opportunities to look at better working practises.
- Health and safety benefits to make your workplace safer.
- Increased productivity in automating otherwise manual handling tasks.
- Saving dedicated floor space with unnecessary equipment.