When asked which type of trolley or truck is better for moving goods, the answer isn’t that straightforward. There are several things that need consideration before choosing equipment and by answering a short set of questions, this can hopefully lead you to a simple answer.

The world of warehousing and logistics has a crucial element of efficiency and productivity. The use of electric order picking equipment has revolutionised the order picking process and has offered a much more convenient and user-friendly solution for UK businesses.

Unlocking efficiency combined with safety in today's fast paced business world is critical for the transportation of heavy loads when negotiating stairways and other challenging terrains.

When it comes to efficiently storing and transporting goods, stillages and pallets are essential tools for many businesses.

In today's fast-paced business world, efficiency and productivity are key to staying ahead of the competition. When it comes to warehouse operations, streamlining processes is essential for meeting customer demands and maximising profits. One effective way to achieve this is by investing in top-of-the-line material handling equipment. From fork stackers and pallet trucks to conveyors and automated systems, these tools can revolutionise your warehouse operations and take them to new heights.

One-in-three accidents at work are caused by manual handling. In 2022 out of the 1.8 million working people suffering from a work-related illness, 477,000 of them experienced problems from a job-related musculoskeletal disorder according to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Furthermore, 300,000 people in the UK were troubled with back pain caused by manual handling incidents!

Sack trucks have been around since the industrial revolution and were used to move large sacks of spices around the docks. As this was usually the job of young boys, the simple L-shaped sack truck with two wheels was invented to allow the children single handedly move goods much heavier than they could carry. That design has survived and is still in use today. There have also been further design developments resulting in numerous material handling trucks more suited to specific tasks.

The simple scale and the ability to weigh things with it, is something most of us largely take for granted. However, you may not be fully aware just how sophisticated modern scales have become.

When there is a pile of goods that are needed to be moved from one area to another, there are various ways in which that can be achieved. You can either handball each item or place the goods onto a truck or trolley of some description and push or pull them to their new location.

Applying strapping as a packaging measure to pallets, boxes, cartons and loose products seems like an easy thing to do but getting it right in terms of the actual requirement and the costs involved can be anything but!

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.

When you normally think of pallet trucks you think of a helpful tool that moves wooden or plastic pallets around a warehouse or factory floor. Well, of course they do predominately do that, but there are also a whole variety of other styles that are designed for many different tasks or uses in less traditional environments.

The UK's ‘Cash & Carry’ grocery wholesaling trade was first reported as starting in June 1957 with the opening of Vye and Son in Ramsgate, a subsidiary of the Home & Colonial Group. But Lawrence Batley is widely accredited as the originator of the concept in the UK and in April 1958, L. Batley & Co. of Huddersfield opened a large 30,000 sq. ft. modern cash & carry warehouse which was by far the biggest of its kind to date.

Whilst every company is unique in its own way, the work problems it can encounter on a daily basis are often shared throughout industry. Action Handling has a 48 year trading history, during which it has accrued a fountain of knowledge, so when it comes to finding solutions for work problems, we can often pull on previous projects completed for other customers with similar hurdles to jump.

Before buying cylinder handling and storage equipment it is important to understand and assess how different types of cylinders need to be handled and also to establish the actual requirements of individual gases by identifying them in the first place.

Forklift trucks are an indispensible piece of equipment for many in the materials handling industry. Traditionally used for lifting and stacking, they can also be customised by adding attachments, adding to their versatility within your business.

Steel drum barrels have been in use for many years to store and transport various items. They've also been used in less orthodox circumstances, such as musical instruments native to Trinidad and Tobago, urban bonfire pits and even by several daredevils who decided to tackle Niagara Falls inside steel drums of varying shapes and sizes. One bright spark even enclosed his drum in inner tubes (amazingly, he survived).

Gravity roller conveyor is often referred to as gravity conveyor, roller conveyor or just plain old conveyor. Conveyor in its most basic form is made up of an outer framework and a series of rollers fitted within that frame over which goods can be rolled from point A to B.

There are many types of hand truck or trolley available to the industrial sector today and many of them have names that we have all heard of before…..flatbed truck, rough terrain truck, platform truck, hand trailer, warehouse truck etc. Sometimes they seem to be referred to as trucks and sometimes as trolleys. What`s the difference? To be honest I`m not quite sure anybody really knows! Certainly Wikipedia seems to struggle with that.

They lift and move pallets of goods around from point to point and are generally used in warehouses, factories and goods inwards departments. Some models are often used to move un-palletised goods like machine parts, boxes, drums and cartons but then they would normally need to be fitted with a fork platform or lifting attachment to suit the load.

My TV repair man came around the other week to fix a problem with my 10 year old flat screen LED. I was somewhat surprised when to my joy the problem was fixed and it only cost me £78. I was expecting the usual ‘Oh sorry mate, that model must be at least 2 years old and you might as well throw it away and buy another one’.

With such an array of hand trucks and trolleys flooding the industrial market place it can sometimes be totally baffling to know which sack truck or trolley to select for your workplace or indeed even home use. The choice seems endless from folding foot, fixed toe plate, mesh infill back, curved back the list of different variations of the product are vast and that’s before we even get into the realms of handles and wheeling, So to find a sack truck that can perform a host of applications there may well be a very savvy choice.

It's that time of the year when keen or even not so keen gardeners turn their attentions to the planting of garden plants. A very good friend of mine and knowledgeable gardener tells me that Begonias need a damn good regular drowning and that sweet peas need lots of loving care and attention. Bulbs like Gladioli can be planted at this time of year but one should ensure that the deciduous trees in the locality have to be well 'into leaf' to offer their protection to the soil. Now quite how he knows all these things are a complete mystery to me seeing as he seems to spend all his time in the bookies or the pub!! But what I do know, is that he knows his garden plants ... and I don't!

From its humble beginnings in the mid nineteen twenties the Wholesale Warehouse more latterly known as the Cash & Carry, although the first street appearance of the term is widely accredited to Lawrence Batley who didn't open Batley's Cash and Carry in Huddersfield until 1958.

When we refer to trucks in the materials handling industry, we are referring to a wheeled platform used to convey loads in a warehouse or factory setting. Sometimes these trucks can be motorised, and they come in many shapes and sizes, depending on their end use. Action Handling has supplied trucks to industries across the UK for over forty years, and we have a large range of different types available.

Our NuKeeper product range offers an extensive choice of cleaning equipment, opening up a multitude of possibilities within the professional cleaning sector. Much of the product range is unique, with key patented features designed to blend today’s technology with our own brand of quality-based common-sense engineering.

For the past forty years, Action Handling have supplied trucks and trolleys in a huge range of designs, sizes and capabilities to clients across the UK, so you could say we’re pretty familiar with them. We understand that, for the average user, your requirements may just be for “a standard sack truck”. However, when we further analyse the everyday use of the machine, it allows us to supply the most suitable equipment for your specific needs. If you are wondering which sack truck, what sack truck or are just looking for a description of sack trucks this buyer's guide will help.

Many of us can remember the famous scene from ‘I Love Lucy’, where Lucy and Ethel was working at the Acme Candy factory, wrapping chocolates on a conveyer belt. The belt speeds up and the candies arrive more and more quickly, leading to hilarity (wonderfully conveyed by the expressive Lucille Ball). It’s a scene that has been re-used and parodied and paid homaged to many times since, and is considered one of the most famous episodes of I Love Lucy ever.

In the collection at the British Museum, among many other fine things, is a small cast lion weight, found in what is now modern day Turkey. Made from a tin/bronze alloy and dating to the fifth century BC, it’s evidence of the fact that weights have been used to measure commodities for trade since ancient times, just as they are today.

Forklift trucks are an indispensible piece of equipment for many in the materials handling industry. Traditionally used for lifting and stacking, they can also be customised by adding attachments, adding to their versatility within your business.

One of the most popular pieces of equipment used in the UK is the simple pallet truck. They are often referred to as pump trucks, lift trucks, stillage trucks and probably a multitude of other names but in essence they all do the same job in lifting pallets for ease of movement and transportation.