How to Reduce Forklift Operational and Maintenance Costs

Material handling equipment is considered by most customers to be a necessary evil. They do not add value (for your customers) but you cannot do without. That is why you must minimize the cost of operating and maintaining your forklifts.

In order to allow this to happen, it is essential that the personnel involved in the operation and maintenance of forklifts are well-trained, understand your operational needs and are proficient at the task.

Five Tips to Reduce Forklift Operational and Maintenance Costs:

• Match equipment with Task – Is your current fleet ideal for your current operational needs and are they properly equipped to increase safety, limit down time and productivity
• Invest in operating training – well trained operators will take care of equipment better and spot trouble before it becomes a major problem
• Perform pre-shift inspections – will keep your equipment safe and identify worn components before they break.
• Follow a Preventive Maintenance Program – it’s not unusual for a forklift repair to cost four times more than the cost to properly maintain it in the first place. Preventive maintenance reduces equipment downtime 30-50% and prolongs the life of the unit by 20 to 40%. Well maintained unit also reduces fuel consumption.
• Develop fleet reporting and analytics real time – this will provide equipment usage, maintenance expenses, operator misuse and application issues. Information provides power to change and correct operation flaws and high lights the time to consider retiring old equipment.  

Visit your current forklift maintenance program and see if it is providing you with the following benefits

1. How flexible is your current maintenance program? Does your program adapt to operational and usage change? Can it be cancelled with little notice?
2. Does your program allow you to schedule when you want service to be performed? Do they show up to perform the service when it is convenient for them?  Application, usage and customer should drive the schedule. This will help to reduce production down time. 
3. Are you provided any information on your fleet cost and usage? This part is extremely important to help reduce overall cost, and to identify operator misuse and the right time to retire a unit.
4. How is your current program structured? Is the labor cost charged by the hour or fixed by the service. Fixed labor fee would be the best scenario, because it puts the pressure on the service provider to complete the service in an allotted time and helps customer to budget expenses.  
5. What Parts pricing structure are you paying – Parts make up approximately 50% of the total expense of the service performed. So, it is very important to understand what part price level you are being charged.  (We can provide you a quote so you can compare)
6. Check your invoices for additional fees being charged – Some plans will tack on multiple fees to their invoices. (travel, miscellaneous, fuel, environmental or more)
7. Is your provider advising you before any additional work is done – You the customer should be the one to approve all work performed on your truck.
8. Does your service provider partner with you to help provide solutions and programs for your operation? This information should be provided freely and with no obligation.

A Proper Forklift Planned Maintenance Program can save $$$$$ thousands over life of unit.

Contact us today for a FREE equipment evaluation and proposal for a planned maintenance program and start reducing your cost today!