Home » Storage and Handling » Moffett Truck Mounted Forklifts – is Now the Time to Review Your Lpg Gas Cylinder Handling Methods?

 

Moffett Truck Mounted Forklifts – is Now the Time to Review Your Lpg Gas Cylinder Handling Methods?

By John Bailey, UK sales manager, Moffett Ltd

Major lpg manufacturers and trading companies in Germany, Holland, France and Spain are leading the world when it comes to the use of truck mounted forklifts for the final leg of lpg gas cylinder distribution.

Although their conversion from the more traditional manual methods might have been slow to take off, it’s now moving at a fast pace – in some instances with earlier walk-behind machines serving as the necessary stepping stone toward today’s higher capacity and more versatile ‘ride-on’ machines.

Suffice to say, the implicit safety benefits of moving to Moffett Truck Mounted Forklifts are accompanied by productivity benefits that are significant to the point that any transport manager or board of directors would be wise to consider them as an option.
As an example, a national lp gas distributor in the Netherlands has managed to double the number of drops per vehicle in any one day since switching to Truck Mounted Forklifts. Another has recorded an 18 per cent increase in daily collections and deliveries.

LPG CYLINDERS CAN BE DELIVERED TO THE EXACT SPOT SPECIFIED

Both advances have been achieved together with a significant reduction in driver absence due to sickness, notably through back pain and muscle strains and, no doubt, with rising levels of customer satisfaction – with the lp gas cylinders being delivered from the truck to the exact spot the customer specifies.

Closer to home in Ireland, Calor Gas is reaping similar benefits, with an initial four Truck Mounted Forklifts being joined by four others, the eight replacing counter balanced forklift trucks that used to be carried on a manually raised and lowered platform that, apart from other drawbacks, took up useful payload capacity on the truck bed.

It necessarily follows that such productivity improvements have led operators to rethink, with some choosing to defleet and others directing more work to the existing fleet to maintain that all important vehicle and driver utilisation. For some, the performance of the Truck Mounted Forklifts has prompted a move to fewer but higher capacity vehicles (six wheelers in preference to four, for example) to further reduce fleet numbers and costs, whilst boosting driver and vehicle productivity.

So, whether you manhandle lpg cylinders from the truck – with or without a tail lift – or you rely heavily on the customer’s site based services, perhaps now is the time to be looking at Truck Mounted Forklifts, both to cut costs and boost efficiency. Also, because the process is self-contained and one-man operated from manufacturer’s yard to point of delivery, this might just be the opportunity you are looking for to introduce ‘out of hours’ deliveries.

As might already be gathered, a Truck Mounted Forklift is mounted at the back of a truck rather than on it. And though mounting and dismounting is easily and quickly accomplished, Moffett has gone the extra yard with its Ground Mount™ system. Instead of having to climb onto the machine to lower or raise it, Ground Mount™ enables the driver to effect the same via a handheld remote control. The driver’s feet never leave the ground during the mounting and dismounting process.

Once lowered, the Truck Mounted Forklift comes into full play, with pallets or stillages stacked up to three high being easily lifted from the truck for subsequent spotting. Moffett offers a range of products and attachments tailored to suit a wide range of stillages, pallets and operating requirements, the latter including all wheel and multidirectional drive.

These contribute to the machine’s outstanding manoeuvrability that comes to the fore when access is tight, plus it provides for excellent performance over rough terrain – the truck can be left on hard standing, leaving the Truck Mounted Forklift to handle the final stretch over rough ground to deliver the load.
Equally, compared to the more traditional methods where gases are loaded by type and a mix of cylinders selected by hand at the delivery site, using a Truck Mounted Forklift means that an order is preassembled onto designated customer pallets or stillages that can be quickly offloaded, the empties being returned in the same way.

If self-unloading is not required at a delivery point, the Truck Mounted Forklift can remain at the depot for yard duties, freeing up the equivalent in payload weight.

It also follows that, for maximum flexibility, there will be an optimum ratio of Truck Mounted Forklifts to trucks fitted with mounting kits. But this will obviously vary according to the type of operation and the level of service you might be aiming for.

One thing is for sure, if you are aiming high and you have yet to consider the operational advantages and the all round cost benefits the Truck Mounted Forklift can bring, maybe it’s time for you to review your handling methods.

Contact Moffett Ltd on 02476 834580 www.hiab.co.uk