Forklifts

From hand pallet jack to counterbalance forklift:

what decides is how high the load goes and how far it travels. A hand pallet jack lifts a pallet just clear of the floor with a few pumps of the handle and is pulled by hand, with nothing to fuel or charge. A walkie stacker adds a motor and a short mast, so one person can set pallets on the lower levels of a rack. Higher racks and longer yards need a ride-on counterbalance forklift, which carries its load ahead of a heavy rear end. Toyota, Hyster, Komatsu and Cat are the names seen most on used ones; Chinese makes such as Heli and Hangcha are the cheaper way into a new one. Battery trucks suit cold rooms and food stores where exhaust is unwelcome, propane trucks run on a swap-out cylinder indoors and out, and diesel belongs in an open yard. Reach trucks from Crown or Raymond work the narrow aisles between racks. On rough ground or a building site, one of the telescopic handlers does the job a forklift cannot.

The mast that fits through a container door:

measure it before anything else if the truck will load export boxes. A refrigerated box has a lower door than a dry one of the same size, so hold the lowered height against the containers you actually load. Free lift matters just as much. On a full-free-lift mast, nearly always a triplex, the forks climb to stacking height before the mast itself grows, so a driver can set one pallet on another inside the box without touching the roof. A duplex mast with little free lift stops at the doorway. The capacity on the data plate holds only at the load centre printed beside it, and every attachment takes a share, a carton clamp far more than a side shift.

A forklift that ran double shifts through the packing season:

has lived a harder life than a truck of the same age that spent its days in a quiet hardware warehouse, and the hour meter is where that shows. Used propane or dual-fuel trucks of two and a half to three tonnes from Hyster, Komatsu or Cat change hands for around Q90,000 to Q120,000, and the hours, more than the badge, decide where in that band one lands. Service records should note a reading at each visit, and a meter showing less than the last entry has been replaced.

Mast chains, tilt cylinders and the transmission on a used truck:

are where the money goes, and one loaded test finds all three. Raise the heaviest pallet you have to full height. The mast should climb smoothly, without roller clatter or sideways play at the top; shiny grooves in the channels and slack or uneven chains mean a bill soon. With the load up, tilt forward and stop: a mast that keeps creeping needs tilt-cylinder seals. Check the forks at the heel, where they thin and crack. Inch it up a ramp loaded, because a powershift transmission that slips or thumps into gear is the dearest repair on the truck. A bent or rewelded overhead guard means something fell on it or it went over, and is best left alone. Chains, solid tyres and propane regulators turn up under industrial parts.

The measurements an exporter looks for in a forklift listing:

start with the data plate, because capacity, load centre, mast type and fuel settle whether a truck suits long before the price does. Add the hour meter and the mast fully raised. Measure the lowered height and the free lift yourself and put them in the listing. Say whether the cylinder or charger goes with it and whether a flatbed can reach it. A packer coming from Zacapa will want to run a loaded pallet into a container, so have gas in the cylinder or charge in the battery and a pallet waiting on the forks.