My dealership is shopping for a cheap used fork lift. Electric is our first choice, but pricey and concerned about battery replacement. Propane is way cheaper to buy but could be tempromental to operate. Currently looking a a Mistsubishi unit running on propane. Thoughts out there? What's brands are better than others?
I have an electric Toyota that I bought new in 2001. Zero problems ever, except the battery wear.
I did swap the battery last year as it was holding little charge after almost 20 years. The new battery was $5k, but its like new again and should last another 15 years.
We had a propane one before and got rid of it after one of my guys passed out due to the fumes in the warehouse. If you can afford, electric is the way to go.
A good friend of mine sells Toyota forklifts. They are apparently really good- I've talked to clients of his who simply won't buy any other type. It is one of those "pay once, suffer once" kind of deals.
I understand the real money is in the service contracts.
My only experience is with a propane model. It didn't get a ton of use - maybe 3 times a week to unload delivery trucks. But given the limited use, we never had a problem with it. It did live in a semi-conditioned garage in the Northeast (near Philly). I think we had to refill the tank once over the 4 years I worked there.
They all seem to have their ups and downs.
At HD, we had propane and electric. The propane units lasted nearly forever. We had a Toyota that the hour meter broke at 13,500 hours and five years later it never had a failure. I remember it leaked a little hydraulic fluid so we retired it to the outside loading fork.
Contrast that with our fleet of electric reach trucks that pretty much needed to be replaced after 5 years. Either the batteries were too expensive, the motors died and required a crane to disassemble, or they otherwise became more expensive to fix than just buying a new one.
Propane is lovely. You can let it sit for 50 years, put a $100 battery in it, turn on the gas, and run it like it was yesterday.
Have you looked into rentals?
That's what the warehouse uses my dad used to run. Not responsible for maintenance, if it breaks they fix or replace, etc.
But that may not be economical for just 1. I think they had around 10.
Wally said:They all seem to have their ups and downs.
Wally, you never fail to deliver. Well done!
I used to work the big Material Handling shows, Yale, Hyster, Clark, Raymond and the others were all there along with some smaller players. The best advice I can give you is that local support matters more than manufacturer. If you have a good shop locally who can help guide you to the right machine and more importantly, provide ongoing support and maintenance when needed, which brand won't matter much.
probably not what you want, but it was a great forklift to operate
I supervised and maintained a fleet of fork lifts. Most were propane, just the normal high hour problems.
The batteries in the electrics were maintained by a battery company. If a cell went bad it was replaced. I think they never replaced a complete battery.
I use an electric toyota at work fairly often and it never gives us any trouble. No clue what year or model or anything though.
In reply to Gearheadotaku :
I sold forklifts and each brand has their good and bad ones. The local dealership is the key because an honest one will take care of you no matter how you buy it while the crooks ( and there are plenty ) will stiff you. Toyota as a forklift is reliable but marginal. While it will do what it says, That's it. There is no extra. Clark used to be the best but the owners sold and it set a record for going downhill that's still used as a prime example of what not to do. You can buy an old TW40 made in the 60's-70's and it's still running perfectly. But a 4 year newer one has been scrapped for 40+ years
Hyster was good and then got real cheap. Avoid Yale. And most German forklifts. New they are fine but parts get really spendy.
Watch out for Grey market forklifts. You can usually tell them by the non- English ID tag. American standard forklifts are UL app proved while grey market is not. The main fault with Grey market forklifts is parts availability. They will use an older version of drive, trans, hydraulic, etc parts that are only found in one warehouse in Poland or East Teemore. Some weird place.
Batteries can last 5-7 -20 years depends on how they are charged and maintained.
Currently keeping an eye out for a sub $1k forklift, so beggars can't be choosers. Just missed out on a $500/ran when parked deal a week ago.
Regardless, I'll be interested to see where this thread goes. Good luck in your search.
None of ours at work are electric and everything I drive is substantially bigger. However I've never had to push the Toyotas out of areas they shouldn't be. The other brands we have require a gentle nudge more often than I think should be necessary and seem to be broke down at the mobile shop more often as well.
We have your regular 5000, 8000, and 10,000 lb warehouse forklifts, all run indoors on concrete. Every single propane one has been replaced with electric over the past few years. Way less headaches, just plug in and charge at the end of the shift. Electric is quiet and clean.
We also lease them all with a service contract so PMs and breakdowns are all hands off. If something goes really sideways we either get a loaner or a new one.
For a guy who wants to store one and use it every 3 months, I would go propane. For daily use indoors, electric all day.
we use Mitsubishis at work. we have four, two 5000 pounders and two 10,000 pounders are are amazingly computerized
I will have a used two year old electric Mitsubishi three wheeler for sale in about a month. We use them all the time at work - like 3 shifts a day, 365 days a year. they are well maintained, but look ugly.
I had a bunch of trouble with some toyotas that were used exclusively in a freezer warehouse. The hydraulics just weren't up to the task, this was 15 years ago and in -10 to 0 F conditions.
In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
There are fluids design for freezers. I learned about them talking to the factory rep. Not common knowledge.
frenchyd said:In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
There are fluids design for freezers. I learned about them talking to the factory rep. Not common knowledge.
Yup. Had those. Running a -10 freezer is out of the norm. The fluids didn't like it.
When we bought our latest building, I had a huge need for a forklift. I’d never owned one before, but I remember hearing of these “mythical” $1,500 forklifts. I went searching and although they are out there, none were worth what they were asking. I raised the budget to $2500 and still had no luck. I went to $4000 and began to have some luck. I ended up getting a TCM FCG25 propane unit for $3500 and I couldn’t be happier. I don't put a ton of hours on it, but it’s been 100% reliable. One battery in 5 years and maybe a gallon of hydraulic fluid.
There are decent deals deals out there but nowhere near the $$$ I thought. Oh well, a few bucks more for a clean unit and no break-downs was worth the buy-in.
omarahet said:I would love to have one for fun!
I bet a canoe would be fun.
Curtis said:At HD, we had propane and electric. The propane units lasted nearly forever. We had a Toyota that the hour meter broke at 13,500 hours and five years later it never had a failure. I remember it leaked a little hydraulic fluid so we retired it to the outside loading fork.
Contrast that with our fleet of electric reach trucks that pretty much needed to be replaced after 5 years. Either the batteries were too expensive, the motors died and required a crane to disassemble, or they otherwise became more expensive to fix than just buying a new one.
Propane is lovely. You can let it sit for 50 years, put a $100 battery in it, turn on the gas, and run it like it was yesterday.
You are comparing a draft mule to a pedigree horse. Electric reach lift trucks are extremely complex but needed for the application. I think Home Depot buys Crown which is one of the best of that variety. But definitely a lot more maintenance than a simple propane lift truck. And Toyota propane lift trucks are the quality lift truck to buy.
Propane trucks are weird. The trucks of the 60's and 70's are typically a lot more durable and bullet proof than newer ones. Clark, the dominant brand of that period had nearly indestructible propane lift trucks but when they stopped making them in Battle Creek Michigan they went right to the bottom and now are out of business.
Hyster was a strong pneumatic truck through the 1990's. ( for use outside ) Now Toyota has that position.
Electric lift trucks totally depend on how and who uses them. Their batteries can last 20 years plus if properly maintained. Or need replacement in as little as 3 years. They need to be used or stored nearly fully charged. Distilled water only. Not tap and checked monthly. An adequate sized charger to slough off the lead sulfate. With full storage/taper charge ability. ( in other words not a cheap charger) if the battery is in good shape and it's a newer brushless motor contactless board one they are the lowest maintenance forklift you can use. If used inside definitely a lot safer than propane which can make people sick or even kill them.
A bad thing thing about electric is NEVER do short charges. That kills the battery. The number of times an electric forklift can be charged is limited. I also worked at HD (like Curtis) and we had an electric reach truck, a electric pallet jack and two propane forklifts for lumber and outside.
When I left and went to the air freight ops we had 8 propane 5k lifts and 1 10K. All were mostly inside use.
The biggest problem we had with them was when our Service Manger decided to go with pneumatic tires on some of them. We were constantly getting flat tires and replaced them all with solid tires.
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