The lift truck has become such an invaluable piece of machine found and used in most warehousing and industrial operations, ever since its introduction to the market more than 90 years ago in the 1920's. One of the forklift's pioneers, Clark has grown to become an industry top supplier in the material handling business. Other popular names in the making of these equipment consist of: Cat, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Hyster, Nissan and Yale.
Hyster has grown to become among the most popular units of forklifts within the business. In fact, in some places, the word "Hyster" is synonymous with forklift. Different other names for this industrial lifting machinery include: fork truck, stacker truck, lift truck, jitney and high/low.
The ancestor of today's machinery was initially developed during the early 19th century. At this time, battery-powered, small models were invented for the purpose of moving traveler's luggage at the Altoona train station within Pennsylvania. In the First World War, several different versions were developed in England specially for use in the material handling industry. These machines evolved as a solution to the lack of manpower at that time.
The modern equivalents come in a range of sizes and configurations. There are the big truck-mounted lift truck units which are also called sod loaders and then the opposite end of the spectrum has small hand truck units. There are also a line of automated versions referred to as forklift automated guided vehicles that are basically robotic in nature. These units were made as a way of lowering operational expenses and to improve productivity.
A regular lift truck is able to use a huge array of attachments that are capable of being added for a range of particular functions. The motors can be internal combustion or IC units, working on propane, diesel or gasoline, or there are battery operated options which need regular charging. Typical warehouse units would normally be rated to lift between around 1 and 5 tons.
The forklift has become a priceless component in the material handling industry. Many of these units are used on a daily basis all over the world to complete tasks that used to require much more man-power. Operators need to take stringent training programs so as to run these heavy machinery safely and legally. Lots of workers have longer careers now and better overall health due to their not having to lift objects by hand anymore as the forklifts are capable of handling those situations now instead.