How to Break Your Bad Used Forklift Buying Habit

How often have you heard someone say, “I’m a Chevy man or woman” or notice they always drink the same brand of beer? We all have a natural tendency to make purchases out of habit. If our first car was a Chevy and we liked it, we stick with the brand and probably even the model. If we like the taste of Bud, we see no reason to try anything else. That’s fine for most things, but if you buy the same type or brand of used forklifts out of habit, you may be shortchanging yourself and hurting your business.

How to Break Your Bad Used Forklift Buying Habit

Businesses change over time. Hopefully, your business has grown, but businesses also contract or consolidate. As they change, their material handling needs change as well. Interestingly, while they will change the layout of their factory or warehouse to accommodate their changing needs, many business owners don’t even consider their forklifts. They may not be brand loyal, but if a cushion tire IC forklift was good enough for them when they started business 20 years ago, replacing it with another one is good enough today.

If that sounds like you, you need to break your bad used forklift buying habit. A painless way to start is to familiarize yourself with all 7 classes of forklifts that are available. Briefly, they are:

1. Electric motor rider lift trucks
2. Electric motor narrow aisle trucks
3. Electric motor hand or hand/rider trucks
4. Internal combustion solid/cushion tire trucks
5. Internal combustion pneumatic tire forklifts
6. Electric and Internal Combustion tractors
7. Rough Terrain forklift trucks

For a more complete description of these classes and their attendant codes, refer to our Forklift Guide.

After you’ve opened your mind to the possibilities, you might want to explore your options in more depth. There are nearly a dozen links to articles about the various types of forklifts in our Articles directory that will help you understand more. For example, in Maximize Warehouse Space with Narrow Aisle Forklifts, the author writes about how much aisle space can be reduced (and workspace gained) simply by purchasing a used narrow aisle forklift.

Image courtesy of iStock by Getty Images – Photo by ogichobanov

If you’re an “IC person”, you may turn up your nose at the idea of exchanging or supplementing it with an electric rider truck and have your reasons for doing so. However, you can have your cake and eat it, too, if you buy an inexpensive used walkie stacker to handle your storage needs while your trusty counterbalanced IC lift truck handles the big stuff. Read Used Walkie Stacker Forklifts: Essential Equipment and you may discover a walkie stacker is what you’ve been looking for for years, but didn’t know it.

After you’ve opened your mind to the many types of used forklifts on the market and their advantages under different working conditions, the next step is to analyze your workplace and make a purely pragmatic decision. Is sticking with the known helping or hurting your business? All forklifts are functional and efficient, but some forklifts are more efficient than others under different circumstances.

Efficiency = Productivity = Profits. Are you in business because you like the smell of LPG gas or are you in business to make a profit? Considering that question alone should be enough to break your used forklift buying habit.