7 March 2017

An increasing number of companies are currently reviewing the model mixture within their materials handling fleet. That makes absolute sense. A truck that is only used half the time might be obsolete. In the end, no one can afford to spend money irrationally anymore. A materials handling fleet should be tailored to your needs and unnecessary expenses must be avoided.

However, such a tailored fleet requires some attention when it comes to maintenance and service. Downtime is no longer an option in this case. Simply because those 'spare trucks' are no longer available. Or you may have only one left. Proper planning has become crucial.

One single point of contact

Yet we see too many times that (daily) maintenance gets neglected in practice. Or at least postponed. If that happens too often, we are still throwing money thrown down the drain and the bottom line will suffer. By now, it should be well known that poor and overdue maintenance leads directly to unnecessary high (repair) costs. Unless your core business is machine maintenance, it is advisable to outsource the maintenance of your forklift and warehouse trucks. If you let an official forklift dealer do this, then you are often assured of one single point of contact. Which prevents parties or employees accusing each other when malfunctions or damage get detected.

A lean, mean servicing machine

Outsourcing service and maintenance offers multiple benefits. Perhaps the most important advantage comes from the fact that a forklift dealer is geared to providing a seamless and efficient service to keep your operation running smoothly. They have professional engineers which are trained by the manufacturer and know how to resolve issues within no time. To that dealer, maintenance and service are part of the core and daily business. They are on top of the game and know exactly when, for example, preventive maintenance should be scheduled. Not too early, not too late.

Another reassurance may be that an official dealer uses at least approved parts. OEM parts bring along a certainty that they are the best fit for that truck and they will last. Non-approved parts may look very similar, but could be outperformed in the long-run. Sometimes they can be of inferior quality and thus bring along the risk of a breakdown or even damage your truck.

And if a part is not in stock, it can be delivered in most cases directly to the service engineer prior to the appointment, so he can carry out the maintenance as scheduled and downtime is kept to a minimum.

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