Vertical-Mast Forklifts Work Hard for the Rough-Terrain Market

Case's G Series forklifts have a load-control option, which the company credits with helping retain loads on rough terrain, and reducing stress on the mast and rollers.

Frame leveling is a s

Larry Stewart, Executive Editor

Case's G Series forklifts have a load-control option, which the company credits with helping retain loads on rough terrain, and reducing stress on the mast and rollers.

Frame leveling is a standard feature on AUSA's 6,500-pound CH320. Operators employ the hydraulic cylinders connecting frame to axles to square up the machine for stable lifts. Manitou, Omega Lift and Tovel—all companies that also build telehandlers—offer frame-leveling systems as well.

Rough-terrain, vertical-mast forklifts continue to pick and place a lot of construction materials on jobsites despite the meteoric rise of telehandlers. Conventional-style lift trucks lost market share to telehandlers when that challenger made the construction scene, but sales numbers have stabilized, and vertical-mast forklifts appear to be regaining some lost ground thanks to their lower cost, greater productivity, and adoption of some telehandler-like features.

"There was a big swing when telehandlers came out — they took a lot of market share from the straight-mast forklifts — but we're seeing it start to turn around now," says Dan Hall, national sales manager with Harlo. "A lot of it has to do with the big difference in price. You pay, maybe, $80,000 for a telehandler, whereas you can get one of our 8,500-pound machines with similar capacity and lift height for about $50,000.

"Our customers are also telling us that as long as they don't need a lot of reach, a straight-mast machine will do twice the work that a telehandler will do because of ground speed and maneuverability. Rental houses are actually starting to get higher rates on straight masts, and utilization is going up, too."

Rental buyers are wielding significant influence in the rough-terrain forklift business. Half or more of all vertical-mast forklifts sold today go to a rental yard. These purchases are driven primarily by utilization, a factor followed closely by acquisition price. Telehandlers' popularity has given them a great advantage in terms of rental utilization, but their higher price has moderated the expansion. Even as competition among telehandler marketers has brought down their prices, some forklift users are finding that telehandlers are not nearly as productive in repetitive loading and unloading tasks that traditional rough-terrain forklifts have been doing quite well for decades.

"We used to sell 5,000 to 6,000 straight-mast trucks a year in the 1980s, but once telehandlers got a foothold the market flip-flopped," says Paul Gibson, general sales manager with Noble Construction Equipment. "Now telehandlers are selling 6,000 to 7,000 units per year, and straight-mast trucks are between 1,500 and 2,500 per year.

"Competitive pressure in the market has been such that a contractor may be able to rent a telehandler for not much more than the cost to rent a straight-mast lift truck," Gibson adds. "They can off-load a truck, even though the telehandler is a little more gangly, slow, and requires more skill to do the job—but they get the reach if they need it. There will always be lift trucks, though, because there are places that you can't get into with a telehandler.

"The rough-terrain lift truck is small, compact, and able to carry a heavier load vertically than a telehandler. If a guy wants to take 4,000 pounds 30 feet high, we can do that with a 6,000-pound lift truck. He has to go to an 8,000-pound telehandler to do the same thing."

Marketers of rough-terrain, vertical-mast forklifts have endured despite diminished sales. In North America, there are at least 19 distinct brands, with well over 100 models available. There are an almost identical number of manufacturers of telehandlers, although their products are being marketed under 24 different brands. Not surprisingly, several of the brands market both lift trucks and telehandlers—names like Case, Ingersoll Rand, JCB, Liftking, Load Lifter, Manitou, Omega Lift, Sellick and Tovel.

Lift-truck marketers have added to their maneuverability advantages by borrowing some features that make telehandlers popular. For example, AUSA, Manitou, Omega Lift and Tovel have hydraulic chassis-leveling systems that allow the operator to square up the truck's frame when it is sitting on uneven terrain so lifts can be made more safely. Liftking, Load Lifter and Swinger lift trucks offer the feature as an option.

Four-wheel steer is another telehandler-like technology. Liftking, Load Lifter, Omega Lift and Tovel all offer rigid-framed machines riding on four equal-sized tires. Coordinated four-wheel and crab-steering modes give these machines maneuverability that rivals the rear-wheel steering of a traditional lift truck. And the ability to shuttle sideways in crab-steer mode offers another dimension of pick-and-place flexibility.

Placement dexterity can be improved by buying a machine with a side-shifting mast or carriage sideshift. Mast sideshift is a fairly common feature throughout the lift trucks available, and allows the operator to move the mast hydraulically several inches to either side of center. Carriage sideshift is sometimes an option. It moves the carriage to either side of the center of the mast.

Generally, there are two types of masts available on rough-terrain forklifts—three stage or two stage. A three-stage mast is made up of three rails that extend to the full height. It has a lower profile when the forks are lowered. Two-stage masts are made up of two rails and present fewer obstructions to the operator's view through the mast when the forks are down.

Carriages, which carry the forks up and down the mast, are typically designed in two ways¡ªeither an ITA Class IV Hook carriage, or a shaft-mounted carriage. The hook carriage is a basic fixed-fork arrangement, while the forks hinge around a shaft on a shaft-mounted carriage to allow the forks to float. Carriages can also be equipped with a quick coupler so that the operator can easily swap forks for other attachments such as buckets, blades or brooms.

Hydrostatic drive amplifies a rough-terrain forklift's ease of operation by eliminating gear shifting. Ausa, Manitou, Waldon and Master Craft have hydrostatic machines. A few other manufacturers offer automatic powershift transmissions that also take gear shifting out of the operator's hands.

Kawasaki markets one of the automatic powershift machines, which is a version of its wheel-loader line with a Sellick mast in place of the loader arms. Waldon's machines and A & O's Swinger are smaller wheel-loader conversions. Articulated steering makes these machines very maneuverable (Waldon's 6000C has the smallest turning radius of any four-wheel drive in the RT forklift category), and they'll handle very poor site conditions with their four-wheel drive.

The Construction Equipment Universe Study indicates that the total number of rough-terrain, vertical-mast forklifts at work in the United States has grown 46 percent since 1995, to a total of nearly 30,000 machines, and the number of firms that own this kind of lift truck has grown by 11 percent. The population of telehandlers is growing somewhat faster, but these dynamics suggest that there are still plenty of construction applications for vertical-mast machines. Lift trucks should remain a vital part of the construction scene as manufacturers continue to improve the productivity of this material handler for contractors who don't need a lot of reach to place loads.

Latest in Field Test

Tom Berg for Construction Equipment

Trucking

Field Test Shows Peterbilt 589 Drives Strong

Tom Berg

Feb. 6, 2024

Frank Raczon, Construction Equipment

Videos

Field Test: Takeuchi TB257FR Excavator

Frank Raczon

Dec. 22, 2023

Field Test

Wacker Neuson ET58 Excavator Field Test

Frank Raczon

March 3, 2023

Tom Berg

Trucking

Inside the International HX Vocational Truck

Tom Berg

Oct. 11, 2022

Buying File

How to Choose Horizontal Directional Drills

Aug. 24, 2021