A market report shows Toyota, Yale and Caterpillar were the top three forklift importers into the Argentine market in 2004.
Marketeck, an Argentine marketing company, analysed official Argentine Government customs statistics processed by Tesys SRL and found imports for 2004 totalled 2,243 new forklifts and 1,561 used forklifts, with an FOB value of USD33,674,540.
Toyota led the list of importers with a 19 per cent market share. A total of 58 forklift brands were imported but the top 12 made up 75 per cent of the market.
Clark, which used to be the dominant brand in Argentina, was the sixth largest importer with a 4 per cent market share.
In a separate phone survey of 1500 forklift users, Marketeck found many users still referred to a forklift as a "clark".
Company president Henry Whitney said that complicated research because many companies answered the survey saying, "Yes, we have two Clarks".
"If pressed for details, they might add, 'One is a Clark. The other clark is a Yale," Whitney said.
"For years, Clark had a factory in Argentina (and) roughly half of all forklifts in Argentina were Clarks."
Other manufacturers in the top 12 were Linde, TCM, Tailift, Jungheinrich, Crown, BT, Hyster and Mitsubishi.