@jeffh

This is Edward, product manager, from UN Forklift, would you please send me a mail(address in signature), so that we can share more info about us to you.

I can completely agree, that said I have had the same feeling about European made trucks. engineering is not what it used to be.

I've heard of them back in the day. Can anyone share some updated contact details?
Thanks in advance!

JeffH, I am familiar with the group that has currently set up shop in McDonough GA. Product quality appeared to be somewhere on a scale between "okay" and "passable", however they are also ridiculously inexpensive. Their main problem is and will be that they are woefully unfamiliar with the way to go to market in the U.S. and too proud to admit it.

@lifter01 FYI, the Chinese manufactured Baoli is now under the KION Group umbrella. Engineers in US and China have been working together to develop a full line of models so this brand will meet the needs and demands of the North American market. Trucks are also checked in US for quality control before going out into the market. They will also have the same quality support that you would expect from KION (Linde). Parts and Technical Support located in the US. First trucks have recently hit the market and I'm sure you'll hear more about these trucks in the economy segment.

If it's Chinese developed built and supported Tcmtom it's junk pure and simple yes Heli make plenty of trucks but nowhere near the quality of a Korean truck let alone a European or US truck

If your looking for a great brand we have been doing the TAILIFT. Really good trucks and great product support

Hi jeffh! Can help you here, my company starting importing these a around 2010 for a couple of years here in the UK so I'll give you my experience

We only really had 1.5 to 3.5t gas and diesel. Quality I found very poor, pins, bearings ect.. made of cheese, mast rollers lasted 6mths to a year, Nissan k25 and yanmar 4tne98 engines used to suffer cracked heads and seized bores due to poor quality cooling systems, radiators were a joke - Japanese engine don't mean nothing and is going to die fast if its life support systems are junk. Transmissions clutch packs could last less then 500hrs (that's not a typo) if used for any real gradient work or harsh operators, also clutch packs were burnt out due to badly designed inching spools - the spool/main valve had no damper/accumulator set up to smooth clutch pack engagement - they just used a tiny pin hole port to slow oil flow and it worked until you had 1 tiny fleck of paint from inside the transmission case go for a swim and block that port and bingo, just enough pressure to engage drive but as soon as your drove it hard plates slipped and within 2 days the clutch packs were toast!
No real electrical trouble except direction levers falling to bits, front axle cap bolts shearing off.

Getting parts and warranty was a nightmare, parts were expensive, often unavailable, weeks not days if they were, on warranty China would try to make you to jump through so many hoops it weren't worth it. We ended up having to adapt parts from different trucks to keep them going (master cylinders from tcms, direction levers from doosans ect...).

Quality was just like any other no name Chinese truck, they were in my humble opinion junk! I still have some around that do OK, all in low useage in good flat yards with gentle opeartors.

New out the container - poor welds, not one bolt tight, cross threaded bolts, hose pulleys that don't line up with hoses, spent 2 days with another tech with 2 new ones tightening every bolt and replacing every fixed metal pipe on the masts because all were crushed when they just stacked one mast on top of another with no packing.

Most of the hydraulic hoses failed in short order, very difficult for hose companies to source the oddball fittings (bsp cones with metric threads if I remember) had to re-pipe a lot of em.

I could waffle about them all day, as a field service engineer they were the baine of my life for some time (while having to smile and tell the customer there new truck was lovely, not a pile of junk).

Any other questions just ask!

Tony The Trainer DID reply with his experience on an UN electric. Scroll down & read it.

Maybe the lack of more comments might be directly proportional to the population of UN equipment being used and/or sold to end users or in dealer rental fleets. Or maybe the units are used in countries that don't have access to FAC.

Guys, as much as I appreciate the feedback, no one has left a reply with their experiences with UN Forklifts.

Has anyone either owned, operated, worked on, or even better: been a dealer?

Most Chinese manufactures can't get the basic components right, i am yet to see a Chinese engine truck with a decent brake set up. They either don't work effectively or drums wear out before the shoes or the brake springs snap and cause brake failures. Some products come with Korean disk brakes but they aren't much better or they weren't a couple of years ago.

Exalt it's not a matter of knocking new products. The problem with Chinese MHE equipment is the quality of the product and I've yet to work on a well made one and that includes Samuk. 2 back up support, it's ok to sell a product but if you can't get the parts you can't keep it running and we struggled to get parts that should be avaliable overnight. Yes Chinese trucks may come good in the future but I can't see it happening for a long time yet

People do seem to knock new products on the Market,the one thing to tell if the truck is any good is the customers.if they are good and can show they can cut downtime then customers will benefit from them

Johnr j I live and work in north tx. Denton and places north. Some of the best BBQ comas out of the small mom and pop places. You can always tell when the line to get in streches out into the parking lot the food is killer. Big Shiner Bock fan myself. What you said is correct. If you sell industrial equipment you better back it up with parts and service. Down equipment is not producing revenue and tends to have accounting departments going postal on you.

@triumphrider
Thanks for your comments. Secondly what part of Texas are you from. Used to live in Waco, then in Houston area - Katy. Miss our friends, family, TexMex, Texas BBQ (GA don't know BBQ - from the pigs butt) & Lone Star or a Pearl Light when the budget was tight.

We saw a few folks when our grandson got married in late Sept., he lives in Fourney & of course our daughter & granddaughter & saw our first Bucky's truck stop - that place is awesome.

I agree with you @johnr j and in fact KION has recently taken on the Chinese brand Baoli. KION plans to back this with the same product support, parts and sales quality that they do with Linde. I think it will probably end a lot of the headaches that consumers faced in the past with Chinese trucks. Was at the dealer meeting and the truck looked good so we'll see shortly.

Johnr j you said it best

@newbious.
Until the Chinese can get reasonable after sale support - parts, service technical back up on a par with the other US lift truck companies & dealers or other countries - they will have a problem exploding sales anywhere. Heli is about the only one that has done a decent job in work towards providing adequate parts support. I know the President of Heli Americas and have met his counterpart for the other Heli distributor in the US for the West & Southern region - they both hare committed to providing support that customers expect & deserve expected. Tialfit has done a decent job as well - they changed horses (national distributor) several years ago -knew the first distributor in Dallas, TX - good company for sure and support driven.
My personal experience with Chinese equipment & in discussion with Chinese LT providers is that there first objective is to build truck population then the after sales support will follow - as they say "THAT DOG DON'T HUNT" in the eyes of the end user. End users are not wanting to wait 90 day+ to get a replacement part for a commonly failed part.
When I worked with the national distributor for Mitsubishi fork lifts in Houston during the mid 1980's it was not usual to remove parts from new stock trucks to get the end user up and running & keep our dealers satisfied - we had up 900 trucks in inventory at one time & we counted inventory of whole goods & service parts on a very regular basis (sometimes more often). In the end our sales kept moving on up like the Jefferson's - then MCFA was formed in 1992 & support only got stronger.

Unless a company is will to commit to total product support from day one - the follow adage will apply " If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" look up the meaning via a Google search.

My 2.5 cents worth & my perspective from 4 decades plus 1 year in the lift ruck industry. Hung up my spurs in 2007.

I have done a small amount of work on some low hour Chinese trucks. Helis, Hytsu and Baoli. Pretty much every job turned to crap, being more difficult than you would expect. Sometimes the design just sucked, other times the parts failed at ridiculously low hours. Things like hub seals, handbrake cables and direction levers. A fuel tank sender that can't float up or down properly because they do not fit the tank shape.
Kingpin needle bearings that are a size that is not available from bearing suppliers.
I have heard some pretty scary stories about some Chinese Toyotas as well.
If you need one truck buy two Chinese ones might be a good idea and then rent one in when they are both broken.

I used UN electric counterbalance machines at my last employment. it was a training company so the machines were not used "operationally" but we found them to be pretty poor. batteries werent great, electronics werent great and the service engineers used to tell us that they had a lot of problems with other machines that were used in live environments.