What good reading this particular forum is AndyPandy sums up the industry problem really well. Twenty five years ago a new 5000 lb er as it was then was £11000 with a triple and piped to carriage its now £16 - £17 000 with a profit yet the labour rate was £8-9 per hour. The money has gone out of new sales unless its a special. Yet the big boys arnt interested in buying market share by acquiring the smaller independents cos they are usually so far up their own *** they go down the tech squeeze route. Ive heard WILL WRITING PAYS really well if you are under 40 and can listen more than speak.

You can look at this two ways, residual values of ex hire machines, which no one wants because they can't look after them will be driven down and the customers who purchase forklifts will be held to ransom because only the manufacturer can work on them.
Which will only play into the hands of the developing Chinese manufactures who can supply simple machines anyone can look after, and boy do they need some looking after, but these will quickly get better.

Or the forklift industry has spent the last 20 years shooting itself in the foot undercutting each other and its about time customers starting paying the correct price for machines and service and customers being held to ransom is a way of doing this. Will there be a place for independents in 10 years time?

I think this will all back fire on the manufacturers as people will not be willing to buy equipment that is hard or impossible to be repaired by independents. Residual values will also be affected as the number of people able to look after the equipment will be less so demand for these makes of trucks will be less, thus making it hard for the manufacturers to do silly hire deals backed by high RV's. Small fleet users will always prefer independents as they give a sh*t about their customers unlike the manufactures!!

BT control there TruckCom software very tightly.

The newer trucks as there launched the factory parameters cant even be changed with the BT can key, you need BT Truck Com.

The latest Reflex tilting cab reach truck even needs the can key connected just to tilt the cab over.

Don't they already do this? Linde/Still & Jungheinrich seem intent on making it as difficult and expensive as possible to service and repair their trucks by control of their software and diagnostics. What's needed is some sort of standard like the car industry has, OBD2. You can buy a fault code reader for less than £30 on eBay. I believe some fork trucks now use OBD2 for engine diagnostics. Personally I think things will get worse before they get better, I doubt there would be agreement on a common system.