And who owns Raymond? Toyota of course. I can remember raymond sideloaders were in a class all their own. For example we used to call houston sideloader city because all of the raymond sideloaders there. They could be serviced in the field as the customers usually had overhead cranes. to be fair they had their issues but overall you could not beat a raymond sideloader. +I do not how they perform today but back when i spent a lot of time on those the customer loved them. They were proud of their parts back then and i am sure they still are.

There is a reason why Raymons sells more Swing Reach or turret trucks than any other brand year after year. The proof of that performance is in the numbers. For those of you who don't know, there is an organization called the Industrial Truck Association or ITA. All the major brands of lift trucks are members and report their sales to ITA every month by class of truck and code. For example, Class I is electric counterbalanced, Class II is for Narrow Aisle trucks (including Swing Reach, turret trucks) Class III is for walkies, walkie riders and walk-in stackers, Class IV is for Internal combustion cushion tire trucks and Class V is for Pneumatic tire internal combustion trucks. The sub codes denote the specific type of truck within a class. For example Class II Code 2 is for Narrow Aisle Orderpickers, Class I Code IV is for sit down counterbalanced electric 3 wheel trucks, Class III code II is for walkie electric pallet trucks, etc. The Class and Code for Swing reach/turret trucks and side loader electric trucks is Class II Code IV. Raymond has alway been in the 50% to over 60% share of that Class and Code. Raymond does not sell many side loaders as side loaders are a very small party of that Class and code. The great majority of sales in that Class and Code are Raymond Swing Reach trucks. This has been true for over 30 years. The great majority of customers like the Raymond because of its design, lower cost per hour to run and more importantly the high productivity and reliability it gives them. On top of that Raymon dealers have the largest number of this type of truck in their rental fleets to support their customers occasional additional needs. The other thing to keep in mind is that Raymond owns the majority of their dealers and as such their primary line is Raymond. There are very few Raymond dealers that carry any additional competitive brands., I urge you to go to your Crown dealer, your local Yale dealer and any other dealer that represents a line of turret trucks and see what they offer as back up and support for their turret trucks. The reason Raymond us number one in turret truck sales is because of the quality of th product and the Raymond dealer network. The proof is in the numbers of trucks sold and the repeat customers. The ITA figures show Raymond is number 1 in their share os market foe these truck and has been for over 30 years. Visit a dealer and see for yourself.

I can't tell you how many times I asked the operators and the answer was nearly always the same. They were more stable at height and they were more comfortable and these were 4+ year old trucks normally. I think a happy employee that is comfortable with a truck will out perform one that is in a truck they are afraid to work at height. I can't comment on operating cost. The Crown techs I delt with at these locations always seemed competent, but that being said I was almost always in a factory store area.

IN all fairness , have had experence with the raymond 38 csr 30tt series andolder ts and tsp crown units, properly maintained these units were very reliable.

To me reliability Equals Lower cost of operation. Meaning you do not have to spend so much on parts

You have to have a good budget to run Crowns, they are expensive to run whichever way you look at them, plus they have very poor engineer coverage and even then the good knowledgeable TSP techs even rarer.
Whether operators prefer them or not is a side note, good availability and cost of operations come first.
Business is business at end of day.

Yes true, Raymond really hits you hard on replacement parts pricing.

Not really a true statement, I have had both newer Crown and older. The new trucks have significantly less parts than old Crown trucks.

Same experience. Employees always wanted to drive the Crown over Raymond or Yale. Not too many companies buying Yale for a turret truck.

I'm a past Crown Employee that was often sent out to disassemble off lease TSP's that were being replaced with different brands of Turret Trucks. The employees that were driving the NEW competitor trucks were not happy about losing the Crowns even while driving new trucks. I always left feeling good knowing the user wanted the Crown.

Have you looked at the number of individual parts used in a Raymond lately? On average 25% less than Crown.

Have you priced out raymond parts lately?

I would suggest you look at the outright leader in that segment which is Raymond. They have more man up swing reach trucks or turret trucks, in service in NA than any other brand. Their dealers have more of this type of truck in their rental fleets than any other dealer network and they have more technicians trained in depth on their trucks. They also have a VR trainer that can be connected to the Raymond trucks Vehicle Management System to train an operator on how to safely operate the truck using an actual Raymond turret truck using the trucks controls but safely in a virtual environment. Raymond also has had the highest share of market in that segment for decades.
Go to or call your local Raymond dealer and ask to see their man up turret trucks or swing reach trucks as Raymond calls them. Also ask about the support they provide in terms of technicians, dollars worth of parts in inventory and the number of turret trucks in their rental fleet. Then compare it to the brand you already mentioned.
I have been in this industry for many years and can tell you that for a specialized truck like this you should go with the machine that has the best record of i=market acceptance and is backed up but the best dealer network that only focused on electric powered lift trucks and specialties in very narrow aisle equipment. That is Raymond.

The Crown overall has better support, techs are trained to support these complicated machines. Durability hands down to Crown, the operator will like the Crown better, more comfort.

My two bits input on this. Seems like we lost flow thru productivity at the cost of slightly more cube storage. The company i worked for at the time did a complete rework of the warehouse to allow counterbalance and reach units to access the racks. It was like a 30% increase in flow thru productivity. was really a modified crossdock operation to be fair. Yep we sold the swing reach units for about 35% of the cost of the units. Burtwok has some really good points in his discussion. Also the person who bought in to the sales pitch left the company to pursue "other intrests"

The VNA choice can make or break a warehouse in my opinion.
The Crown is a solid machine mechanically (except excessive chain & mast roller wear), but it's software is problematic & overcomplicated, the ones that we ran were forever pushing fault codes, affecting productivity by 20% on some shifts by having to constantly restart the truck, apparently it was us the customer at fault according to Crown!, despite a Linde we also had on site running rings around it doing same job.
Tyres are stupidly expensive, 3 times the cost of any other VNA we ran from Linde & Yale, plus service cover in the UK is appalling bad (not sure what Canada is like) , but with it being pushed as a vertically integrated global company (don't you just love sales folk) I thought all would be good, got better service from the local independent on these.
I was glad we had a break clause in at 3 years on these things, so ended the contract.
The Yale machines were a bit old school in tech, but better for it, service was excellent too & parts were always in stock, some issues on residual capacities at max height on Yales, but it was a minor inconvenience to be fair.
We also ran Linde K trucks VNA, good machine, but made of cheese if it collided with anything, end of contract costs were high on the Lindes because of this and bits tended to fall off it for some reason.
The Yales were and still are a good machine, probably 80% of our fleet VNA are Yale now.