The supposed difference in weight holding capacity, and therefore less movements between bottom board US pallets and open bottom UK pallets is not a good argument. Weight on pallets has been getting significantly less over the last 10-20 years.When we used to have manufacturing pallets could be up to 3,500 lbs plus ea, Grocery pallets were generally 2,500 lbs except for Crisco cans at 2,700 lbs and general rule was 2,500 lbs per pallet. Today a more general real world rule is more like 1,500 lbs. Why the difference? No manufacturing, the rise of the internet, where we want one of each in our color delivered tomorrow, rise of packaged import goods, and finally the ubiquitos Blister pack. If you compare a tape measure in a small box you can pack thousands onto a pallet with the resultant heavy weight, but compare that to a tape measure in a large blister pack ready to be hung up at a retailer. Now we are talking less than a 1,000 lbs per pallet. Nobodys acknowledges it but if you go around a warehouse, and start handliftting pallets by the side, you will be able to do it today.
Again the plain fact is that in Europe land is much more expensive so people take advantage of the cube and go up. You need specialist equipment to do that, the same equipment will not offload the trucks so you have to buy a different style of truck to do that.
In the US most small to medium size business's use the same truck to offload and put away in the warehouse. Using 13' Aisles and of course they can only lift to 192" so racks aren't very high nor buildings at 20' to 22' high. Now the newer building @ Class A space are higher 25' to 28' and you would move into them knowing you are going to use a Crown or Raymond Hi Rise stacker type equipment. Also something else to offload the trucks. In a given area this is at best 25% of the space.

Hi everybody.
I think that the TommyBhama's remark is very interesting. The ratio is about 1.3:1.
The sum of more factors may it be the solution......maybe.

i think Class 1 is around 700 class 2 is around 850 class 3 is around 1700. Im not 100% sure but they won't be far of

Does anyone know what the electric forklift market is ? Especially interested in the Australian market.

One of the answers to this question could be the Euro Pallet 800mmx1200mm, which has an open base (unlike the US and UK 40x48inch closed pallet) and allows smaller more cost effective stacker machines to be used rather than more expensive reach or counterbalances. The concept of this pallet is great but the drawback is it doesn't hold as much weight as a bottom boarded pallet, and as such to move the same tonnage of stock there are more pallets needed, more pallets - more movements, more movements - more forklifts...maybe

maybe theres more leasing than buying in america

This is the answering machine of Europe.
We are away for the football championship.
Look at:
.uefa.com/uefaeuro/season=2012/matches/index.html

(Little O.T.)

there are no laws here saying how long you can keep a forklift. there is a massive shortage of used equipment, prices have doubled in the last 12 months. most units available are between 8 & 14 years old. with the availability of cheap parts & the rip-offs by the main dealers regarding hire "damages" it must be far cheaper for an end user to own the equipment. you won't get a salesman telling them this though!

I spoke with one of my suppliers today who used to do business in the UK. He had 3 large warehouses with about 250 pieces of material handling equipment under his command. When I brought up this subject & asked his opinion he told me that in England he was required to replace a forklift when it was 6 years old. He was constantly having to purchase new equipment as the fleet aged.

Is this true? Is there some sort of law requireing a forklift to be replaced after it's 6 years old? He also told me that English forklifts have alot more safety stuff on them than the American units.

The company he worked for eventually sold off all the assets in England, as the cost of doing business was just to high. He then ran a warehouse (for the same company) in the states where he said the average age of the equipment was 8-10 years old, with some units being 15 years old. He had his own service dept. & techs- this arrangement was much more economical in his opinion.

Elephantroom

I can't explain where the forklifts go in Europe, they must have a high number of used/refurbished units available. I'm not sure what their safety rating stats are or where they're accepted but here in the US we use the UL. I do know that if a European forklift gets here (grey market), it's a huge liability issue & OSHA will force the company to get the unit of the property immediately.

I don't believe a forklift purchase here is ever on a whim. Large companies have budgets, etc. Small companies have to juggle multiple issues, sometimes it seems like a purchase is on a whim, but there's always tax issues, downtime, purchase price vs repairs,etc. that make the ultimate decision.

I think there will be a slow down in Europe , Some companies are already seeing this but will not say this openly , They keep saying that growth is good and show last year as a example of this but there will definitely be a slowdown in Europe this year. A gain Asia will lead the market. We could see the disappearance of some smaller European Manufactures mainly possibly in the Italian market. Also some of the Asian manufactures Like Clark , Nissan - TCM , Komatsu Hyundai and Doosan might look to concentrate on markets closer to there home.

andrew_j

thanks so much - you've explained it!

can u give me an example of the types of forklifts that are used in europe for the two functions - load and unload.. vs. the one type of forklift that would be used in the US to do both functions? i'm learning about the industry, so this might be a very basic question.

another question for the forum - do you think the European crisis will reduce demand for forklifts? do you think financing of forklifts to the customers and to the dealers will be adversely affected?

There are other factors at play as well. Americans think nothing of lifting boxes and consider it manly! In Europe due to culture and strict Health and Safety Laws everything is lifted by mechanized equipment.Europe's warehouses are far more "cubed" than the US, needing constant use of higher lift narrow aisle fork trucks in the aisles. This mean you have separate equipment to load/unload. Americans use the same truck for both functions, and therefore have to have 14' aisles, which is ok because rental rates are much cheaper than Europe. Imagine you were building a warehouse near Manhattan, and then think of the things you would do, to get the most out of that space.
Material handling in Europe is treated with respect as a saving rather than a cost. Here equipment purchase is often at the company President's whim.

A lot of the trucks that come of hire are sold on to emerging markets or back into europe. Companies like Linde and Jungheinrich have plants that only referb trucks and then sell them on. I don't know any ware they scrap truck just after five years. One point that has come out is that customers in the US use there truck over a longer period than in Europe. There have been one or two 10 year contracts lately but most are five years. The customer seems to get a better service on this with newer more productive trucks. We are looking into a new way of rental that will combine both benefits of the north american and european markets

bbforks

in response to your answer that forklifts in europe are trashed after 5 years... how come they aren't shipped and sold to emerging markets... similar to trucks, buses, agricultural equipment, etc. there's still value and i would imagine that there must be a market for 5 year old forklifts in the emerging markets, or even europe's less fortunate neighboring countries. any insight?

thanks.

It seems to me that the financing differences between the 2 continents make the difference. With Hire purchase, the company gets to depreciate the machine as they pay for it. With lease purchase, the payments are deducted in full with no depreciation. Depreciation starts after the lease ends, therefore, with HP. there's no tax advantage to keep the unit after your done paying for it. With a lease purchase. a company can still depreciate the unit down for a couple of years- delaying the purchase of a new machine.

In Italy the "Full rental" is entirely tax deductible, more-or less like your FMV lease, I think.
There must be some other explanation to justify twice the sales.

The so called dollar option lease is not really a lease in the eyes of the IRS. It is a time payment contract which at the end user retains ownership at the end of the contract term (provided they made all payments) & the equipment must be treated as a capital asset on the customers books. The FMV is a true lease & monthly payments can be treated as an operating expense - owner ship belongs to the leasing organization at the end of the term. With a FMV the end user is simply paying for usage of the equipment. They could possibly sell the equipment to the original lease customer at a "Fair Market Value" at the end of the term. The leasing company determines the market value at that the lease end.

I think it's more down to management choice the tax brakes for leasing will probably be similar because other areas use contract hire like auto's and construction industry. Like was pointed out if the service side is not up to it then customers won't go for it. This is why i think Large manufactures like KION will use there influence and move into to what will be a very large market. At the moment the European market will fall back ,Asia is very competitive Brazil is down in first Quarter. With new regulations and higher cost of fuel the only way to go will be rental because customers will want a more efficient equipment at a lower cost

Does anyone know the tax benefits of leasing/renting vs buying in Europe? I have to believe that there is a tax advantage to renting that we don't have, or maybe there's a penalty for purchasing we don't have.

We all have the same brand of machines at our disposal, no matter which side of the pond we happen to be on. We all live in a global economy and most companies now have international accounts. If there are advantages out there for companies to explore, I'm certain that they will. I guess time will tell whether renting/leasing becomes the norm over here.