Johnr j As a side note, in my opinion Hyster at one time was a major player in big machines but as time went on they lost market share. In other words the Old gray mare ain't what she used to be. Dose this mean you agree with me that Hyster are not as big as they were in big trucks.

When you mentioned Hoist you forgot to mention the Most Important part the Hoist relationship with Toyota, This will be very important to the North American Market. Host Toyota will take market share in the North American medium to big truck market and the biggest looser will be Hyster, again this will put pressure on the medium to big truck facility in Nijmegen.

Just because Taylor were successful in the past doesn't meant they will be successful in the future, One of the big main areas for future success will be the environmental impact of a Truck in the medium to large truck market, At the moment all the zero emission medium and Big trucks from 7T - 36T are battery powered, either by lead acid or lithium Iron batteries, The problem for these is quite simple they all need charging and cooling if you were to look at trucks from 10T- 16T there are now a number of manufactures in this market Kalmar, Carer , Heli,Hangcha, Montini, These mainly all use lead acid battery technology so if you are working a multi shift system you would need spare batteries and charging infrastructure. Over 16T you have Wiggins they use the Thor Truck battery system this is an Lithium iron battery system that would need at least 3 hours charging for an 8 hour shift. Also cooling the battery might have some issues.


This now leaves us with the third alternative Hydrogen fuel cell technology. Toyota would probably be the most experienced company in the materials handling industry with Hydrogen. The point they have not been looking at hydrogen in medium and big trucks goes a long way in saying Hydrogen has to many issues to enter this market. 1 The cost of the truck will make they just to expensive for big Trucks, 2 The cost of the infrastructure for refueling will also be to expensive, 3 At $5.00 per kg and a fuel consumption of around 8 - 16 kg Per Hour depending on truck size fuel cost would be much greater.4 Then there is the problem with Vibration of the truck and the damage this will do to the fuel cell meaning the fuel cell would need a total rebuild ever 18 - 24 month.

Hyster has wasted quite a large amount of money of Hydrogen maybe over $100 Million this is one of the reasons I believe they will be in trouble over the next number of years.