SMB1,

Food For Tought,

An accepted concept in one part of the world may not be readily accepted in another.
For example, in the late 60's I worked for a company called Allis Chalmers that partnered with a company, Lancer Boss of Leighton Buzzard UK, to market their large frontloading forklifts and the outdoor sideloader concept that was well accepted in the UK and other parts of Europe. Lance Boss folks boasted that they were the #1 sidelaoder supplier in Europe. & received many awards for design. Well, 40 years later the outdoor sidelaoder still remains a "niche" market concept in the US. Only a few dealers actively promoted the product & concept.

Yes, I heard Sir Neville Bowman Shaw & his brother Trevor many times over say it was a well accepted concept throughout Europe. The biggest obstacles (besides parts support, a mirade of ongoing design & component changes and sometimes reliability issues) we had is that the USA had and still does too much land and to convert to outdoor narrow aisle storage was not time and initial total cost effective in the customer eyes.

Our biggest success story was with a company called Indland Steel and already a longtime customer for front loaders for Allis Chalmers - that was in 1980/81. The sales person, I know very well, spent almost 2 years working with them on conversion to a sideloader to handle ingots out of teh rolling mill and marshall them in the storage yard & load out delivery trucks. Indland spent over $1million USD just to prepare their yard. A few years later Indland went back to the original way of handling - primarily due to down time cause by operator error/much damage with these new concept machines.

What we needed was more success stories and proven cost saving techniques or calculators from our supplier from Leighton Buzzard to launch this "new USA concept" rather than words. Not too many sales people I know will spend 2 years to get an order.