EP Equipment-China does have controlling interest in Big Lift, formally known as Big Joe. I have heard that they plan on moving all of Big Lift's manufacturing to China. Hopefully EP will have more success in using the Big Joe's dealer's network, than they have had under their own EP brand. I think that EP has had trouble under their brand because of the lack of customer service after the sale, mostly with forklift sales in the USA. EP has represented themselves as the manufacture of the forklifts they sell, when this is not really the case at all. They purchase their forklifts from Hangcha with only the name changed on the counterbalance and maybe a few add-ons. The problem with this is not the quality of the forklift, but with the supply of parts to the customers or dealers. EP-China will sale forklifts in USA and Canada and never have parts in EP-USA to support the equipment that they sell. Hopefully Big Lift will not suffer from the same mistakes that the EP brand has. This has hurt EP's reputation in the material handling business, I think. It's pretty bad when a customer has a $20,000 piece of equipment to go down for at least two weeks, because of a $25.00 part they can't get. I hope that EP and other Chinese companies will soon realize if they want to do business in North America, they need to have much better customer service than what they have now.

In my opinion, I would avoid this type of problem by buying only made in America products, if you can find them anymore. Good luck to all that buy from Big Lift and EP Equipment. Really, good luck!!!