sporto5 - Well stated. Crown & Raymond dealers & manufactuer main focus is Class I, II & III products - yes Crown is now into the engine powered stuff & have offered Komatsu, Daewoo (Doodan) products for many years. But their main focus is on warehouse products & warehouse systems or this is where these dogs eat.
Other forklift companies/dealers offer products in all 5 five classifications - their resources (financical, buildings, support equipment, personnel knowledge/training,) customer /application expertice to support those are spread overall 5 differnt types of products - sort of like the "jack of all trades" syndrome or going to a general practice doctor for heart surgery.
In the Southeast - Carolina Handling would be my selection. A simple example - last Friday at 6:30 PM I saw one of ther service vans leaving and industrial park near where I live (45 miles east of downtwown Atlanta)- their home office is NE of Atlanta. One of two things happened - the service tech was seeing a girlfriend in that park or was taking care of a customer (which I do know they have in that park).
When I was in sales working the south side of Atlanta it was not uncommon to see theirservice van's in the Industrial parks there early in the am 6 or 7 am. Their location is closer to the north east side of Atlanta.
No, I don't work or every had for either company - I did work for several of those "jack of all trades" companies - dealers & manufacturer