When Clark was king of the hill they had a great number of company owned stores and promoted strong STR & LTR and customer finance programs (aka financial merchandising) and were leaders in developing national account along with Hyster. Then Clark started sell off their company stores and began loosing control of the distribution system. Then their move to Battle Creek, MI to Kentucky did not serve them well at all, then Terex got involved with Clark and Clark's parts operations went to **** in a hand basket. By this point the former king of the hill was rolling down the backside of that hill very rapidly.

Davelift: One reason Linde's don't do well in the US is that a FMV (fair market value) lease of 36 to 60 months depending on anticipated annual usage is VERY common, where basically the end users is only paying for the usage and at the end of the term they turn it in & get new units before the high cost of repairs period kicks in. These FMV leases can be structured with or without a maintenance agreement. A finance company owns the equipment during the lease period is ultimately responsible for selling the asset at the end of the lease to recoup at least a predetermined residual value or greater if the condition of the equipment and Fair Market Value will allow. They can be sold to the lessor, local dealer or open market. Typically, units sold on a FMV program don't show up on the selling dealers balance sheets.
So what I have said is Linde's are higher priced than other makes, therefore their monthly payments will be higher than the competition for the same time period and because most trucks will not run more than 10,000 hours in a 5 year period and customers don't really care that a Linde will run 20,000 hrs or 10 years because they plan on releasing new units every 5 years - why pay for something you aren't ever going to use. Certainly, the Linde lift can fit into the niche markets that are classified "mean, dirty & nasty" operations but that is only about 3 - 5% of the total market, the rest of the lift truck dogs fight & eat in the other 80 - 85% of the market. The missing 10% of the market includes light duty and specialty type lifts.