I agree with you @johnr j and in fact KION has recently taken on the Chinese brand Baoli. KION plans to back this with the same product support, parts and sales quality that they do with Linde. I think it will probably end a lot of the headaches that consumers faced in the past with Chinese trucks. Was at the dealer meeting and the truck looked good so we'll see shortly.

Johnr j you said it best

@newbious.
Until the Chinese can get reasonable after sale support - parts, service technical back up on a par with the other US lift truck companies & dealers or other countries - they will have a problem exploding sales anywhere. Heli is about the only one that has done a decent job in work towards providing adequate parts support. I know the President of Heli Americas and have met his counterpart for the other Heli distributor in the US for the West & Southern region - they both hare committed to providing support that customers expect & deserve expected. Tialfit has done a decent job as well - they changed horses (national distributor) several years ago -knew the first distributor in Dallas, TX - good company for sure and support driven.
My personal experience with Chinese equipment & in discussion with Chinese LT providers is that there first objective is to build truck population then the after sales support will follow - as they say "THAT DOG DON'T HUNT" in the eyes of the end user. End users are not wanting to wait 90 day+ to get a replacement part for a commonly failed part.
When I worked with the national distributor for Mitsubishi fork lifts in Houston during the mid 1980's it was not usual to remove parts from new stock trucks to get the end user up and running & keep our dealers satisfied - we had up 900 trucks in inventory at one time & we counted inventory of whole goods & service parts on a very regular basis (sometimes more often). In the end our sales kept moving on up like the Jefferson's - then MCFA was formed in 1992 & support only got stronger.

Unless a company is will to commit to total product support from day one - the follow adage will apply " If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" look up the meaning via a Google search.

My 2.5 cents worth & my perspective from 4 decades plus 1 year in the lift ruck industry. Hung up my spurs in 2007.

I have done a small amount of work on some low hour Chinese trucks. Helis, Hytsu and Baoli. Pretty much every job turned to crap, being more difficult than you would expect. Sometimes the design just sucked, other times the parts failed at ridiculously low hours. Things like hub seals, handbrake cables and direction levers. A fuel tank sender that can't float up or down properly because they do not fit the tank shape.
Kingpin needle bearings that are a size that is not available from bearing suppliers.
I have heard some pretty scary stories about some Chinese Toyotas as well.
If you need one truck buy two Chinese ones might be a good idea and then rent one in when they are both broken.

I used UN electric counterbalance machines at my last employment. it was a training company so the machines were not used "operationally" but we found them to be pretty poor. batteries werent great, electronics werent great and the service engineers used to tell us that they had a lot of problems with other machines that were used in live environments.

I completely disagree Chinese forklifts are usually junk.. there are exceptions to the rule but you get what you pay for. And yes some smaller components are made in china but all electrical work combined with quality of metals used makes a huge difference. Also we have to team up here if they take the forklift industry whats next auto where does that leave us... Ill tell you broke!!!

people need to get over the whole, oh its made in china, it must be crap. Hate to break it to everyone but even our brand name american trucks are full of Chinese components. Everything is made in china these days. So get over it and stop knocking it before you try it. Maximal is about to blow up world wide.