I agree with the individual who stated that you should be more concerned about the capabilities of your local dealership. Unless you are talking about lithium-ion (it is unfair to lead-acid to do a head to head comparison), where service requirements are minimal, serviceability is your key to success in any PIT program. If you are considering lithium-ion, look for a company with a spotless safety record and an excess of 10,000 cycle life at 100% depth of discharge.

Thank you all for your advise. I dug a little deeper into the generic branded batteries that most of our original fleet consists of and found out they are un-labeled Reaco's which are actually CROWN's V-line batteries. They have a standard 5 year full warranty and have typically held up well at our facility. I just didn't realize what brand they actually were. We have been typically getting 7+ years from them. We had originally made the switch to GNB (EXIDE) because we changed vendors. I think we are going to try the CROWN V-lines again. I know the watering/maintenance service we received in the past wasn't optimal and we still received many years of service from the Crown's. The vendor we are switching to shows a lot more promise on their watering/maintenance ability (and knowledge). I don't think the DEKA's are an option for us at the moment.

MILLDOG...you wouldn't happen to have a copy or link of the 3M study do you?

3M did a study several years ago and ranked Deka #1. I always had great luck w/ Enersys based upon the local support.
I would be more concerned with your local dealer(s) than the battery itself

I totally agree with Bucknut. Interstate runs a close second

Deka batteries are the best, they do cost a little more but in 25 years in the business I can count the number of failures on one hand, and those failures were handled by the manufacture in good fashion.

I've mainly dealt with GNB & found there pretty decent, very rarely had any issues / failures & any problems we did have ( cell failed or charger fault ) where quickly sorted out by GNB.

Also dealt with Hawker EnerSys - about the same experience as GNB.

The only thing I don't like about either GNB or Hawker EnerSys is there awful battery filling system's, give me old fashioned cell flip tops & a topping up gun on the end of my topping up cart any day.