History is a wonderful teacher if you stay awake in class.

There have been many companies making trucks for someone else through the ages ie NYK made the first (disasterous) model 110 for Raymond and don't forget that Raymond had a yellow line and made its outdated technology for Cat.

Here in Canada it is BT that lost the lion share of the deal as they were absorbed into Raymond. The merge was good for all as BT got a top notch national distribution and service organization and Raymond ended up with more product lines and a wealth of technical support.

Nothing but speculation as to weather Toyota will eventualy merge in the stream or when its independant dealer contracts expire.

have been told that they are trying to get exra business from the customers who are "badge loyal"think eventually uplift they will be one - in the long term it costs too much just on overheads to stay single

I see Atlet are now doing counter balance's. There a nissan painted yellow. so there's two companies selling the exact same trucks???

will they follow in the toyota / bt rolatruc foot steps and become one ending the dealerships??

or will they carry on seperate???

Toyota bought BT for Raymond. BT owned Raymond and Toyota wanted the Raymond name so they could have a good North american presence. Raymond had also already been building 3-4 of the Toyota electric models of lifts With parts Toyota wanted.

It was quite the opposite here...

From a sales perspective..

So yes I'd have to agree that it "ruined it" somewhat. We experienced the merge around 2003-4 and they operated seperately for about a year(Toyota reps sold toyota, BT guys sold BT), which was great but after about 2005 it was all about market share for toyota (get in get out) and there wasn't enough quality time being spent on the BT products, Sales and service wise. BT became the 'side' product, Toyota was the main product. Same for management same for service.

I left because of it, So I hope these days I am very wrong because BT and Raymond are a top product.

Got to agree talking to a toyota engineer before christmas and he said it feels like bt took them,all his managers/supervisors had been replaced with bt people and its a worse company for it.

Now the holiday is over, shall we talk about forklifts again....I think the Toyota dealers got a raw deal, Toyota after all bought BT and the dealers have had to take the hits of being closed and people loosing jobs

hic. you put your left leg in. party season gents

Come on lads!! Talking forklifts on christmas day thought only i was that sad:-)

You are so dead right uplift! I think Locators did the right thing and got out, I think they have a Still dealership now...........that can't be so good!
Cheers Bobby

Toyota bought BT in 2001 (ish) and they ran as 2 companies. bt was a great company and everything was in house. toyota was mainly through dealerships, toyota decided they wanted to do the same. so they merged (2007) and created toyota material handling uk. they bought all the shity dealerships (which some have been shut down now) and some of the big dealerships didnt sell to toyota and are now big Competitors.

i think they took on to much in such a short a time, and obviously didn't see the credit crunch coming.

the toyota (****) counterbalance and BT (Swedish) warehouse are great kit! and i'd be very surpised if the giant toyoda/toyota don't stay top of the game.

intersting to see Nissan (****) buying Atlet (swedish) -- Nissan operates through a network of dealerships, and Atlet is all in house? will we be seeing Nissan Material Handling in 7 years time?

again i think nissan are great counter balances and atlet seem good warehouse equipment.

i think were going to see a lot of the big boys buying out material handling companies in the future?