I can quote a term i heard in the Navy(US that is) Hurry up and wait!. Long lead times are everywhere from parts, shipping those parts, and finding a tech who knows what he is doing to install them. Here in the Dallas/FtWorth area techs with 3 to 5 years under their belts are really hard to find. Sad but true.

Perhaps there is too much technology these days?
After all, it's just a fork truck shifting pallets.

Get a more basic truck and manage the people better.

I recall our place down in the Midlands, we had some senior sales guy in from Crown, banging on about the technology, when asked about lead times, failed to give a direct answer and would come back to us with an update, that was 8 weeks ago, perhaps he lost the magic beans, he certainly lost us.
Briggs were more switched on for us, got us some good quality rental trucks to cover the shortages.

On the contrary, supply chain and delivery lead time is absolutely not affected from many of large scale manufacturers of China.
Like "HELI" is supplying machines without any interruption at a full pace and dealers/customers are enjoying same delivery lead time as before COVID or Ukraine war.

As with most issues, it starts at the bottom and works it's way up. With our company it's the component manufacturers who are driving the long lead times. Either they can't get a component to manufacture their item, or a lack of employees to put them into production among many other reasons. We now have a vendor putting a surcharge on top of an expediting fee to get components that are past due. Unfortunately our customer suffers then too. Seems it's only going to be time that will solve the issue.

There are some OEM's that are quoting >12 months delivery lead times, which for the end user can be problematic especially for new build projects needing trucks by a 'go live' date.
However, there are some OEM's, Jungheinrich in particular where lead times are considerably quicker than 12 months. Jungheinrich are not immune to supply chain & resource challenges but with smart planning in their production facilities have been able to 'iron out' the peaks & troughs to ensure reliable & relatively short lead times compared to the rest of the OEM's. I hope this helps?

Recall in the mid 70's we ( A-C) manufactured/fabricaed a large percentage of our units. Lead time was up to one year - items like forgings, castings, mast rolled channel was very long, production of out sources items, was limited, lead time on new orders (stock or sold) was 52 weeks. Then the bottom feel out. Cancellation of order abounded. Recall one month the ITA new factory orders went negative - we had a plus 6 order month. Biggest on month market share month in our history - LOL
Ya' gotta' have some gray hair or a receding hair line or none to recall that time period. This person that is a double upside down hockey stick does well - was appointed a District Sales Manager during those days in the Ohio Valley area. - fun, fun but learned a lot.

Recall in the mid 70's we ( A-C) manufactured/fabricaed a large percentage of our units. Lead time was up to one year - items like forgings, castings, mast rolled channel was very long, production of out sources items, was limited, lead time on new orders (stock or sold) was 52 weeks. Then the bottom feel out. Cancellation of order abounded. Recall one month the ITA new factory orders went negative - we had a plus 6 order month. Biggest market share month in our history - LOL
Ya' have to have a lot of gray hair and/or receding hair line to recall that period of time. Two upside down hockey sticks here.

heh Data, i totally wasn't paying attention to where you were from...
yep in europe what you say very well is the case i suppose...
here in the US it is a bit different since most of what we get here is built over there. So in our case the wait times would be longer because of the trip over on the boat ;o)

Hi swoop, lead times in Europe are rumoured to be 1-year plus for all equipment from most OEMs, and as opposed to the traditional 12 weeks and orders for the odd couple of counter balance trucks can be fulfilled from a stock, however the UK market is around 10% sales through dealers with the remainder going through the OEMs directly.

what kind of delay times are you talking about?
sure the supply chain problems today are causing some issues but not totally.
usually dealers do not keep in stock all models, they usually keep certain popular models with either basic features or a couple in stock fully loaded. Some customers want specific features which makes the mfg and delivery times more extended because of the special orders they make. From my experience when customers order trucks if they are not stocked at the dealer then the wait times can be many months, those are the orders that are built when ordered and of course the more orders there are the wait times can get rather long because they use the process of building them in the order they come in. Nobody gets any special privilege's to jump the line in front of others.