Barloworld Handling has supplied Palletline with a fleet of Hyster Fortens forklifts.

Barloworld Handling has won a competitive tender to supply Palletline with a new fleet of 40 LPG Hyster Fortens forklifts for its distribution hubs in Solihull.

Palletline is a leading UK palletised distribution company, and operations director Mark Pulford says the company was looking for "optimum levels of reliability and performance", improved ergonomics and advanced technology when it invited five companies to tender for the contract.

After a rigorous evaluation that considered contract life costs, service support, reliability and driver feedback, Palletline chose Barloworld.

"We are maintaining a close focus on efficiency across all our processes to match the cost, safety, and operational improvements already achieved at our new hub," Pulford says.

Most of the fleet is deployed at Palletline's new central hub in Solihull, which the company opened at the end of 2008 to meet rising demand for its palletised freight handling services. The new hub has tripled pallet throughput capacity and boosted operating efficiency for the company.

Palletline says it is the first palletised distribution network to operate a drive-through and side-load operation, which goes beyond safety requirements for its sector.

The two tonne Hyster forklifts will be deployed throughout the night to load and unload palletised goods.

Pulford says Barloworld's service and account management is a major factor in their winning the contract.

Barloworld installed a telemetry device to each forklift that monitors its productivity and automatically uploads information like run time and availability to the fleet management portal. When there is a problem, a fault code is sent to Barloworld so that a technician can be sent to repair the forklift before a breakdown occurs.

A team of Barloworld engineers man a fully-equipped on-site servicing bay to carry out regular planned maintenance on the trucks.

The value of the contract was not disclosed.