What are your company's products/services?

The focal point of Tampa, Florida-based Keytroller's product line are the Keytroller vehicle monitoring systems. The company also offers Speedtroller and Speed-Saver digital speedometers that automatically control speed, a Tire-Saver tire and transmission abuse prevention system, Keyenabler wireless vehicle theft prevention systems, Movetroller, for indoor vehicle tracking, and the Weightroller line of forklift weighing devices.

Give a brief history of your company's involvement in the materials handling industry.

Keytroller Inc was established in 1997 by Terry Wickman who has had a career with forklift manufacturers covering marketing and dealer development. He recognised a need in the industry for a reliable supplier of electronic devices that would improve equipment safety, productivity and performance. The devices limit equipment access to trained, authorised drivers and make operators accountable. The company's flagship product, Keytroller, has evolved from a simple keypad into a complete wireless vehicle monitoring system with an LCD screen, RFID card enabling, impact sensing, checklist automation and maintenance scheduling. With Keytroller, users can control vehicle speed automatically, track indoor locations, record impact/abuse and movement history and transmit data wirelessly.

What is your company's current position in the regional market? How about globally?

Keytroller has relationships with more than 400 forklift dealers in North and South America and OEM relationships with the six largest forklift manufacturers in the US. The company has marketing agreements with master distributors to sell its product lines into Asia, Europe and Australia.

Keytroller is closely aligned with Ravas, in Holland, a weighing equipment manufacturer, Transmon, in England, a speed and abuse control equipment manufacturer, and RDS, in England a weighing device manufacturer. Keytroller markets some of their partner's products under private label agreements for sale in North and South America. The synergy and co-operation between Keytroller and its partners is important in producing quality products and has a very positive effect on the companie's growth and new product offerings.

All Keytroller products are designed to install seamlessly on any manufacturer's forklift; be it gas, LPG, diesel or electric. They are engineered to improve the operation, productivity and safety of forklift equipment. That inherently makes the forklifts more saleable while providing a reasonable additional profit for the installing dealer. For end-user fleets with a variety of vehicle makes and models, Keytroller products can be installed on any machine using the same wireless network and PC filtering and graphing software.

What makes your company outstanding in its market?

Keytroller is the only company to offer a full line of electronic safety equipment for forklifts. If there is a problem with abuse, access, training, damage, weighing, indoor tracking or monitoring, Keytroller can solve it at an affordable price. Many dealers use Keytroller units exclusively because of their reliability and performance. Dealers do not want to deal with a lot of call backs or technical and installation problems. Keytroller has endeavored to make installation, set up and operation as easy as possible.

Innovation is the hallmark of the Company. For instance we just introduced new wireless in cab PDA option for logging weighing events from our Weightroller line of forklift scales. The PDA can log an accurately weighed load from trailer to rack and event print an adhesive label wirelessly. This weighing log is then transferred by a PDA cradle to the host PC for additional filtering and graphing can be done.

What are your future plans?

Keytroller is expanding its offerings in wireless transmission and data evaluation. Last year, the company introduced three new radio options (900mhz, 802.11 and Ethernet), including the innovative Movetroller tracking system that provides real time and historical location of any tagged vehicle - just like GPS, but indoors. With Movetroller users can immediately see the position of a Keytroller-enabled vehicle anywhere in a plant within WiFi range. Management can view idle time, impact location and movement in certain areas, further improving accountability of forklift operators.