Dennis Ogden and his team with some of NMM's Crown fleet.

Crown Equipment is helping one of Australia's biggest multi-user mailing house/print distribution centres grow the capacity and efficiency of its storage and distribution operations by providing a more capable and reliable materials handling fleet.

National Mailing and Marketing (NMM), an award-winning company which has been providing customised distribution solutions to government and private sector clients in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and beyond for over 30 years, is running a Crown CG Series counterbalance forklift for loading and unloading duties, and three Crown RR Series reach trucks to fully capitalise on the height of its recently built storage facility.

The company has also taken on Crown Wave Work Assist Vehicles, which are improving stock-picking efficiency and safety over the step ladders previously used.

NMM began using Crown materials handling equipment when its growing operations outpaced the capabilities of its old lift truck fleet.

The company currently manages over 5,000 pallets and 10,000 product lines for its 50 clients, to whom it provides digital print on demand, mail fulfilment and distribution, and third-party logistics services.

General manager Dennis Ogden says the boost in reliability and the way Crown equipment fulfils NMM's materials handling needs has led to a strong relationship between the companies.

"Going back to the early days of NMM, we started off with one second-hand forklift and steadily built up the fleet over the years," Ogden explains. "As the business grew, we obviously needed to upgrade those vehicles. We then started having problems with certain vehicles, at which time we looked around for a short-term hire vehicle.

"That hire vehicle replaced two of our vehicles and became a permanent fixture. We had excellent service from Crown so we decided to dispose of the second-hand forklifts altogether, which were failing continuously. The costs were mounting, so we went for the full hire fleet option.

"We now have a full fleet of Crown vehicles and they're operating very well."

Based in Hume, ACT, NMM has been servicing the public sector and private businesses since 1993. In addition to the ACT and southern New South Wales regional areas, it also has clients based in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and as far afield as London.