Bowker Group has received 12 Flexi articulated forklifts after re-evaluating materials handling operations at its three sites.

One of northern England's largest independent third-party logistics (3PL) service operators, Bowker Group, has received a fleet of 12 Flexi articulated forklifts after re-evaluating materials handling operations at its three sites.

Five Flexis are in service at the Leyland and Preston facilities while two trucks are working at the Hull site.

Although the Flexis can operate in aisles as narrow as 1.8 metres (5.9 feet) wide, Bowker opted to set the aisle widths at its facilities at 2.0 metres (6.6 feet) for higher speed efficiency of throughput.

"A significant part of our business is about achieving a quick turnaround," explains warehouse manager Stuart Greenwood. "Quite simply, we felt that by narrowing the aisles too much we would restrict the speed at which forklifts can travel [safely] between picking locations."

After close consultation between company's key personnel and Narrow Aisle Flexi's warehouse planning team, 2.0 metres (6.6 feet) was agreed to be the optimum aisle width for Bowker.

John Maguire, Narrow Aisle's sales and marketing director, says that while articulated forklift suppliers have stressed the benefits of keeping aisle widths to a minimum for many years, he believes some companies are in danger of adversely affecting the efficiency of their forklift fleet by trying to squeeze too many racking runs into any given storage cube.

"At fast-moving operations like Bowker where speed of pallet put-away and pick is essential, the speed at which a truck can safely operate in the aisle is more important than the need to narrow the aisles," he says.

Maguire says that this is sometimes forgotten at the warehouse planning stage. He recently visited a site where the wide chassis articulated forklifts specified in the operation have no choice but to travel at less than half their top speed within the aisle because clearance was too small, leaving little margin of error on either side of the truck.

Bowker's Flexi fleet comprises of G4 models from the Narrow Aisle range. Narrow Aisle claims the G4 is the most popular articulated truck in Europe.

At Bowker's Leyland facility, incoming vehicles arrive at a covered goods area and Flexis are used to unload incoming trailers and deliver pallets directly to the racking. At Hull and Preston, a combination of Flexis and counterbalanced machines are used for unloading.

"The Flexis and the new warehouse layouts introduced across our sites have made a big difference to our operation," Greenwood says.
"One of the most interesting things has been the reaction of our operators to the trucks. One driver in particular had not even seen an articulated truck before and had only ever operated reach trucks. However, within a few days of using the Flexis, he was converted and now refuses to drive anything else."

Established in 1919, Bowker offers a range of contract distribution and dedicated and shared-user warehousing services from its facilities at Preston, Leyland and Hull. It has a diverse client base and stores and distributes anything from hazardous chemicals to foodstuffs.