Car dealers have offered extended warranties on automobiles for more than 25 years. Heavy equipment and construction companies have offered extended warranties on their equipment for the last 20 years. Now, a new company in Ft Lauderdale, Florida, is offering an extended warranty program for forklifts.

Lift Shield, the brainchild of President Jim Facente, is now offering forklift warranties through forklift dealers across the US. "Lift Shield offers extended warranties on both new and used equipment and allows Dealers to increase used Forklift sales by offering a 1 or 2 year extended warranty" said Facente.

Facente, a former dealer principal and CFO for a large forklift company in South Florida, came up with the idea after his dealership was sold to a large Caterpillar dealer in July of 2001.

Presently the new program covers only electric forklifts but the company plans to add coverage for internal combustion forklifts within the next few months. The used extended warranty program covers more than 140 major components on an internal combustion forklift and most all of the major electrical components on electric forklifts.

Although Lift Shield is a relatively new company, their warranty program is underwritten by the oldest insurance company in the world, Lloyd's of London. The Lift Shield program is administered by Glynn General, who has been providing extended warranties to the heavy equipment and construction industry since 1984. Through its alliance with Glynn General, Lift Shield now also offers extended warranty coverage on all types of equipment.

"To our knowledge, we are the only independent company offering extended warranties for forklifts," said Facente. He adds, "With our program, a dealer can offer a 4 year, 5000 hour extended warranty, to its customers on our new electric forklifts and a 1 year, 1000 hour or 2 year, 2000 hour extended warranty program on our used program. Our goal is to allow our dealers the opportunity to remove the fear a customer had about purchasing a used forklift and to be able to provide added protection to customers purchasing new forklifts."

The Lift Shield program will not only increase the dealer's equipment sales but also boost parts and service sales. The program requires the customer to have the covered forklift on a periodic maintenance program and only serviced by the selling dealer, thereby locking out the competition. One of the best features of the program is that Lift Shield pays the dealer their published list price on parts and labor for warranty repairs, unlike manufacturers, who pay only a portion of the dealer's labor rate and only the cost of the parts for warranty repairs. Best of all, Lift Shield pays with real money, not a credit like manufacturers and they pay most claims within 14 days, thereby improving the dealer's cashflow.

Beyond conventional applications, some dealers have been successful at using the extended warranties in creative ways. A few examples cited by Lift Shield involve dealers who purchased the coverage for older units in their rental fleet and dealers who purchased the coverage on customer machines they have on full maintenance contracts. One dealer even offered to provide an extended warranty on a forklift sold to a customer by one of his competitors, just to get the service business.