Nacco Industries Inc's Yale, Hyster and parts units were stand-out performers in an improved operating profit, despite lower sales for 2002's second quarter, ended June 30.

Nacco chairman Alfred Rankin Jr said demand for forklifts continued to improve. "Backlog increased (24 percent) to 17,500 units'' at June 30, compared to 14,100 orders not yet filled at June 30, 2001, and 16,300 at March 30 this year.

"We've continued in each quarter to increase our backlogs, which should bode well for shipment volumes as we look to future quarters," Mr Rankin said.

The materials handling group's wholesale and retail forklift units accounted for 63.8 percent of Nacco's sales for the quarter.

"Although profit in the second quarter was a modest number in total, I feel good about the total situation," Mr Rankin said. The results "are confirmation of our cost reduction and restructuring".

Wholesale achieved profit of USD2.5 million on sales of USD347.2 million, compared to USD4.9 million profit on sales of USD392.0 million for the comparable 2001 quarter. Wholesale shipped 16,135 units in the quarter, compared to 14,971 for the same period in 2001.

The retail unit posted the same USD3.7 million loss as the 2001 quarter, but the 2002 result was on sales of USD41.5 million, compared to USD52.7 million in sales for second quarter 2001.

"The largest portion of that (current retail loss) was in our Asia-Pacific operations, where we continue a restructuring program," Mr Rankin said. "While our objective of achieving at least break-even results is coming a bit more slowly than we anticipated, we think the underlying situation is improving, and we are continuing to focus a lot of management attention on that area."