Thursday is Thanksgiving in the United States and marks the start of one of the peak shopping periods on the continent. It begins with Black Friday and culminates in Cyber Monday, which last year topped the scales as the biggest online shopping day in US history, with USD13 billion in sales.
Retailers and distributors, whose livelihoods increasingly depend on fast, reliable and affordable materials handling, will be giving thanks this weekend for the equipment on which they rely - and the operators who run and support it.
This Thanksgiving period will test the capability of traditional forklifts, but it will also see more automation as it handles record quantities of goods and materials. And the automated solutions include a growing fleet of Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs), which are the focus of this week's special report.