A collaboration between manufacturer Crown Equipment Corporation and distributor LiftPower Inc has resulted in delivery of 30 Crown electric forklifts for a Jacksonville tyre warehouse.

The new facility of Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire LLC also obtained 12 gas-powered forklifts from an outlet for Toyota Material Handling USA Inc of Irvine, California.

"We were aggressive in approaching people at Bridgestone," says Don Hume, chief executive officer of Jacksonville-based LiftPower. "We talked with Bridgestone in Tennessee and on the West Coast and hooked them up with the Crown national account people" in New Bremen, Ohio.

Hume was aware that Bridgestone managers were contacting various forklift manufacturers in the process of setting up the tyre-maker's one-million-square-foot (100,000-sqm) distribution centre at Cecil Commerce Center, which was a US Navy air station until 1999.

Bridgestone is ramping up Jacksonville warehouse operations and the firm's forklift needs "may double" as tyre volumes increase, Hume says. Bridgestone Firestone of Nashville, Tennessee, is a unit of Tokyo-based Bridgestone Corporation.

Proximity to the burgeoning Port of Jacksonville was a factor in the forklift Bridgestone sales. "The continued growth of imports from China is creating demand for more distribution on the East Coast" as numerous major US ports approach saturation levels, he says. LiftPower is a "beneficiary of being in a port city."

Another growing port in Savannah, Georgia, also boosts LiftPower. Recently, LiftPower sold 300 Crown electric forklifts for use in two new Savannah-area facilities of retailer Target Corporation, a two-million-square-foot (200,000 sqm) regional distribution centre in Port Wentworth, Georgia, and a 1.5-million-square-foot (150,000 sqm) standard distribution centre in Midway, Georgia.

LiftPower employs 85 and distributes Crown, Daewoo, Komatsu and Bendi forklifts through dealerships in Jacksonville, Savannah and Ocala, Florida. A parts site is located in Valdosta, Georgia.

Recently, LiftPower donated a new rider reach forklift worth about USD14,000 to the non-profit Dignity U Wear Foundation Inc of Jacksonville.

Community groups, individuals, manufacturers and retailers donate new clothing that the organization distributes to needy children. "We will become more involved with them," Hume says.