A Tailift forklift - now supported by Schmidt Industrial Truck Inc

The Schmidt family, a player in the forklift service business since 1971, has been appointed a dealer for the World-Lift and Tailift brands in a region covering southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois.

Rick Schmidt founded the family-owned and -operated company. His son, Alan, is president of sales entity Schmidt Lift Inc and service business Schmidt Industrial Truck Inc. Alan Schmidt's wife, Renae, is vice president with responsibilities for accounting and administration.

The businesses employ 12, occupy 15,000 square feet (1,350 sqm) in Racine and focus on the geography generally between Gurnee, Illinois and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

"We are doing everything we can to keep a positive attitude right now," says Gene Sharrett, operations manager with Schmidt Industrial Truck, which employs six certified service technicians and has 12 repair bays, three mobile service trucks and a delivery truck. "We service more than 400 customers."

Schmidt Lift began representing the World-Lift brand in mid-2008, built a closer relationship during ProMat 2009 in Chicago, Illinois and became a Tailift dealer after the 12-15 January trade show. "We knew we needed a brand" to be competitive in the forklift market desides Schmidt's historic roots as a service center, Sharrett notes. Securing the brands "raised our game".

In mid-2004, Tailift Co Ltd of Taipei, Taiwan named Worldwide Wholesale Forklifts Inc of Fort Lauderdale, Florida as an exclusive distributor for Tailift-brand forklifts in certain regions. The Tailift organisation manufactures the World-Lift brand forklifts at a plant in Qingdao, China and distributes and exports the equipment. "Schmidt has the dealership authority to sell both product lines to customers and sub-dealers in its area," says Peter D Vaz, Worldwide president. "Worldwide is the exclusive distributor of the World-Lift line (and) the exclusive distributor of the Tailift brand, east of the Mississippi (River) at this time."

Worldwide Wholesale has 236 dealers in the US, Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas and the Caribbean Islands, Vaz notes.

The Schmidt organisation faces challenges.

"We are holding our own as an independent (forklift firm and) doing everything we can" to communicate "a positive approach to a slumping economy," Sharrett notes. "I went back to school." Currently, Sharrett is enrolled in a marketing course in the college of business and management at Cardinal Stritch University. With the assistance of other students, Sharrett is "applying his studies to a real life situation" relating to effective target marketing for Schmidt products and services.

In addition to forklifts, the Schmidt team also represents lines of aerial lift platforms, scrubbers, sweepers, balers and personal transporters.