What’s So Good About Electric Forklift Trucks

Forklift Truck

You can get many types of forklift trucks in warehouse settings but one of the more popular choices in terms of how they are powered is electrical forklifts. They may cost a small fortune to buy but it's certainly a cheaper forklift to run as they are just powered off a battery which is charged up after use every day.

They are also a lot quieter than fuel powered forklift trucks which are a godsend when working indoors as the noise from some of them can be quite annoying.

They also require less machinery parts to run which means that maintenance on these types of forklifts are a lot easier to deal with. Someone who goes on a forklift training course is given full instruction when it comes to maintaining such vehicles but this tends to be for the upkeep rather than a full repair job. However, the upkeep on these is fairly simple too so this means that there is less likely to be mistakes made in this area.

Now this next point this may not be on a company's top agenda but they are actually quite environmentally friendly unlike the fuel powered forklift trucks which emit carbon monoxide. This apparently adds to the greenhouse effect which adversly effects climate change and global warming.

In fact both gas and diesel powered forklift trucks shouldn’t be used indoors anyway because there is a health and safety issue due to carbon monoxide building up to dangerous levels in confined spaces. This could lead to carbon monoxide poisoning for many of the staff which is obviously of major concern. Despite the fact that the warehouse or similar building may have very good ventilation it's still a big issue and so the only sensible choice companies have is to use electric forklift trucks. For more information about Forklift Trucks training visit www.aftt.co.uk.

When forklift truck drivers go on forklift training courses one of the segments on the course is related to health and safety as forklift trucks can be dangerous in themselves if not handled properly. Some courses even have first aid as part of the syllabus because it's important to understand how to deal with a situation when someone gets injured, even when having inhaled poisonous fumes.

Speaking of hazards having fuel such as gas or diesel stored on the premises is a high risk and breaks several health and safety regulations unless stored safely away from the building. This of course ends up costing the company more money for specially designed fuel storage so where a company may have saved on the cost of the forklift they end up losing through the added expense.

Electric Forklift Truck - Reviews

Now it’s not all good news when it comes to electric forklift trucks as they aren’t good in rain or areas where there is much water as this can short out the forklift. So it’s a strictly indoors vehicle unless it happens to be nice and sunny outside.

You may have needed to build a fuel storage area but for electric forklifts they also need an area setup in the warehouse for the charging and replacing of batteries. A good battery will only last around six hours on a good run  but takes a good eight hours to charge. You also have to leave them for several hours to cool down as well which delays their use further.

This means that batteries have to be replaced every shift which isn’t a problem but need to be counted into the overall running costs of using an electric forklift as one battery won’t do.

So those are a few benefits to running an electric forklift over other powered forklift trucks and should help you see the reasons why electric forklifts are used so much in warehouses today.