Now more than ever, the material handling industry is using every resource available, such as electric vehicles, motive power options, and productivity software, to quickly and efficiently move materials from the manufacturing stage to the consumers’ hands.
With the rise of COVID-19 throughout the world, it’s a crucial time for the material handling industry to be proactive, efficient, and reliable in the North American market. Whether it’s realized or not, every industry in North America is affected by the use of material handling equipment somewhere in their manufacturing process whether it be using a forklift, electric pallet jack, personnel carrier or automated guided vehicle (AGV).
In light of current events, HAWKER® wants to highlight the importance of motive power and material handling vehicles, and the benefit they’re providing to essential businesses and customers during this time.
If a product moves in a warehouse facility while it’s being manufactured, there is a substantial chance that a material handling vehicle, such as a forklift, pallet jack, or AGV, moved it. Manufacturers and warehouse facilities all over the United States, Mexico, and Canada are currently using these vehicles to take advantage of improved productivity, reduced costs, and enhanced safety.
A critical advantage of a material handling vehicle in the North American market is their ability to increase productivity. Simply put, these vehicles such as a forklift, allow companies to easily and quickly move their goods throughout their facility. Forklifts eliminate the need for an excessive labor workforce, freeing up employees to complete other tasks, resulting in a more efficient manufacturing process at a lower labor cost and greater product output. Additionally, it’s estimated that for every 1 worker directly employed by the industrial truck sector, 2.5 jobs are supported in the wider sector.
Ultimately, these vehicles allow for a quicker, safer means of transportation of goods within the warehouse facility.
When you're shopping at the local supermarket or grocery store, you are seeing the effects of a material handling vehicle. Those products have moved from their manufacturers, to a warehouse, and then to the shelves via a material handling vehicle such as a forklift.
Without forklifts, all industries would be limited in how they could move large quantities or heavy items around. Forklifts and other material handling vehicles take only minutes to move things that would require multiple people and significantly more time to do the same. Its estimated that there are 2,200,000 industrial trucks in the US.
Currently, in the COVID-19 pandemic, material handling vehicles are enabling essential businesses, such as food suppliers and grocery stores, to quickly produce items, get them into the grocery stores and into the consumer’s hands.
These vehicles are allowing manufacturing facilities the flexibility to produce face masks, hand sanitizer, cleaning products, and more.
Not only are material handling vehicles of vital importance in North America, but so are the motive power solutions that power them. Motive power batteries are keeping electric vehicle fleets powered so suppliers, manufacturers, logistic companies, and more remain in business and can get necessary products to the public.
HAWKER® provides industrial batteries that can be relied on for consistent, dependable power for forklifts and other electric material handling vehicles.
HAWKER®Powerline® and Energy-PlusTM batteries have been around for decades and are tried-and-true when it comes to reliability. HAWKER® also offers batteries that require significantly less maintenance, such as our FLEX® (TPPL), FLEXPakTM (TPPL), and Water Less® batteries. Since these batteries require less maintenance, an employee can focus more on their immediate job tasks rather than spending time carrying out daily maintenance for their forklift battery.
HAWKER® Representatives are doing their part by servicing HAWKER ® products through preventative maintenance programs allowing customers to focus on their primary objectives and products. This maintenance minimizes any downtime a warehouse facility or manufacturer may experience, allowing them to keep their operations performing at peak level.
HAWKER® batteries help essential businesses keep our daily lives as normal as possible. The pressures on the supply chain industry are extreme, so we’ll continue doing our part to efficiently and safety support them and the public.
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