Steve Lowe: Since 1979 I’ve seen a lot of things take place in the forklift industry whether it’s [OSHA 00:00:08] or the EPA. I’ve not seen anything that is revolutionary to a forklift business as the t-matics program. At Allied Toyota Lift we started using t-matics as soon as it was introduced. We knew this was a great idea, a game changing idea.
Dave Cochran: The thing with Toyota’s is that we are number one, the equipment is number one in about every measure that you want. What we’re looking for is ways that we can add value beyond that outstanding forklift.
Steve Lowe: I’ve seen many applications and uses of forklifts where you just look at the forklift and you say, “Wow. I bet it’s got story it could tell me.” Telemetry coming from a forklift actually it to talk to me.
Dave Cochran: One of the great things about telematics is that it is very inexpensive. Within our rental fleet it’s saving us about $600 per unit per year, so the pay back on these telematics units is one year within our rental fleet. After that it’s all gravy. We understand remotely here are the hours that each one of these units is operating, so we get an understanding of how much usage is going on. We’re able to take in and rationalize our planned maintenance schedules. We’re able to understand where the high users and the low users are, and if there’s a breakdown we get an email where the forklift is raising its hand and said, “I have a problem,” so we can proactively send out a technician and get that fixed without having to get a customer complaint.
We’ve got a customer which is rough on their equipment, their operators are rough on their equipment, and by using this data we’ve been able to help them start learning about which operators are having what kind of problems with the equipment and who may need some additional encouragement or training.
T-matics is an incredibly low cost way to get access to information about the usage of forklifts. We’re able to get information that lets us increase the value proposition to our customers and maintain a competitive edge that we just wouldn’t have otherwise.
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