Straight mast lift trucks have emerged with the market for rough terrain forklifts. They have leveled off in the wake of the telescopic handler explosion of the past ten years. Currently, lift truck manufactures are focusing their product development on the core function of the lift truck.
These units for example offer a lift capacity below 6,000 lbs have increased in price on average of 2.45% to about $46,000 per machine. Other machines within the category's bulk class ranging from 6000 pounds to 10,000 pounds in capacity are up 3.15% to $54,177. Machine buyers will quickly point out only if their real expenses are up ever so slightly.
Hourly costs of diesel model machinery have increased to over 81.6% and 84.3% respectively. Even if the prices on the dealer's tag may not seem all that different, as soon as the machine has left the sales yard and enters the client's work space, it must produce on a large scale.
The rough-terrain forklift market has leveled off rapidly over the last 10 years in the wake of the telescopic-handler explosion. The telescopic handlers are may just be the future that this kind of machine is evolving to. The task of a telehandler is to place a load with a long reach. The rough-terrain forklift continues to be the heavyweight champ when it comes to pure grunt lifting.
Omega is a multi-line producer who provides a whole variety of rough-terrain lift truck families. They have established the Mega Series, that consist of of larger vertical-mast units. These models provide lifting capacities varying from 8000 pounds all the way up to 20,000 pounds. The next step was to enable lifting capacities up to 50,000 pound and the HERC Series was developed to complete this task. The more complex and bigger machines required, the more specialized that OEMs like Omega become.