Fork Lift Trucks Case Study Pipe dreams
BSS Industrial’s NDC in Coventry stocks the equivalent of over 250 miles of tube and pipe in its 47,500 sq ft warehouse and uses four Combilift electric C4000 EST stand-on models to ensure the efficient handling and storage of its 600+ product lines which come in lengths of 3m and 6m.
Heating Division of Britain’s largest builders’ merchants group. The NDC operates 24-hour shifts, five days a week, to supply its 62 branches, and the Combilifts work round-the-clock to move around 56t of metal, stainless steel, galvanised steel and plastic tubes, rod and rail on a daily basis. A Combilift EST was initially trialled towards the end of 2012 when the contract for BSS Industrial’s previous truck fleet came to an end and orders for three more soon followed. The machines are on contract hire from materials handling solution provider Rushlift Limited, whose team of over 150 mobile engineers also carry out the maintenance and service on all Combilift equipment within BSS Industrial. The ST range has a very narrow cab, with stand-on or seated options, and its ability to operate in very narrow aisles makes it ideal for steel and pipe stockholding facilities such as the BSS Industrial NDC. The 4t capacity trucks handle bundles weighing from 500kg to 2t in aisle widths of 1.8m. They are fitted with guide rollers for guided aisle operation which enables faster travel down the aisles and reduces the risk of product damage. Together with a lift height of 9.5m to access the 13 storage levels, maximum use of all available space has been achieved to accommodate the 2,353 picking locations.
F PERFECT FOR THE JOB
According to NDC manager David Dempsey, the trucks are perfect for the job, with the design of the cab making it easy for operators to enter and exit when necessary. An in-cab camera monitor ensures a good view of the load when accessing the high
34 March 2014
www.shdlogistics.com
ollowing BSS Industrial’s acquisition by the Travis Perkins Group at the end of 2010, it today forms part of the Plumbing and
top beam, and hydraulic fork positioners allow quick and easy adjustment of the fork width to accord to the varying product sizes. Smaller C2500 ESTs are in operation in over a dozen of BSS Industrial’s branches so far, and these were designed to meet the requirements for very manoeuvrable machines that can offload from HGVs, manoeuvre stock around and load their own trucks for daily customer deliveries. They are now the standard specification for branches when forklifts need to be renewed. A key feature of this model is the set of additional hydraulically operated longer fold-down forks which make a major contribution to health and safety procedures when offloading. The short 70mm forks are compatible with the depth of the racking arms on which goods are stored, but this makes them too short to reach across the bed of the trailer. Rather than using slings to access and lift the centrally-placed bundles of tubes and pipes, the operator merely needs to activate a lever in the cab to fold down the 1480mm-long extra forks, which can reach under the load and retract it back to the side of the trailer. The standard forks can then be redeployed to complete the offloading procedure. BSS Industrial’s Bristol branch was the first to use one of these customised models, and branch manager Martin English is very pleased with its performance. “The ability to access over halfway across the truck bed without the need for slinging eliminates any oscillation of the loads and minimises any risk to the operators. We can also offload from one side of the HGV in the warehouse which makes the procedure much quicker and more economical on space.” n
www.combilift.com
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