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April 10, 2025

What Forklift Truck is Best Suited to Your Material Handling Needs?

When it comes to material handling, that’s the million-dollar question! Choosing the right type of truck is fundamental if you’re to stay withing the bounds of efficiency, safety, and cost effectiveness. If you’re in the warehouse business, construction business, or run an industrial facility, choosing the right forklift truck can make a huge difference to your productivity, and with a wide range of forklift types available, getting to grips with their use in performing specified tasks is key when making your decision.

Here are some different types of forklifts and their suitability for different handling needs.

Counterbalance Forklifts

These are some of the most commonly used forklift trucks. They have a straightforward design where the forks are at the front of the machine and a counterweight is at the back, which helps balance the load. These are best used on smooth surfaces (e.g. in warehouses, distribution centres, and loading docks) and are available in electric, diesel or LPG models. They have easy manoeuvrability in open spaces and various load capacities depending on the size and model.

Reach Trucks

Reach trucks do what their name suggests. They are for high stacking in narrow aisles and have an extendable mast that helps them reach deep into racking systems. These are best used for warehouses where there are high racks, narrow aisles, and places where there needs to be efficient use of space. These machines are usually electric powered for indoor use and have tilting forks for more precision handling. They have excellent lift height capabilities.

Rough Terrain Forklifts

Rough terrain trucks are for use on uneven surfaces and outdoors like construction sites or agricultural land. They give a bit more stability and power. They have large pneumatic tyres for stability, and are diesel powered for high performance. They have high ground clearance and are robust so that they can cope with all types of terrain.

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Pallet Trucks

Pallet trucks are ideal for moving goods across short distances and can be manually and electric powered. They are among the most used industrial trucks in small to medium-sized businesses and are essential for the horizontal transportation of goods. Their powerful lifting hydraulics allow you to move heavy loads easily, even in confined spaces. They are simple to use and compact, allowing for easy storage.

Order Pickers

An order picker is a type of forklift that allows the manual placement or retrieval of stock in high racking. Order pickers are a faster, safer alternative to ladders and scissor lifts.

Order pickers can be used to move single items in narrow aisles for order fulfilment, where forklifts can lift many items all at once via a pallet. Generally, order pickers are smaller and more manoeuvrable than forklifts and help warehouse workers with inventory, identifying, and moving items. Pulling down an entire pallet to remove just one or two items can be inefficient, so order pickers allow operators to reach the pallet high up and remove a single item.

Sideloader Forklifts

A side loader forklift (often called a side loader) is a type of industrial truck specially designed for lifting and transporting long or wide loads in smaller spaces. Where traditional forklifts have the forks situated at the front of the vehicle, side loaders carry their loads at the side. This design offers better manoeuvrability and makes them able to handle materials that would be difficult (sometimes impossible) for traditional forklifts to manage.

While traditional forklifts and side loader forklifts both serve the purpose of lifting and transporting goods and materials, their structural differences lead to varied applications. Side loaders are excellent in narrow aisles and tight spaces because of their side-carrying design and are ideal for moving long and bulky materials like timber, pipes or sheets. They are available in diesel, electric, and LPG models.

Telehandler Forklifts

A telehandler (also known as a telescopic handler) is a telescopic forklift that can lift loads and extend or retract its telescopic arms to adjust its maximum reach and lift height. The main use for a telehandler is to lift pallets with the ability to suspend loads with a chain or shift heavy loads to areas that would otherwise be difficult to reach. Telehandlers are useful in a variety of different environments but are most often used in construction and agricultural industries, and are mainly suited to working outdoors.

A telehandler can be fitted with a range of different lifting attachments and equipment, allowing it to lift and transport a broader range of different loads.

Articulated Forklifts

Articulated forklifts are suitable for both indoor and outdoor use and are effective in narrow aisles to load and unload goods efficiently. These machines are used in high-storage-density warehouses which need continuous operation. An articulated forklift can utilise multiple swing head angles depending on aisle size requirements.

These forklifts allow companies to make the most of their facility’s square footage. Articulated machines can manoeuvre in small spaces, allowing optimisation of the layout, to increase storage capacity by creating more aisles and as much height as possible.

Choosing the right forklift for material handling is essential for efficiency and productivity. Whichever type you choose, understanding the features and applications will help you make your final decision.