The Mheda Journal

Earlier this week, I was talking to MHEDA Board member Mark Milovich of Lift Atlanta about what customers want from their forklifts. Mark, as always, gave great insight into the different advantages and disadvantages of propane, electric, diesel and fuel cells. It’s part of an article we’re preparing for the next issue of The MHEDA Journal, so I don’t want to go into too much detail right now. I do, however, want to talk about one comment I found particularly interesting.

When I asked if he does business with hydrogen fuel cells, he said, “The fuel cell is a great idea, but it’s at least another 6 to 10 years before we start seeing that as a real viable option.” He was referring to his company in particular, so that’s not meant to be a blanket statement for the industry at large, but, still, this blew me away. I’ve been working in the industry for eight years now, and when I started, fuel cells were 6-10 years away. They’re still there.

My question is, why? From all I’ve read, the technology has advanced dramatically in that time. There are some customers who have jumped in with both feet, installing hydrogen fueling stations and revamping their operations around the hydrogen infrastructure. But those stories remain few and far between. Questions about the volatility and accessibility of hydrogen are holding people back. But with the price of gas and electricity both likely to rise in the coming months, will that hasten the adoption of fuel cells? What do you think?

I’ve been remiss in not addressing an event that occurred during the MHEDA Convention last week. I’m going to remedy that right now.

As some of you may be aware, Howard Bernstein received a lifetime achievement award from MHEDA after ceding control of his company, The Atlas Companies based in Schiller Park, IL, after 60+ years in business. Howard is an industry stalwart, having started his company in 1951 after becoming intrigued by forklifts at the lumber company where he worked following World War II. As the story goes, Howard was one of the first people, if not the first, to lease lift trucks. He attended the first MHEDA Convention in 1954, and has attended all but two in the history of the association. (This year was #56 for MHEDA, #54 for Howard.) He served as MHEDA President in 1965, was on the board for an unprecedented 18 years, and was instrumental in the creation of the first MHEDA magazine. To say he’s been an advocate of the industry doesn’t do it justice. In some ways, Howard has been the industry for much of his life.

For all those reasons, MHEDA bestowed on Howard a lifetime achievement award. Never has an award been more fitting. He was introduced at Convention by MHEDA Immediate Past President Greg Morrison, whose family goes back generations in business with Howard. Upon taking the stage, Bernstein said, “MHEDA is not about yesterday. MHEDA is about tomorrow, the future.” That’s why he is working with MHEDA to set up a scholarship to attract young talent to the industry that has been, in his words, “so good to me over the years.” Once again, kudos to a great idea.

I’ve had the opportunity to interview Howard several times during my time at The MHEDA Journal, and he couldn’t have been nicer and more helpful. The first time I called him was not long after I started here in 2004. I was calling to see if there was any news at Atlas that we could publish in The MHEDA Connection. Considering our relative statures in the industry, he would have been justified in blowing me off, but he took my call. I don’t remember what the news was (if any), but it’s just one tiny example of many that illustrate the character of the man. A true living legend. We’ve set up a webpage where other MHEDA members can leave a tribute to Howard. I urge you to take a look and share your stories.

Congrats, Howard, and I look forward to continue working with you in the future.

As I mentioned in my last post, we at The MHEDA Journal have been talking to members over the past few weeks to try to develop some articles for next year. As part of this process, I spoke last week to Terry Wickman at Keytroller. He brought up an interesting topic for distributors to consider: How do you break into a new account? “One of the ways to break into a new account is to solve a problem that they have. Even if a customer is using a competitive brand of forklifts, solving a problem that they have related to those forklifts is a good way to get your foot in the door without talking about new trucks. You’re solving their problem even though he or she may not have your equipment,” he said.

Safety products are one way, aftermarket parts are another and attachments would be a third. That’s just what I can think of off the top of my head, and I’m certain there are others. (Anyone care to share any more examples? Leave a comment to let me know!)

So as you’re making plans for recovery in 2011, take into consideration these and other ways to break into new accounts. That market share growth that seemingly everyone is planning on has to come from somewhere. Speaking of which, congratulations to everyone who weathered the storm of past couple of years and is still around to take on 2011. Happy holidays to everyone, and best of luck next year!

As material handling distributors look toward a new beginning in 2011, one of the areas many of them plan to focus on to generate more revenue will be fleet management. As most of you are aware, fleet management is the complete oversight of a customer’s fleet, including service calls, invoicing, leasing agreements and anything else you can think of. “The more services we can provide for the customer, the more they will need us, and the harder it will be to get rid of us,” the thinking goes. Sound logic, and when executed well, it does indeed pay off for the distributor.

However, in the words of one MHEDA member, success with fleet management is just a pipe dream for many distributors. The problem, according to Steve Ross, operations manager at Komatsu Forklift Retail Operations in Long Beach, CA, is that these distributors give good lip service to fleet management but don’t actually perform it very well for customers. “There are a lot of people who do fleet management,” Ross says, “but what happens is they don’t communicate it with the customer. They’re afraid the customer will find out how much it costs for the distributor to fix the forklift and they don’t want to stand up for their profits. However, the most profitable dealerships are the ones who make it a point to communicate this with their customers.”

It’s an interesting observation. The age-old industry question of “How much is the customer willing to pay?” rears its ugly head again. As has been pointed out on more than one occasion, there’s nothing wrong with profit. The end-users of your product are businesspeople who surely understand that. But it takes a true partnership, one in which both parties are willing to be frank with other and broach those not-so-fun to talk about subjects. According to Ross, fleet management doesn’t need to be one of those issues. “The truly successful dealerships have a partnership mentality, not an ‘I’m-going-to-make-money-off-this-customer’ mentality. You have to get over that and communicate with your customer. If you do enough of the right things for the customer, you’re going to make money. And if you don’t do it, there are plenty of people out there who will.”

What do you think? Have you seen this mentality at play in the marketplace? How can it be overcome?

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) recently released its annual list of its most-cited violations. The list compiles the safety guidelines that the agency has written up most frequently during the past 12 months. And for the umpteenth year in a row, powered industrial trucks made the list, this year at #8.

The complete list of violations is as follows:

1. Construction Scaffolding
2. Fall Protection
3. Hazard Communication
4. Respiratory Protection
5. Ladders
6. Lockout/Tagout
7. Electrical – Wiring Methods
8. Powered Industrial Trucks
9. Electrical – General
10. Machine Guarding

The appearance of “powered industrial trucks” is a concerning issue to me. With all the forklift safety programs out there, from manufacturers, distributors and third-party training companies, it’s troublesome that powered industrial trucks continue to be cited as violations. We know the expertise exists, so that means it’s down to the end-user to comply. How can distributors make sure their customers are trained, certified and in compliance?

I think there’s two ways to look at it. The first is obviously safety. Employees are at risk of injury or worse when training and equipment usage parameters are not followed. Supervisors and employees must know how important that is. As David Hermann, safety director at Wisconsin Lift Truck (Brookfield, WI), stated in a recent article in The MHEDA Journal, “How do you motivate them to do it? Convince them that they’re too important not to.”

Failing that, there is still one other perspective to approach this issue from. Not only do unsafe operations put workers at risk, an OSHA citation also brings with it a monetary penalty in the form of a fine. Based on what I’m hearing out there, not a whole lot of companies are flush enough, particularly in the current state of the economy, to be able to pay off a hefty fine. 

So the incentives for compliance are twofold.a distributor prove able to help a customer prevent these fines, it would be a great foundation to build a relationship on. So I’m putting it out there to you, the experts. How do you help your customers stay compliant?

Yesterday, two of my colleagues and I had the opportunity to visit MHEDA Distributor Member Liftech Equipment Companies in East Syracuse, NY, just a short 10-minute from our offices. Liftech President Joe Verzino, who served as MHEDA President in 1997, was kind enough to take some time to show us around the operations of a real lift truck distribution facility.

Sometimes, as writers, it’s easy to forget that that we’re not actually in the industry we write about. We do the best we can but we don’t see the equipment every day and don’t have the hands-on material handling experience that MHEDA Members do. That’s why it’s imperative for us to rely on you for insight, article ideas and comments on trends that impact your businesses.

So getting a chance to visit a distributorship is an opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of. My colleague, Steve Guglielmo, who just joined the company a few weeks ago, had an interesting take on our visit in his blog about learning the industry. This was my second tour of the facility, but it wasn’t without a few learning experiences of my own.

One of the things I found interesting was how, even though Liftech has 7 branches across 3 states, all of their rental activity was controlled at the East Syracuse headquarters. I knew about this thanks to a story we published last year on their switch to a centralized rental program, but I had never seen the plan in action. It was amazing to see that just a few people in one place could handle so much activity spread across a 600-mile territory. Also, Verzino mentioned the difference between the major manufacturers his company represents. As a distributor for Hyster Company forklifts and JCB construction equipment, Verzino can see a definite difference between the publicly owned company (Hyster/NACCO), and the private one (JCB). He was quick to point out that neither approach was better than the other, but it is easy to tell from the way they operate which is which. The NACCO group is much more traditional and  JCB is more free-wheeling.

Thanks to Joe and the crew at Liftech for their hospitality!

So it’s September already. How did that happen? I’ve been immersed in preparing the Fourth Quarter issue of The MHEDA Journal, and time has been rolling along at a pretty good clip.

Speaking of rolling, one of the articles I’ve been working on is an analysis of how forklift tires reach the end-user. So far we’ve come up with 10 different paths. 10! It’s a much more convoluted market than I had anticipated. I’ve talked to several tire manufacturers, a few forklift distributors, parts departments and more to get as many perspectives on this interesting and often overlooked aspect of the material handling business as possible.

One person I spoke with was Mike Sain at Material Handling Inc. in Nashville. Mike’s company had a long history of providing tire service before getting out of the business about 15 years ago. Within the last year or so, he has gotten back in thanks to some help from his forklift manufacturer. Mike says, “We’ve used our tire service as a door opener into some large target accounts. We’ve worked deals with some local fleet users who previously weren’t using our trucks, service, parts or rental, but were unhappy with the local tire guy. We went in and offered better tire service. We delivered, and that has led to business in other areas of our company.” Read more of Mike Sain’s comments in the upcoming issue.

I’m still trying to round up some info on the market, so if you have any inside details about the forklift tire industry, let me know.

As is often the case these days, material handling played a role in two events I attended this weekend. Before I started writing for The MHEDA Journal, items like these would not have made an impression on me…now I notice them ever more frequently. I’m sure MHEDA’s Industry Advocacy Committee would be happy to hear that!

Friday night, I went to see the new animated movie Despicable Me. The main character, Mr. Gru, is intent on becoming the greatest villain of all time by stealing the moon. More than once in the film while devloping his plans, Gru ascends a scissor lift. I’m sure most people wouldn’t give it a second thought, but material handlers with children may want to give Despicable Me a view. It was a funny movie, and the aforementioned scissor lift scenes could be a nice teaching moment!

Then on Sunday, a local brewery held an anniversary party outside its facility. There was a good crowd on hand, and my group of friends carved out a spot near the brewery away from much of the crowd to chat in relative quiet. Every so often, a gentleman on a well-used Nissan forklift would go through the loading dock door and come back with two or three kegs of brew. Again, I doubt most people noticed how the material handling industry kept the party come off smoothly, but as we all know, material handling played a huge role!

One of the biggest sporting events in the world literally kicks off tomorrow. To us in America, it may not seem so, but the FIFA World Cup is believed to be watched by more viewers globally than any other event. So it’s nice to know that our industry will be playing a role, even if it’s a small one. My colleague Dan Vest, editor of MHEDA Edge, came across a news item that I wanted to share with you.

Evidently, several JCB forklifts will be present at six World Cup venues for use both inside and outside, mainly for preparking hospitality suites, concession stands and other visitor facilities in and around the venues. The trucks were also used during the final construction and fit out phases of the construction of Soccer City in Johannesburg, the 94,000-seat stadium that will play host to the first and final games of the tournament. Other venues featuring the forklifts include Royal Bafokeng Stadium at Rustenburg, Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein, Peter Mokaba Stadium, Polokwane, the Durban Stadium and Green Point Stadium at Cape Town.

If nothing else, it’s more good exposure for the industry. I’d love to hear if anyone spots one!

U-S-A! U-S-A!

Before we get too far into the month, I wanted to make note of the fact that June is National Safety Month. I didn’t know that at the time I started planning the Third Quarter issue of The MHEDA Journal, but it works out well because we’re hitting on the safety theme in this issue.

Two members of the MHEDA-NET safety group, David Hermann of Wisconsin Lift Truck (Brookfield, WI) and Rudy Cuevas of Associated Material Handling (Carol Stream, IL),  agreed to write articles for this issue. Safety is a topic that we’ve often focused on in the magazine in passing, but it had been a while since we’d done a focus on it. Thanks to David and Rudy for their help in doing so.

I don’t want to give away too many of the details before their articles are published on July 15, but I will say that Rudy’s article about creating a safety policy is a must-read for anybody looking to develop rules and regulations to promote safety at their distributorship. David’s article talks about an often underrated piece of any successful safety program–the employee. All the rules and regulations in the world can be put in place but won’t make a difference if the employees choose to ignore them. How can that be avoided? Read the upcoming issue of The MHEDA Journal to find out.