It's easy to understand why lift truck fleets can be difficult to optimize. A large operation may have dozens of trucks serving multiple parts of a warehouse or distribution center, all of which may be driven by different operators on different shifts and possibly serviced by different technicians.
Traditionally, fleet owners had to rely on manual reports from operators and service personnel for data on fleet performance and costs. Even when collected consistently and accurately — not easy in itself — that data was cumbersome to analyze for trends or clues to fleet improvement.
Today, managers can look to the lift trucks themselves for data on a variety of critical operating parameters. From their desktops, managers can use an electronic enterprise fleet management solution to assist in supervising their lift truck fleet and operators. Lift trucks automatically and wirelessly send operating data to a central server, where the fleet manager can easily review and analyze. Furthermore, the fleet manager can send instructions to the trucks, such as changes to travel speed and lift acceleration to suit the abilities of specific operators.
