As the market for rough terrain forklifts has emerged so has the demand for straight mast lift trucks. Their emergence and demand has leveled over the past ten years because of the explosion of telescopic handlers. Now, manufacturers of forklifts are focusing their product development on the lift truck's core function.
For example, models that offer a lift capacity of less than 6000 pounds on average are up to 2.45% to a little more than $46,000. Other equipment in the category's bulk class ranging from 6000 pounds to 10,000 pounds in capacity are up 3.15% to $54,177. Purchasers of machinery would quickly point out only if their actual costs are up ever so slightly.
With models that rely on diesel fuel, hourly expenses in those 2 classes have increased 81.6% and 84.3% respectively. Even if the prices on the dealer's tag might not seem all that different, when the machinery has left the sales yard and enters the work space of the client, it needs to produce on a large scale.
Over the last 10 years, the rough terrain forklift market has waned because of the increase in telescopic-handler purchases. The telescopic handlers are may just be the future that this particular type of machinery is evolving to. The task of a telehandler is to place a load with a long reach. The rough-terrain forklift remains the heavyweight champ when it comes to pure grunt lifting.
Omega is a multi-line maker who provides a complete range of rough-terrain lift truck families. They have established the Mega Series, which consist of larger vertical-mast models. These models offer lifting capacities that range 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 job. The more complex and bigger equipment required, the more specialized that OEMs such as Omega become.