As the market for rough terrain forklifts has emerged so has the demand for straight mast forklifts. Their emergence and demand has leveled over the last ten years thanks to explosion of telescopic handlers. At present, forklift makers are focusing their product development on the lift truck's core function.
These units for instance provide a lift capacity under 6,000 lbs have increased in price on average of 2.45% to about $46,000 per machine. Other machines in the category's bulk class varying from 6000 pounds to 10,000 pounds in capacity are up 3.15% to $54,177. Equipment buyers would quickly point out only if their actual costs are up ever so slightly.
With models that depend on diesel fuel, hourly costs in those 2 classes have risen 81.6% and 84.3% respectively. Even if the prices on the dealer's tag may not seem all that different, once the equipment has left the sales yard and enters the work space of the purchaser, it has to produce on a large scale.
Over the last ten years, the rough terrain forklift market has decreased due to the increase in telescopic-handler purchases. The telescopic handlers are might just be the future that this specific type of machinery is evolving to. The job 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 producer which offers a complete variety of rough-terrain forklift families. They have established the Mega Series, which consist of bigger vertical-mast models. These models provide lifting capacities ranging from 8000 pounds all the way up to 20,000 pounds. The next step was to allow lifting capacities up to 50,000 pound and the HERC Series was developed to complete this job. The more complex and bigger machinery needed, the more specialized that OEMs like Omega become.