As the market for rough terrain lift trucks has emerged so has the demand for straight mast forklifts. Their demand and emergence has leveled over the last 10 years because of the explosion of telescopic handlers. Presently, manufacturers of lift trucks are focusing their product development on the core function of the forklift.
For example, units that offer a lift capacity of less than 6000 pounds on average are up to 2.45% to a little over $46,000. Other machinery within the category's bulk class varying from 6000 pounds to 10,000 pounds in capacity are up 3.15% to $54,177. Equipment purchasers would rapidly point out only if their real expenses are up ever so slightly.
With units 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 might not seem all that different, once the machinery has left the sales yard and enters the customer's work space, it needs to produce on a large scale.
Over the past 10 years, the rough terrain forklift market has decreased because of the increase in telescopic-handler purchases. The telescopic handlers are might just be the future that this type of machine is evolving to. The job of a telehandler is to place a load with a long reach. The rough-terrain forklift continues to be the heavyweight champ when it comes to pure grunt lifting.
Omega is a multi-line producer that offers a whole variety of rough-terrain forklift families. They have established the Mega Series, that consist of of larger vertical-mast units. These models offer lifting capacities varying 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 do this task. The more complex and bigger machines required, the more specialized that OEMs like Omega become.