Straight mast forklifts have emerged with the market for rough terrain forklifts. They have leveled off in the wake of the telescopic handler explosion of the last decade. Currently, manufacturers of forklifts are focusing their product development on the forklift's core function.
Like for example, units which provide a lift capacity of less than 6000 pounds on average are up to 2.45% to a bit over $46,000. Other types of machines 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 machines will rapidly 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 machine has left the sales yard and enters the work space of the customer, it needs to produce on a large scale.
Over the last ten 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 kind of machine is evolving to. The job of a telehandler is to place a load with a long reach. The rough-terrain lift truck continues to be the heavyweight champ when it comes to pure grunt lifting.
The manufacturer Omega makes many different lines of lift equipment and a whole range of rough-terrain lift trucks. The Mega Series is an established line that consist of of bigger vertical-mast models. These units offer lifting capacities varying 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 do this job. The larger and more complex machinery needed, the more specialized that OEMs like Omega become.