Transitioning from Manual Hand Pallet Jacks to Electric Pallet Trucks

Many companies are tasked with improving efficiency & saving money. But how does one do this?

The easiest thing to do is simply look at the low hanging fruit and lower overall costs that are right in front of you. But what do you do when those decisions have already been made?

In those cases, you have to look at spending money in the short term to save even more in the long term. This can be accomplished by gaining efficiency and making a safer work environment by reducing injuries for an overall return on investment (ROI). Finding those savings can be difficult at times and can only be found when thinking in a different, more creative manner.

What are the Long-Term Costs and Benefits?

Moving your warehouse away from manual hand pallet jacks to electric pallet trucks is one way to dig deeper into long-term ROI for your factory or warehouse.

A manual pallet jack can be purchased for less than $500. Or, an electric pallet truck can be purchased between $2000-$6000 dollars and requires a bit more maintenance and upkeep. However, many companies are looking at switching to electric pallet trucks to improve the speed of moving products, and to reduce time to pick, move, and ship.

Look for Your Hidden Costs

A hidden cost that isn’t often looked at, is workplace injuries caused by the additional physical requirements of using manual pallet jacks. The constant pumping motion required by employees, along with the manual pushing and pulling of heavy loads can cause shoulder injuries. Those injuries can lead to lost productivity hours and worker compensation claims in the thousands of dollars.

In some cases, one shoulder surgery could exceed the cost of an electric pallet truck, but the safety budget and capital budgets of companies do not always interact to allow management to analyze this.

With proper training, warehouse employees can easily move to a more efficient, safe, and potentially cost-saving program by moving from manual hand pallet trucks to electric pallet jacks in their daily operations.

Contact us today to request a quote or to learn more!