inbound
Mitzvahs of the month
Here’s our monthly roundup of community service and charitable works
by companies in the logistics and material handling fields:
▪ Toyota Material Handling, U.S.A., Inc. (TMHU) has
donated an internal combustion forklift and two specially
designed lift truck engines to Vincennes University’s
Logistics Education and Training Center, which includes a
fully functioning warehouse. TMHU is also offering
hands-on operator safety training to faculty of the Indiana
institution. In addition, TMHU will make a donation to
the Arbor Day Foundation for every new 8-Series,
reduced-emission diesel-powered forklift sold in 2013.
▪ IFCO Pallet Management Services hosted the 3rd Annual IFCO
Pallet Management Services Charity Golf Invitational in Las Colinas,
Texas. Through the benefit, IFCO and its customers and suppliers raised
$60,000 to support the Ryan Palmer Foundation and the Wounded
Warrior Project. Among the many sponsors were Yale/Hyster, Penske
Truck Leasing, Ryder, Conveyor Experts, and J.B. Hunt.
▪ Pizzas 4 Patriots and DHL Express shipped 17,000 pizza pies to U.S.
servicemen and women in Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Oman in time for
July 4 celebrations. This follows the team’s record-setting 2012 pizza delivery, recently confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records. The nonprofit Pizzas 4 Patriots was founded in 2008 by Master Sgt. Mark Evans.
▪ Keep America Beautiful (KAB) and The UPS Foundation have award-
ed 30 Community Tree Planting Grants totaling $150,000 to KAB affiliates
for tree planting initiatives in urban and suburban communities.
▪ More than 30 employees of Clark Material Handing Co.
participated in the Tri-4-Freedom 27-hour triathlon. The two-day event raises
awareness about the 27 million people enslaved worldwide, promotes
social and environmental sustainability in sports, and financially supports human-trafficking survivors.
▪ SDI Intelligrated, a joint venture in São Paulo, Brazil, between
Intelligrated and SDI Group USA, has brought three interns from Brazil
to St. Louis as part of a scholarship program sponsored by the Brazilian
government. Scholarship recipients are primarily students in the science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. ;
Forklift batteries are a
weighty matter
PHOTO COURTES Y OF TOYOTA MATERIAL HANDLING, U. S. A., INC.
The good news is the American entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well.
The not-so-good news is logistics doesn’t seem to be a field where that
spirit is being channeled.
A survey released in mid-June by The UPS Store, the back-office unit
of UPS Inc., found that 48 percent of respondents dream of starting a
business, and 71 percent of small-business owners said they would start
their business all over again today if they could. However, only 2 percent
of those polled said they would start a business in the logistics field. More
popular choices were restaurants (the most commonly cited type of business) and “clothing/apparel,” according to the survey.
The survey was conducted in early May among about 1,500 consumers
and more than 200 small-business owners. ;
Maybe not everybody loves logistics?
As noted in our article on lift truck
batteries in this issue (“Battery
room confidential,” page 57), batteries that appear to be interchangeable
can have subtle differences that
make them unsuitable for certain
applications. What works in dry,
moderate temperatures, for example, may be ineffective in a cold storage warehouse. A battery that performs well with a DC (direct current) motor may not last a full shift
in an AC (alternating current) truck.
Those examples aren’t exactly sur-
prising. But here’s one you might not
have thought of: A battery can be the
wrong weight for a particular truck.
Electric lift trucks rely to varying
degrees on the weight of the battery to
safely counterbalance loads. But operators who are swapping out batteries
sometimes focus solely on the replacement’s physical dimensions and output capacity while giving little
thought to its weight. That oversight
can lead to unsafe lifting conditions
that could cause a truck to tip over.
“Just because a battery physically fits
into a [compartment] doesn’t mean it
will be heavy enough,” Tony Amato,
executive vice president of battery distributor Industrial Battery Products
Inc., told us. And just because it’s
heavy enough for one truck doesn’t
mean it will meet the standard for
another model, even if that truck is
from the same manufacturer.
Some batteries weigh more than
others of the same physical size. To
ensure the battery you plan to use is
heavy enough, Amato recommends
checking the lift truck manufacturer’s “minimum battery weight”
specification, which is often listed
on the truck’s data plate. (If not, you
can get it from your local dealer.) Be
sure, too, to verify the battery’s
weight, which is usually stamped on
the outside of its case. ;
