As the market for rough terrain forklifts has emerged so has the need for straight mast lift trucks. Their emergence and demand has leveled over the past 10 years because of the explosion of telescopic handlers. Now, forklift manufactures are focusing their product development on the lift truck's core function.
For example, models which offer a lift capacity of less than 6000 pounds on average are up to 2.45% to a bit over $46,000. Other kinds of equipment within the category's bulk class varying from 6000 pounds to 10,000 pounds in capacity are up 3.15% to $54,177. Buyers of machines will rapidly point out only if their actual costs are up ever so slightly.
With units which rely 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, as soon as the machinery has left the sales yard and enters the client's work space, it must produce on a large scale.
Over the last 10 years, the rough terrain lift truck market has waned because of the increase in telescopic-handler purchases. The telescopic handlers are may just be the future that this kind of machinery is evolving to. The telehandler's job is placing a load with a long reach. The rough-terrain lift truck remains the heavyweight champ when it comes to pure grunt lifting.
Omega is a multi-line producer who provides a complete range of rough-terrain lift truck families. They have established the Mega Series, that consist of of larger vertical-mast units. These models offer lifting capacities ranging 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 larger equipment needed, the more specialized that OEMs such as Omega become.