As the market for rough terrain forklifts has emerged so has the demand for straight mast lift trucks. Their emergence and demand has leveled over the last 10 years thanks to 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 provide a lift capacity of less than 6000 pounds on average are up to 2.45% to a bit more than $46,000. Other machinery in the category's bulk class ranging from 6000 pounds to 10,000 pounds in capacity are up 3.15% to $54,177. Machine buyers would quickly point out only if their actual expenses are up ever so slightly.
With units that depend upon diesel fuel, hourly expenses in those 2 classes have increased 81.6% and 84.3% respectively. Even if the prices on the dealer's tag may not seem all that different, as soon as the machine has left the sales yard and enters the work space of the customer, it has to produce on a large scale.
Over the last 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 kind of machinery is evolving to. The task 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 company Omega produces a lot of different lines of lift machinery and a whole range of rough-terrain forklifts. The Mega Series is an established line which consist of of larger vertical-mast models. These units provide 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 made to complete this job. The more complex and larger equipment needed, the more specialized that OEMs like Omega become.