When it comes to working in a warehouse, there are few tools that people will find as useful as a pallet truck. These little lifesaving vehicles are capable of carrying immense loads, and are one of the best tools that you can have at your disposal in fulfilment centres, and other factories that manage small goods and products on mass.

First of all, a short description of a pallet truck. These are small vehicles that are usually designed with space for one inhabitant in mind. They are generally pretty slow vehicles, both because the distances they are travelling are typically very short, and because the operator is often unable to see what is in front of them when they are actively using it due to its load. This can turn a factory into a hazardous environment, so it is important that a pallet truck is moving around at safe speeds, making a maximum speed of roughly ten miles an hour pretty typical for a pallet truck.

Pallet trucks are characterised by a pair of forks that are found at the base of the vehicle, usually at the front. These are designed in order to slot into a ‘pallet’ which is essentially a wooden base that can be used to carry around any other product on top. Once they’re slotted in place into the pallet, the forks can then be lifted up, lifting the pallet along with it in a stable process that can be undertaken with some pretty heavy goods. As a result of this design, you will often see pallet trucks manoeuvring around a factory with a pallet bearing a load of upwards of a metric tonne.

When it comes to these vehicles, they can come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and different sized products can fulfil a range of different roles. It’s not just a matter of the larger the pallet truck the better; some of these smaller products that can be directed by hand are a great option for moving goods into a smaller vehicle, such as van, when sending out products to their buyers. Larger electric pallet trucks can be used in warehouses in order to move stock from one location to another, but their larger size can make some of the finer work more difficult than is necessary. There is also another advantage to smaller electric pallet trucks that are manoeuvred by hand, in that their lighter weight enables them to be moved themselves. Many delivery workers that supply large quantities of goods, such as supermarket and pub and restaurant suppliers will take a small hand operated electric pallet truck to help with off-loading their goods from transit vehicles.

There is also the matter of cost as well. Smaller products that are manoeuvred by hand can be as cheap as a few hundred pounds, and still be capable of lifting far more than any individual in a quick and safe process, while larger electric pallet trucks are capable of lifting higher weights in a much quicker process, you should expect to pay at least a few thousand pounds for such a vehicle, which may not be attainable for smaller operations, where such an expenditure is difficult to justify.