This year Atlet AB celebrates its 50th birthday with a book, film and a website where, in a lift truck driving game, participants can pitch their keyboard skills and knowledge against other players worldwide. The Atlet story: In the autumn of 1958 the engineer Knut Jacobsson had an order for four hand-drawn stackers, but no complete truck and hardly any suppliers of components. Fifty years later the company has become one of Europe’s biggest manufacturers of indoor trucks, with subsidiaries in eight countries including Atlet UK, based in Thame.
From its modest beginnings in a third-floor flat, Atlet grew quickly. The brand derived strength from innovative products and ancillary services that helped customers cut their costs. The company was the first out with the rider stacker and led the way in the development of picking trucks. With the launch of a reach truck in 1968, barely ten years after the company’s birth, there was a complete range of trucks for indoor use.
In 1972, over a weekend, Atlet moved to newly built premises at Mölnlycke, just outside Gothenburg, which are still the company’s headquarters today. Despite an economic downturn, the 1970s were a successful decade for Atlet.
During the 1980s and 1990s Atlet launched computer programmes for simulating handling solutions in warehouses, developed automatic trucks and introduced a mobile terminal system. Resources were invested in the rental and leasing business and increasing attention was devoted to more active servicing, to the training of drivers and also managers, supervisors and safety officers.
In 1988 work began on the development of Tergo, the reach truck that would incorporate scientifically researched ergonomic features. The research and development work took a full six years to complete. When Tergo was launched in the UK in 1994 it represented a minor revolution in the truck world, with its mini steering wheel and floating arm rest. It was specifically designed to eliminate strain on the neck, back, shoulders and wrists of reach truck drivers. Not only did the Tergo project attract great international attention and higher sales, it led to a doctoral thesis and to Atlet being awarded the design prize of the Outstanding Swedish Design Foundation.
In 2002 Atlet launched its safety system S3 (stability support system), to help drivers to avoid dangerous situations by, for example, reducing speed when manoeuvring at height. In the same year Atlet presented a system for wireless truck diagnosis, TRAC, where the user connects a mobile phone to the truck computer to obtain diagnosis and advice. Also in 2002 Atlet signed the historic agreement with Nissan Fork Lift Europe to supply trucks to Nissan’s distribution network in France and the UK. This paved the way for the Jacobsson family to sell Atlet to Nissan in 2007.
In celebration
To celebrate these first 50 years Atlet has produced a book and a film in which key people talk about their experiences and their memories. Both these can be accessed from the celebratory web site www.atlet50.com where the truck driver game tests keyboard skills and general materials handling industry knowledge. The 10 best participants each month will win a prize. The contest will be concluded in March 2009 with a world championship when the best players in the world will meet, face to face, to decide who really is the world’s best keyboard truck driver.
Atlet Limited
Paul Forster
Tel: 01844 215501
www.atlet.co.uk
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