Atkinson Car Dismantlers has more than doubled the amount of breaking vehicles it can store in its yard thanks to the versatile abilities of a Combilift 4-way forklift. Replacing a rough terrain truck with the 4t capacity Combilift has enabled aisle-widths between the storage bays to be reduced down from 22ft to 13ft, freeing up space for a total of 275 cars compared with a previous tally of around 100.
The Monaghan based company has grown steadily during the almost five decades that it has been in business. It recently got to the stage where it either needed to look at larger premises or examine whether improvements could be made to the storage side of operations, as Director Aaron Atkinson explains: “There was some land available near our current site but planning permission is not easy to come by and acquiring new property is a very expensive undertaking. We were therefore keen to find a more space efficient method of storing stock in our current footprint.”
The ability of the Combilift range to carry long loads sideways in narrow confines was the ideal solution to this particular situation, and the diesel powered truck that has now been in operation at Atkinson’s for a year has delivered benefits over and above space saving. It is used to offload incoming vehicles from HGV’s in a relatively tight space before de-pollution and the removal of fast selling parts. It then takes the cars to be stored three high in bays until they are needed for further parts.
“The Combilift is very manoeuvrable and nifty, which makes it very straightforward to retrieve specific vehicles,” says Aaron. “With our old truck we often had to move a number of other cars around to get to the one we wanted. Multiple handling increases the risk of damage to our stock and although we are dealing with salvaged vehicles in the first place we need to avoid any further deterioration to their original condition. The Combilift reduces the number of times a vehicle is handled, saves time with stock location and has been extremely reliable. It was definitely the superior option to going through the lengthy and potentially unreliable procedure of trying to expand our site.”
Combilift Ltd
UK Tel: 07870 976 758
Email: info@combilift.com
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