Warranties and Reconditioned Forklifts

Company owners and managers purchasing forklifts will find that reconditioned forklifts make better fiscal sense in many cases. Most arguments for purchasing reconditioned forklifts center on usage, which is the primary criterion.

The following are a few rules of thumb a purchaser can follow with respect to usage.

• Periodic, less non-stop usage (low through-put environment).
• Less than 5 hours of use per day.
• Less than 5 days of use per week.

A high-throughput environment places a higher cost on forklift downtime. Managers are less likely to tolerate breakdowns and therefore choose the initial part of a forklift’s life to run it to capacity. Naturally, as the machine ages its probability and cost of breakdown make it less suitable for a high throughput environment. With this scenario, purchasers are willing to pay the price of a new forklift. However, when the forklift is operating only a few hours per day, or a few days per week, the company could strategically use off-time for regular maintenance or repairs, minimizing downtime costs.

To buy a new forklift and not use it to capacity results in a bad investment. It is like buying a new car to drive a couple of blocks, where you could have purchased a bike instead and used the money elsewhere. The money saved in purchasing a reconditioned forklift can be reinvested elsewhere in the business, especially when you consider the market value lost at the beginning of the forklift’s life.

Of course, an older forklift will have a higher probability of problems than a new one, but after assessing all angles you may decide that an older forklift is still worth it, especially one that is reconditioned. Forklifts with lower usage will likely have a longer interval between repairs. So it is likely that you will have repairs, but not that often simply because of the usage. And, needless to say, good preventative maintenance on reconditioned forklifts will surely minimize this risk.

One final argument for reconditioned forklifts that is often overlooked is flexibility. Will you be moving in the near future? Will you be expanding? Will the rack layout change? Will you be carrying a similar mix of products? In short, will the forklift you buy now be optimal for applications in store for the future? Given the above, reconditioned forklifts may minimize your investment risk.