Victorian commercial flooring specialist Floor 91 has turned to the reliability, performance and easy servicing of Toyota Material Handling Australia (TMHA) forklifts to help its multi-purpose business.
Over the course of 35 years, Floor 91 has built its business into a Tier One commercial flooring business, servicing major projects around Melbourne including office fit outs, new hospital builds and apartment buildings.
With a specialty in carpet, vinyl and engineered timber flooring, Floor 91 is responsible for transporting its materials between its warehouses and job sites, using a fleet of forklifts to load its trucks and utes full of flooring.
When it came time to turn over some of its older forklifts, Floor 91 reached out to a number of suppliers and settled on Toyota for three new units, choosing both LPG and battery electric power.
Floor 91 managing director David Lauder said he was won over by Toyota thanks to its smooth operation and reduced servicing costs.
“We basically went to three or four forklift suppliers but ended up going down the path of Toyota on the basis of long-term cost of ownership, and they’re a quieter unit,” Mr Lauder said.
“The three-tonne Toyota forklift is a good machine – it’s smooth and quiet.”
Floor 91 ordered two LPG-powered units – one 3.0-tonne and one 2.5-tonne – as well as a 2.0-tonne 8FBE three-wheel battery electric forklift to be used in the company’s warehouses.
The sharp turning circle of the three-wheel electric forklift allows it to easily navigate the aisles of Floor 91’s main warehouse where it is used for container unloading, while the two LPG units are the main workhorses for the business, working mainly with pallet moving.
Mr Lauder said that Toyota’s self-leveling forklift system has been a big benefit to the workplace.
“They’re good machines, very good,” he said. “There are no negatives, and the self-levelling is a handy feature for pallet racking – initially picking the pallet up, you don’t have to judge it or think about it, that’s very handy.
“The adjusting tynes is very handy because just about everything that we unload is different.”
Floor 91 uses a fleet of exclusively Toyota utes to transport its materials around the city, and with three of its 10 forklifts now wearing Toyota livery, its material handling fleet looks like it could be trending in the same direction.
TMHA area sales manager Tom Machar helped Floor 91 with its purchase, and said the combination of price, servicing and legendary Toyota reliability won the business over as opposed to a single feature.
“I would be thinking it was all three coming together that won us the business – it certainly wasn’t just price. In the long run, they’re the best option to have,” he said.
Mr Lauder said that Mr Machar and his team made the purchase process simple and straightforward. Mr Lauder rated his experience with Toyota as nine out of ten for the performance of the machines and the service provided by TMHA, adding that there was “no question” of whether he would recommend TMHA to others in the industry.
Managing Director, David Lauder showing off their brand new Toyota 8-Series forklift